Good resource for where school falls on open/core curriculum

JMS111
Sat, 01 Sep 2018 17:12:45 +0000

dadof4, fully appreciate your approach of using the site as one tool and then refining from there. You are right, there are not alot of resources, that I am aware of at least, that take a systematic approach to evaluating distribution requirements, and you are doing an awesome and sophisticated job of helping your D. FWIW, I think you are doing the refinement piece really, really well.

As a standalone, the site just doesn’t accomplish all that much in my opinion, b/c it doe snot rate whether a school has tight or loose distribution requirements. It rates whether a school has the sort of distribution requirements the organization behind the site approves of. Again, to take Oxy as an example, they rate low on the site, which some might conclude means they are “open.” Well. what they are and they aren’t. They have a core set of distribution requirements that may be more or less attractive to one student or another and that are more restrictive in some senses that more “open” colleges with few or no distribution requirements. But they allow a high degree of flexibility in fulfilling the core compared to the narrow requirements list enforced by the ACTA’s implicit/explicit hierarchy of learning.

I know from your replies you get all that, and the way you are working to help your D find schools that meet all her needs is impressive!

Thanks