Swarthmore vs. USC

donnaleighg
Sat, 05 Apr 2014 09:41:44 +0000

and just to comment on “At USC, … They do encourage students to take courses in other fields and do require students to choose a specialty in engineering.”

Swarthmore does not “encourage” you to take courses in other fields. It is mandatory. When I went, and I assume it’s similar today, you took 32 courses to graduate. 12 were required in Engineering. 20 were required *outside Engineering". Now of course some of those were required math and physics, but I probably took 15 courses completely outside math and science. I went to a info session with my son at Cornell about the Engineering school there, and was shocked at how little space there was (relative to what I experienced, and what my daughter has experienced at Yale as a Physics major) for humanities and social science. I encourage you to really look into the requirements so you know what you are getting into and aren’t surprised.