So How's That Open Curriculum going

mpnsoft
Wed, 09 Sep 2009 07:32:20 +0000

Since I currently have daughters at both Brown & Amherst who specifically chose the schools with the open curriculum in mind as a priority, I thought I’d provide my own perspective here…

My Brown senior is a math & economics major. Her transcript reveals difficult courses that are spread among a variety of subjects that would satisfy distribution requirements at most colleges.

My Amherst freshman expects to major in math & biology. She’s currently taking multi variable calculus among her other science, music, and humanities courses. I expect that she too will take a broad range of courses that don’t demonstrate a “lopsided” transcript.

Since both girls received perfect scores on a variety of math & science SAT & AP tests, they certainly don’t fall into any category that stereotypes students in an “open” curriculum as math & science averse. In fact, like most of their friends at these schools, they hyper-excelled in a variety of areas – including music and sports – during high school.

Both schools were chosen after careful review of the math departments. Math departments at most colleges have issues of one sort or another because math majors are generally rare compared with other subjects. Though the Amherst department is indeed small, thus far, all indications point to the possibility of an excellent education. And there are potential pluses to go along with the minuses. Of course, a small department does mean fewer courses in a smaller variety of subject areas.

Finally, the # of majors in hard sciences at these schools doesn’t necessarily correspond to the concept that English & History majors rarely or never take science courses at these schools. So, though there are undoubtedly students who avoid math & science at places like Amherst, a quick look at the school’s SAT breakdown should get across the point that the school generally accepts students who excel in multiple areas. And none of the students I know personally at Brown or Amherst fall into the purported categories discussed in this thread.