<p>Hello everyone,
I was accepted to WPI with a generous scholarship package. I want to apply to med school. I know that WPI is terrific for engineering, BUT medical schools want excellency in all areas, including the humanities such as English.
I don't know if WPI necessarily has all that. If anyone could shed some light onto this, that would be great.</p>
<p>I do not know how good of a response, but this is the head of Academic Advising.Academic Advising</p>
<p>Daniels Hall
Phone: x5381
Fax: x5486
Ann Garvin, Director, <a href="mailto:acgarvin@wpi.edu">acgarvin@wpi.edu</a>
Dale Snyder, Director, Academic Resource Center, x5281, <a href="mailto:dsnyder@wpi.edu">dsnyder@wpi.edu</a></p>
<p>I searched google before giving out her information, to make sure I could get it from there.
We have to take 6 courses in one area of humanities and 2 of social science. We just got the new biomed building and they are trying to improve their humanities and biomed programs. The new president is, imo he is changing WPI from what it use to be.</p>
<p>There appears to be a commitment to producing a well-rounded student:</p>
<p>One of the three major projects involves the liberal arts in some way.</p>
<p>WPI seems to value the ability of engineers and scientists to communicate with laymen.</p>
<p>Finally, they have a nice little music dept. for an engineering school.</p>
<p>Hi, premed123. I'm a current WPI student, and although I'm not pre-med, I can probably help you out a little bit.</p>
<p>From the WPI Humanities and Arts website (wpi.edu/+hua)</p>
<p>The requirement in short: five courses plus one concluding project chosen to fulfill the breadth and depth components.</p>
<ol>
<li>Choose at least two courses in an area of focus selected from one of the following intellectual clusters (at least one of these two courses must be at the 2000-level or above):
* Art/art history, drama/theatre, and music (AR, MU, TH)
* Languages, literature, and writing/rhetoric (EN, SP, GN, WR, RH)
* History, humanities, philosophy, and religion (HI, HU, PY, RE)</li>
<li>Choose at least one course in an intellectual cluster outside the area of focus for the breadth component.</li>
<li>Choose one concluding project (inquiry seminar or practicum) in the area of focus taken after the completion of five courses in the Humanities and Arts. Two courses and an inquiry seminar or practicum (HU3900 or HU3910) in the same area of focus are the minimum to fulfill the depth component. </li>
<li>In foreign languages, students may take five language courses followed by an advanced-level course which serves as a practicum. See instructors in foreign languages for more information.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~`
In short, this seems to provide a pretty nice way to get at least a touch of well-roundedness in the humanities and arts. As a disclaimer, I did my humanities and arts requirement before they changed the system; the "breadth" component was encouraged, but not required. Also, the seminar is a recent change; students used to be required to do a full project (which is what I'm working on now, in fact). For context, my project deals with issues of faith and American Christianity in the poetry of Charles Wright. At the end, it'll be a 20-ish page paper.</li>
</ol>
<p>In my experience (which is in literature), the courses were uniformly very strong. Obviously expecting a liberal arts level of quality is unreasonable, but I found the upper level literature courses to be both challenging and invigorating. One strength of WPI's humanities is that there isn't a strict curriculum because students are not expected to become, say, PhD candidates in art history. It's true that students certainly don't finish their humanities study with a full education in the field. However, the flexible curriculum and relative autonomy of the program ensures (for students willing to put in the effort) at least a moderate sense of competence and understanding.</p>
<p>On the flip side, one major disadvantage of WPI's humanities program is that it's unfairly easy to slide by and, on paper, do extremely well. I made an A in all of my humanities courses and put considerable effort into them, but I think I could have halved my effort without changing my grade. However, I did get quite a bit of enjoyment out of the effort, and I have the (admittedly intangible) feeling of really earning my grades.</p>
<p>As far as scientific/engineering well-roundedness (which would probably be as important, if not more so, as knowledge in the humanities), this is easy enough to do. Registering for courses outside of your own department is a painless process, and many courses and projects are heavily interdisciplinary. However, sometimes the stated background prerequisites for a course can be a bit misleading, which can cause students to do very poorly. It's always a good idea to talk to the professor teaching the course should you have any questions about the necessary background.</p>
<p>In particular, should you decide to major in biomedical engineering, you will take upper-level courses in electrical and mechanical engineering, along with quite a bit of physics and math, in addition to biology and medicine. The major, perhaps more so than any other WPI offers, is indicative of a wide range of technical competencies and ability. It's probably your best option for being pre-med, though I'm not entirely certain.</p>