<p>UCB, have you met the kids that go there? I mean, they require a few more courses in the humanities than MIT or Caltech, but really is a tech school. Technically the sciences and math are liberal arts, but the weighting of both interest and coursework is very, very heavy in the math/science direction. Her courses first semester: Physics (Special Relativity), Physics Lab, Chemistry, Calculus, Probability & Statistics, Intro Computer Science, Comp Sci Lab, one humanities class, and a half semester writing class (on science fiction writing). And she had zero choice in them (I think she had a couple of options for the humanities class, but all the rest were dictated).</p>
<p>This semester she has Physics (Mechanics & Wave Motion), Linear Algebra, Differential Equations, Chemistry, Chem Lab, Intro to Bio, a required humanities class (no option, they all take the same class), a one credit phy ed class, and the second course in the Comp Sci sequence (the Comp Sci is the one course she could have chosen to do something else).</p>
<p>Like I said, my kid likes it a lot. But she comes from a liberal arts high school environment, and the balance one typically sees across the liberal arts subjects really isn’t there.</p>
<p>Pomona and Mudd may be a 5 minute walk apart, but they are worlds apart in the course requirements and academic focus. Pomona is a much more traditional LAC. But sometimes I think they lump Mudd with the LACs because they are not sure where else to put it…</p>