# What Classes Did You Take in College? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [September 22, 2011, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-classes-did-you-take-in-college/597147 "2011-09-22T03:13:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2011, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-classes-did-you-take-in-college/597147/1 "2011-09-22T03:13:23Z")
How many and what classes did you take in college? ---
**Author:** ![ultrafilter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/3d9bf3/32.png) [@ultrafilter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ultrafilter)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2011, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-classes-did-you-take-in-college/597147/2 "2011-09-22T03:24:03Z")
Forty, as is pretty standard for an American liberal arts degree. Is anyone really interested in reading the entire list? ---
**Author:** ![Rand\_Rover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/db5fbb/32.png) [@Rand\_Rover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rand_Rover)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2011, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-classes-did-you-take-in-college/597147/3 "2011-09-22T03:27:01Z")
A person who finishes college will end up taking more classes than they can remember. You may want to focus your question a bit more. ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2011, 3:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-classes-did-you-take-in-college/597147/4 "2011-09-22T03:32:48Z")
> [@Rand\_Rover](#): > > A person who finishes college will end up taking more classes than they can remember. You may want to focus your question a bit more. Sorry I meant about how many classes and if most of their classes were concentrated in their major or spread out. ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2011, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-classes-did-you-take-in-college/597147/5 "2011-09-22T03:55:46Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > Sorry I meant about how many classes and if most of their classes were concentrated in their major or spread out. Ah. Well, I am atypical in that I eventually treated college mostly as a hobby and was a (semi- ) professional undergrad for five years full-time and ~eight years part-time. I believe I accumulated something over 250 semester units, but I don’t recall exactly. I pursued a de facto double-major in history and biology ( mostly systematics and natural history ). But even within that loose focus I generally was very broad in my choice of classes, taking mostly what interested me and ignoring degree requirements that didn’t. Including finagling myself into several classes I hadn’t taken pre-reqs for, in part because my sheer longevity earned me a certain level of limited priviledge. I was able to get away with this back in the day because a.) I went to what was back then a very affordable state school ( tuition + fees was ~13x cheaper than it is today ) and b.) after the first few years I had a well-paying full-time job working on a graveyard shift. I never felt under any pressure to attend school to land a job. That kind of aimless path is almost certainly much less viable today due to the sheer increase in college costs alone. Not to mention it probably was never a particularly smart plan for anyone anyway ;). ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2011, 4:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-classes-did-you-take-in-college/597147/6 "2011-09-22T04:42:48Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > Sorry I meant about how many classes and if most of their classes were concentrated in their major or spread out. We were required to take 32 classes in four years. My major was a bit different because the university doesn’t offer general education degrees at the BA level, but does hybrid degrees instead (English-Teaching, Math-Teaching etc). So I had to take all the classes required for a “straight” English degree plus additional required classes for teaching as well. I think how it worked out for me was: ten general requirements (I was able to knock out three of them at once by qualifying to take intermediate Spanish, otherwise it would have been twelve), two elective art/theater classes, four education classes required for my major including a student teaching assignment, and the rest a mix of required and elective English classes. The required classes included many literature classes and grammar. The electives were creative writing classes and the History of the English language. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2011, 4:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-classes-did-you-take-in-college/597147/7 "2011-09-22T04:53:26Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > Sorry I meant about how many classes and if most of their classes were concentrated in their major or spread out. My undergraduate degree was in business (specifically, marketing). I had to earn 128 credits to graduate; most of my classes were 3 or 4 credits each – I averaged 14 or 15 credits per semester, plus taking classes over 2 summers, to graduate in 4 years. So, I probably took something on the order of 40 different classes during my undergrad career. At my school (University of Wisconsin-Madison), you entered the School of Business as a junior, assuming that you had taken all of the prerequisite classes, and had a high enough GPA at that point. You only took two business classes during those first two years (two semesters of accounting); nearly everything else I took during those first two years were prerequisite classes (economics, calculus, statistics, political science, philosophy, psychology, literature, even one semester of a “hard science” with a lab). During my junior and senior years, when I was in the School of Business, the vast majority of my classes were in Business, though I had room for a few electives (I took a couple of phys ed classes, and a few survey-level science classes, because they interested me). So, overall, I’d figure that roughly half of my class load was actually in my major (i.e., business), another quarter were pretty much directly related to what I needed for my major (math, statistics, economics), and the remaining quarter were either prescribed by my school for “breadth”, or purely elective. ---
