Is yale curriculum flexible?

zoebrittany
Sun, 14 Oct 2018 14:22:19 +0000

@Boswind - all accepted students are asked to take a math and science survey the summer before they matriculate. The Biology, Music, Chemistry, Mathematics and Foreign Languages Departments have placement exams that you take when you arrive on campus. Advanced Placement Language exams Scores of 5 and IB scores of 6-7 won’t get you credit, but as @skieurope says above, those scores will help you place out of intro level language courses and allow you to enter level 5 without a placement exam, and other intro level courses (Econ, for example). But I’d still recommend that students who get placed into level 5 courses take the level 4 instead, and that intro courses shouldn’t be skipped because they (are worlds more difficult than any AP or IB course you might have taken in high school.

As @donnaleighg and @skieurope wrote above, the language courses are intensive at the 1-4 levels, meeting five days a week, which is necessary if you plan to go to grad school in a humanities subject, since they all have language requirements. Even (grad) students in STEM subjects are better off with a second language if they plan to live abroad or conduct research. Level 5 language courses meet 3 times a week. But even level 5 students who want to become fluent in a second language spend summers abroad (for which generous scholarships are available), studying in accredited programs.

And as far as the open curriculum at Brown is concerned, students at Brown do not have distribution requirements compared to the ones Yale, but most Brown students take the same “distribution” type courses anyway, and of course have to fulfill required courses in one’s major. Hope this helps. Best of luck!