Colleges with lax distribution requirements

Keilexandra
Thu, 11 Jun 2009 13:05:51 +0000

Oh, I forgot about Hampshire. Along those same lines are Marlboro, Bennington, Bard. They may or may not have distribution requirements; I’m not sure, as that style of school is a bit TOO alternative for my taste. OTOH, I know a Marlboro senior who is very quiet, wears cardigans (not preppy ones–I think of her as old-fashioned nice), and loves her school. Pretty campus if you like nature and isolation.

My own college search started with the open-curriculum criteria, but my current top choice is Swarthmore–which has a relatively strict distribution requirement with lab science. Other factors should be the make-or-break.

It seems like you’re looking for linguistics and a smaller college (LAC/small U). At LACs, linguistics should be the deciding factor. I’d recommend looking very closely at the Five College Consortium wrt proximity to UMass-Amherst; I think Amherst and Hampshire should be close enough, but Smith and especially Holyoke are a bit out there. Do you really want to sit on a bus for 2 hours a day, several days a week, for major classes? The Tri-Co consortium is a bit better, since Haverford offers introductory linguistics, Swat’s program is very strong for an LAC, and you also have Penn’s amazing ling/foreign lang. resources. Also consider Pitzer, Pomona, and Scripps of the Claremont Consortium–the two Ps have, IIRC, a joint ling department, although it’s Pitzer’s interdisciplinary speciality. Claremonts are actually within walking distance and share a catalog (Tri-Co does as well), which makes cross-reg so much easier.

Carleton and Macalester, up in snowy Minnesota, also both offer linguistics majors; both are in nominal consortiums, but I don’t know what the ling/language offerings are like. Look into possibly taking obscure languages at Mac through UMinn-Twin Cities.