<p>Hi,</p>
<p>I just posted a question about Harvard's structure, but Yale's is so different! (The USA college system is so complicated ha!)</p>
<p>Can someone please help me understand how this 36-course in 4 years program works in terms of what years you do what, how many electives are done, the majors done, etc.</p>
<p>Thanks heaps</p>
<p>Rainnn</p>
<ol>
<li> Every college has a course catalog. Every college’s course catalog contains a complete – sometimes painfully complete – discussion of the requirements for any degree the college offers. Almost every college’s course catalog is available online, and when the full catalog isn’t the relevant information is.</li>
</ol>
<p>When you have questions, the first thing to do is to read the course catalog.</p>
<ol>
<li> In general, almost every college (and Yale and Harvard are no exception), will require you to (a) complete the requirements for some specific major field of study, and (b) complete general education requirements applicable to all recipients of similar degrees (although the gen ed requirements may vary between regular BA or BS degrees and specialized degrees like BSE, BSN, BFA). A few colleges have no general education requirements at all (Brown, Amherst); a very, very few have almost nothing BUT gen ed (St. John’s). But most colleges follow a pattern where, for a BA degree, roughly 1/4-1/3 of your credits will relate to the gen ed requirement, 1/4-1/2 to your major, and 1/4-1/3 to electives. Sometimes courses you have taken before college can count towards your gen ed or elective credits (but rarely towards your major). Some students do two majors, although a few colleges do not permit that (Harvard).<br></li>
</ol>
<p>Major requirements will include both specific required courses and elective courses within the major. Gen ed requirements vary: The two most common patterns are “distributional requirements” and “core curriculum”. In a pure distributional requirement system, you take any courses you want, but you have to take at least some courses from each of 5 or 6 or 7 broad areas the college has identified. A pure core curriculum system has specific general education courses that everyone has to take. But most institutions mix the core and distributional patterns – they have some courses that are only designed for general education, although you may be able to choose from a restricted list (like “Freshman seminars”), and some requirements that can be met by taking normal courses in various departments.</p>
<p>Most colleges do not require that you take all your gen ed requirements first. Most will recommend that you try to get them out of the way early, though. The most common pattern everywhere, including Yale, is that at any particular time your courses include a mixture of courses you are taking to meet major requirements, courses you are taking to meet gen ed requirements, and electives. The mixture will shift over time, though: your first year would be mostly gen ed and electives, your third year might be mostly major, your fourth year major and electives. Engineering programs and other specialized programs will tend to have more requirements and fewer gen ed or non-major electives.</p>
<p>Since you are unfamiliar with American liberal arts programs, I’ll respond in general terms first then move specifically to Yale (a pattern not unlike that of a liberal arts curriculum).</p>
<p>(In American parlance a “course” is a series of regularly scheduled classes held under one–or a team–of instructors for one term. For example, “Introduction to Psychology”. “Classes” can amount to lectures to an audience of hundreds, smaller discussion groups of 10-20, or a combination of the two.)</p>
<p>Most American college students (a generic term which includes university students) are in a liberal arts program leading to a baccalaureate degree, typically either a bachelor of science or a bachelor of arts. (The major exceptions are students in engineering programs, performing arts programs, and health professional degrees such as nursing, but even these often value the generalist principles of a liberal arts education.) In a liberal arts program breadth across multiple disciplines is as valued as depth in one or a few. This can be an ideal approach for a student who is unsure as to what field to specialize in as exploration and experimentation are encouraged, even expected. But even for students with more focused interests breadth across curriculum is considered valuable both in support of their specialty and in advancing the idea of a well-educated citizen of the world.</p>
<p>So liberal arts programs usually require 4 years of study through 30-32 courses (or course-equivalents in a credit based system). </p>
<p>–To encourage breadth, about 1/3 of these courses, usually referred to as “distribution” or “general education” requirements, are expected to be distributed across a variety of fields. A few schools require specific courses be taken to meet the distribution requirements but most just specify specific areas of study, such as natural science, humanities, and social science, in which a minimum number of courses must be taken. Some courses might be allowed to count for either of two requirements (“Statistical Methods of Psychology” might count as either a social science or mathematics credit, for example) but you are not usually allowed to “double-count” the same course.</p>
<p>–To encourage depth, about 1/3 are focused on a single field (or joint set of fields) called the “major” (or “concentration” at some schools). Majors usually align with departments (Mathematics, Physics) although some are interdepartmental. Each major comes with its own set of requirements, specified by the department teaching the major, and these requirements can specify particular courses that must be taken. Generally you are allowed to count some of the courses that fulfill your major requirements as courses that meet your distribution requirements.</p>
<p>–To encourage curiosity and interest, about 1/3 are left entirely to the students discretion and are typically called “electives”. Many students use electives in support of their major, but this a choice, not an expectation. Some students pursue a second major and consume most of their electives in doing so.</p>
<p>A typical four-year curriculum will follow this pattern:</p>
<p>1st (freshman) year - multiple courses at the introductory level used to fulfill distribution requirements. Presumably you are sampling a lot of different fields.</p>
<p>2nd (sophomore) year - still pursuing distribution requirements but attempting to narrow your interests. Often second and third courses in a discipline are taken in this year. Probably by the end of this year you have completed some of the required courses for your eventual major.</p>
