<p>One of the college counselors at my high school attended brown as an undergrad. He was telling me about how he was able to design his own major at brown because the school had no core-curriculum... the whole thought of this got me kind of infatuated with the possibilities and i was wondering if anybody could list other schools that are identical or at least similar in design? thanks for the help...</p>
<p>a LOT of colleges dont have a required core, but have a distribution you must accomplish before graduation.....taking them at your liesure.....which sort of amount to a core anyway. A core is not so bad. They are all 100 level courses...intro to this or that designed to help you adjust to college.....its NOT a good idea to jump into majors your first semester of freshmen year. </p>
<p>Some schools have a totally open curriculum. Brown comes to mind.</p>
<p>I believe Amherst also has an open curriculum</p>
<p>I have seen a list of about seven with no core and no distribution requirements. The three I know of are Brown, of course, Hamilton College, and Smith College. Can't remember the other four.</p>
<p>Duygu, you are right about Amherst. They say that 85% of their graduates end up taking courses that would have satisfied traditional distribution requirements.</p>
<p>raider, you have to differentiate between core curriculum and distribution requirements. Very few colleges have a core per se. Columbia, Chicago, St. Johns are famous for their cores. Some love them; some hate them.</p>
<p>The majority of colleges have distribution requirements. These are loose categories groupings of required courses. Typically you are required to take 3 courses in each category, but the choices within each category are very wide. Fulfilling the requirements is not especially restrictive.</p>
<p>Even if a college has a core and especially if it has distro requirements, designing your own major is fairly commonplace. </p>
<p>Totally open curriculums are becoming more popular these days, but even within a "no core, no distro" set up there are requirements within your individual major(s) and often other requirements, like writing intensive or multi-culturism.</p>
<p>The difference between colleges with structure and without is, I think, more philosophical. Most kids do end up taking courses across several disciplines, but the question is should the college require this or should they leave it up to the student?</p>
<p>Amherst is the only one with a true open curriculum like Brown's that I can think of. However, plenty of schools offer fairly loose distribution requirements that may allow you to stay comfortably within the subjects you're comfortable with.</p>
<p>Nope, glassesarechic, there are more schools than Amherst and Brown with true open curricula. Hamilton I am certain of, because I have researched it extensively to help my niece with her course plans there for this year. You do have to pass a swimming test, take a little P.E., and take some kind of basic quantitative exam, but I don't believe those qualify as what most people mean by distribution requirements. They are quite proud of their open curriculum, as you will read on their web site. Unless it has changed, Smith and a small handful of others besides Brown and Amherst also have an open curriculum. </p>
<p>I agree with Momrath about the philosophical differences suggested by school imposed structure. I think a lot of people do not like distribution requirements, but accept them as part of the package of going to college at most schools. After all, that's the model people are used to from high school. However, there are those, for example, who don't see any reason to take another single math or science course after high school. Completely defensible. By college age, maybe the "basics" have been covered well enough, and young adults are mature enough to decide what they want to learn. When I was in college, math was wasted on me, and I had to waste my time with math. I haven't had another mathematical thought since my last math class ended (except statistics, which does interest me) and I'm a fairly bright person with a Ph.D.who is able to think analytically in other ways. If I had not had to take math courses and had used those hours for something that truly interested me, would I be a less well educated person? It's hard to argue that it helped me, since I remember nothing about it. I think the open curriculum concept respects students as adults who can make decisions for themselves about learning.</p>