I want to study ONLY math and physics at university and I don’t have patience for anything else. Zero interest in being well-rounded. So, among the top 35 universities, please list all of those where either there is no core curriculum, or the humanities requirement is minimal/easy to get out of by taking classes like history of science.
Columbia would be a bad choice for me because apparently at Columbia there is a super heavy humanities requirement. But MIT, Caltech, and Brown woulg be good choices. However I’m not sure about Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, NYU, Harvey Mudd, UC Berkeley, CMU, UChicago, UPenn, Cornell, UCLA, UCSB. What are some other top places where I can study essentially only math and physics?
Most universities will have a decent amount of GE’s which will include the California UC’s. I have attached the GE requirements for UCLA, just to give you an idea.
Other than Brown, Caltech and MIT, most schools that have flexible curriculae are going to be LACs. Schools like:
Amherst College
Colgate University
Grinnell College
Harvey Mudd College
Oberlin College
Reed College
Vassar College
Wesleyan University
A couple of research universities have a relatively flexible core as well:
Carnegie Mellon University
University of Rochester
Keep in mind that you cannot avoid writing or the humanities entirely, but the colleges and universities above are very flexible.
Most top research universities with top Physics departments, like Berkeley, Chicago, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Duke, Harvard, Michigan, Penn, Stanford, UCLA, UCSB, UIUC, Wisconsin-Madison, Yale etc…are going to have some sort of core curriculum that will involve writing and the humanities.
Brown and Amherst have the most minimal general education requirements among highly selective schools.
MIT, Caltech, and Harvey Mudd have core curricula that include other sciences besides math and physics (biology and chemistry), as well as voluminous humanities and social studies requirements (including breadth and depth subrequirements):
“If you give a man a fish, he’ll eat for a day. If you teach a man to fish, he’ll eat for a lifetime.”
Go look up the curriculum/graduation requirements at each of those schools - I did the exact same thing 10 years ago (except for me it was Biology and Classics, not physics and math, so even though I wanted a science and humanities, some schools wouldn’t allow me to focus all my humanities courses on ancient greece/rome, others would).
You want to be a scientist, right? Get used to reading and researching.
What you are asking for is unrealistic. General education is a requirement at all 4-year colleges, in part because of the fundamental belief that college should provide some level of well-roundedness, and also because of accreditation requirements. Some colleges may require slightly fewer credits in GE areas, but you will not find a 4-year college that teaches exclusively math and science.
These are colleges and universities that I know of that have essentially open curricula: Amherst, Brown, Hamilton, Grinnell and Smith. The University of Rochester is also relatively open.
Hamilton requires 32 courses; no more than 15 may be in any one subject, so that a math/physics student needs to take at least 2 in something else.
Grinnell requires 124 credits, of which no more than 92 may be in any one division (science is a division, so at least 32 must be in non-science).
Smith requires 128 credits, of which at least 64 must be taken outside of the major (not clear how students with two majors are handled).
Rochester requires a major, minor, or cluster of 3 courses in each of science, humanities, and social studies (so a minimum of 6 humanities and social studies courses).
You are not really asking for an opinion on this, but personally I would devote at least 25% of my undergraduate education to core subjects in the humanities, regardless of the freedom I was technically allowed by the college. Nonetheless, there’s something about the freedom to choose itself, at schools that allow it, that I do like.
Most Engineering and Tech schools will have fewer general requirements than traditional liberal arts colleges will. If you have a lot of AP or IB credits, you might be able to bypass some Gen Ed requirements. You should do the ground-work yourself, however. The most elite colleges and universities base their reputations on longstanding excellence in the Arts & Sciences, and pride themselves on producing well-educated graduates. Harvard, Yale, Stanford, et al, would not enjoy their prestige if their alumnae/i could not read and write well. They can pick and choose among the most accomplished students in the world.
Just attended a Harvey Mudd admissions session. They made it clear that they are a liberal arts college and if you don’t want to study areas outside of math and science then this school is not for you. This was mentioned by both the admissions officer doing the talk and proudly but the student doing the tour.
Johns Hopkins falls into the latter category and has a very good physics program. Additionally, it’s one of the most STEM-heavy schools – 53% of A&S students are science majors, and 72.5% of undergraduates with declared majors are either in the sciences or engineering.