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by iakh
973 days ago
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I majored in EE and only ever had math and engineering classes. I had one class in philosophy that I took for fun but dropped after a week after realizing it's not for me. It didn't hurt my option to graduate in three years. What's the requirement for general education? |
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1. 2 freshman humanities courses, from 2 different divisions of the humanities. This will be 18 units [1] of humanities.
2. 2 introductory social sciences courses, from 2 different disciplines (e.g., anthropology and economics). That's another 18 units.
3. 18 units of advanced humanities.
4. 18 units of advanced social sciences in the same disciplines that you took in #2.
5. 36 more units of humanities and social sciences from any mix of humanities and social sciences you want, except no freshman classes).
That works out to 108 units of humanities and social sciences, which is 22% of your coursework if you do the minimum amount of other coursework to graduate. If you took a very heavy course load, petitioning to take an overload every term for 4 years, it would still be 17% of your time spent on humanities and social sciences. It's around 20% for the typical student.
Also Caltech has some breadth requirements for STEM outside your major. Everyone has to take calculus, physics, chemistry, biology, at least one lab course, and at least one other science course. Even if you go to Caltech to major in English (and yes, that does happen) you are going to have take those science courses--and they don't have some watered down versions of them for non-majors. You'll be taking the same physics for example that physics majors take.
I believe that MIT has similar requirements.
[1] A class that you are expected to spend N hours a week on (lectures + homework + labs) earns you N units per term, and there are 3 terms per year. Most classes are 9 units. 486 units to graduate. Normal load is 36 to 48 units per term.