<p>At the end of the 2nd year or by the beginning of the 3rd a major is “declared” in which you acknowledge what field you will be studying in depth. This act usually and merely confers upon you certain registration privileges for courses and perhaps gets you assigned to a departmental advisor, but in a few cases admission to a major is competitive and you must be “accepted” by the department to pursue it. You can change your mind about majors later, if you wish, but this might require you to extend your years of study to more than four.</p>
<p>3rd (junior) year - finds you taking most, although not all, of your courses in your specialty. Finishing one or two distribution requirements in this year is common, too.</p>
<p>4th (senior) year - again finds you taking the bulk of your courses in your major, but you still have some freedom to pursue other interests. Quite a few schools expect you to be proposing, executing, and completing a culminating “senior project” or “capstone” (for example, a major paper–“thesis”–in the humanities, a program of laboratory or field research in the sciences, or a production/performance in the arts) in this year.</p>
<p>Yale’s requirements follow this pattern, although the 36-course specification is unusually high. For its distribution requirements, Yale says you need</p>
<p>– 2 courses in the social Sciences
– 2 courses in arts and humanities
– 2 courses in the natural sciences
– 2 courses in which written work is a major part of the grade
– 2 courses in which quantitative techniques (mathematics, statistics, or logic) are used
– 1-4 courses in at least non-English language that is not native to you (depending on your preparation in that language)</p>
<p>You are not allowed to “double-count” these courses, so the distributional requirements come to 11-14 courses. The bulk of these should be completed by the end of your 2nd year. To make sure you don’t fall behind on breadth Yale stipulates you many of these you need to have completed at the end of each year, but most students stay ahead of this requirement.</p>
<p>As a sample major, lets consider Economics:
Total 12 courses (1 outside the department can be substituted with approval
Req Economics courses
Intro Micro
Intro Macro
Intermediate Micro
Intermediate Macro
Econometrics
Jr/Sr Seminar (400+)
Sr Seminar (400+)</p>
<p>Req Other courses
Math 112
Math 115
Math 118/120 (or higher)</p>
<p>Presumably you would take the intro courses and the math sequence by the end of your 2nd year. (Note that at least one program at Yale, Economics, Politics, and Ethics, appears to require major application during your first year.)</p>
<p>To do all this in four years will require you do take 4 or 5 courses a semester, during which time you would also have the freedom to pursue a few other courses just out of personal interest. Yale does permit you to pursue a second major, should you wish, but does not recognize a “minor” (approximately half a major) like some other schools do.</p>
<p>Thanks for all the information; I was a little hazy about how everything worked too.</p>
<p>I was wondering, for the two courses Yale requires which uses quantitative techniques, what classes are available under that criteria?</p>
<p>I browsed the course catalog and I know Calculus, Linear Algebra, Statistics, etc. apply to this, but when I look under “quantitative reasoning” no courses ever show up. Is this all Yale offers under this requirement, or is there more?</p>
<p>Luckily, it’s not that big of a deal since I like Calculus anyway :D.</p>
<p>My search brought back 154 distinct courses from the Fall, 2009 semester designated “Q”. Most physical science, mathematics, statistics, and engineering courses qualify, and a few “surprises”.</p>
<p>Some samples of possible interest to freshmen and non-scientists:</p>
<p>Applied Math 110, Intro to Quantitative Thinking
Astronomy 120, Galaxies and the Universe
Astronomy 160, Frontiers and Controversies in Astrophysics
Chemistry 114, Comprehensive General Chemistry I
Computer Science 112, Introduction to Programming
Economics 110, Introductory Microeconomics
Geology & Geophysics 140, Atmosphere, Ocean, and Environmental Change
Music 309, Musical Spaces, Sets, and Geometries
Philosophy 115, First-Order Logic
Physics 150, General Physics
Political Science 450, Introduction to Statistics: Political Science
Psychology 129, Statistics as a Way of Knowing</p>
<p>Descartesz – since I don’t feel like looking it up in Yale’s catalog, is it not the case that you CAN double-count distributional courses and major courses? So, for your Economics major, the distributional requirements (other than language) would effectively be 6 courses, not 10, since your required Economics-major courses would satisfy the social sciences and quantitative methods requirements. Or, even if you couldn’t double-count that way, could you count additional Economics courses towards those areas, or do you HAVE to do all of the distributional requirements outside your major?</p>
<p>(One reason I ask is that, on the surface, these requirements look more extensive than what I had when I was at Yale. But if you permit double-counting, they are almost exactly the same as I had at Yale.)</p>
<p>JHS – your understanding is the same as mine. A single course can be used by an individual student to fulfill both a distributional and a major requirement. I tried to make it clear that this kind of double-counting is allowed at Yale and most other schools whereas double-counting is prohibited between distributional/skills requirements, even if a course qualifies in more than one category. For example, a psychology statistics course might count either for quantitative or social science, but could not be used to fulfill both by any single student. It might, however, be used to fulfill both a requirement of the psychology major and a social science distribution requirement.</p>
<p>In the case of an economics major, the required courses might also double to fulfill quantitative and social science distributional/skills requirements.</p>
<p>I apologize if, in spite of my efforts, this wasn’t clear. If we are both wrong, I hope a current Yale student will correct us.</p>
<p>JHS and Descartesz are correct. A single course at Yale can be used to simultaneously fill the requirements of a major and distributional/skills requirements, but cannot simultaneously fulfill a distributional requirement (humanities, social sciences, natural sciences) and a skills requirement (writing intensive, quantitative, foreign language). Descartesz’ description of Yale’s writing requirement is not quite correct, though. To receive a WR (writing-intensive) designation, a course cannot merely have “written work [as] a major part of the grade.” It must also be focused on teaching writing skills, and professors must apply to receive that designation for a course.</p>
<p>Also, a worthwhile link that I’m surprised no one has included yet is [Yale</a> Online Course Information | Search Courses](<a href=“http://www.yale.edu/oci]Yale”>Yale Course Search | University Registrar's Office), Yale’s complete course catalog in online form.</p>
<p>Thank you all so much for this reply!</p>
<p>Wow, 4-5 courses per semester, they are similar sized courses to other colleges i assume? That seems intense to overload like that! But would be fun:)</p>