**Author:** ![Naxos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/50afbb/32.png) [@Naxos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Naxos)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2011, 4:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-classes-did-you-take-in-college/597147/8 "2011-09-22T04:57:09Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > How many and what classes did you take in college? Lots of Math, Logic, Psych and Philosophy. ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2011, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-classes-did-you-take-in-college/597147/9 "2011-09-22T04:59:14Z")
All the general stuff in the beginning, some physics and the last 2 years were almost nothing but math. FYI, being a math major does not make me a human calculator, people don’t seem to realize that having a math degree doesn’t mean I spent four years doing arithmetic. That’s like assuming an English major spent 4 years memorizing the dictionary. ---
**Author:** ![RadicalPi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/radicalpi/32/9806_2.png) [@RadicalPi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RadicalPi)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2011, 8:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-classes-did-you-take-in-college/597147/10 "2011-09-22T08:21:08Z")
> [@Joey\_P](#): > > FYI, being a math major does not make me a human calculator, people don’t seem to realize that having a math degree doesn’t mean I spent four years doing arithmetic. That’s like assuming an English major spent 4 years memorizing the dictionary. So true. I used my calculator for all that stuff, same as everyone else. Anyway, if **QSH** wants my whole list, here it is, at least for the math side. This is about 10 years ago at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I’m going to put it in one of those boxes, if I can remember how. ```auto Bachelor of Science in Mathematics Composition Requirement Composition I Course I tested out of Composition II Grimm’s Fairy Tales Foreign Language Requirement Language Course I tested out of Language Course I tested out of Language Second-year French 1 Language Second-year French 2 (Two years of a foreign language were required.) General Education Requirements Area One Literature and the Arts Introduction to French Literature Historical Perspectives Western History to 1789 Western History since 1789 Social Perspectives Introduction to Sociology Nonwestern Cultures Geography of Sub-Saharan Africa Area Two Physical Science Course I tested out of Biological Science Mammalian Physiology Behavioral Science Introduction to Linguistics Mathematics Course I tested out of Core Requirements Calculus I Course I tested out of Calculus II Calculus of Several Variables Computer Science Introduction to Computer Science Fundamental Mathematics Linear Algebra Probability and Statistics Real Analysis Mathematics Option Geometry Non-Euclidean Geometry Abstract Algebra Advanced Mathematics Differential Equations Advanced Mathematics Combinatorics Advanced Mathematics Number Theory Supporting Coursework A whole bunch of courses that my other major in French satisfied. ``` ---
**Author:** ![Double\_Foolscap](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85e7bf/32.png) [@Double\_Foolscap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Double_Foolscap)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2011, 8:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-classes-did-you-take-in-college/597147/11 "2011-09-22T08:35:26Z")
I went to an English university, so I didn’t have the 40-course workload that Americans seem to get :eek: Year 1: Anglo-Saxon History; Scandinavian and North Atlantic History; Insular Latin Language & Literature; Old English Language & Literature; Brittonic History; Palaeography & Codicology. Year 2: dropped Brittonic History, took up Anglo-Saxon Archaeology. Year 3: Christianization of Scandinavia; Anglo-Saxon Chancery; _Beowulf_; Textual Criticism; dissertation on Tatwine’s _Enigmata_. ---
**Author:** ![Lord\_Feldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lord_feldon/32/341_2.png) [@Lord\_Feldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lord_Feldon)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2011, 8:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-classes-did-you-take-in-college/597147/12 "2011-09-22T08:49:54Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > Sorry I meant about how many classes and if most of their classes were concentrated in their major or spread out. Of the 36 classes I took\*, only 9 were in my major. Or maybe 10. I know I only needed 9, though. ETA: Actually it was 11 or 12. Two intro classes didn’t count in the graduation requirements as major area courses but were prerequisites for all of the ones that did. \*I’m including examination credit (AP classes and credit from the foreign language placement test in my case) for simplicity. ---
**Author:** ![MsRobyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/90ced4/32.png) [@MsRobyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MsRobyn)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2011, 10:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-classes-did-you-take-in-college/597147/13 "2011-09-22T10:14:03Z")
For my major of communication and journalism, I was limited to 13 courses; if I had taken any more, they would have counted as general electives. I also had a history minor, which required six courses. Fortunately, two of those counted toward my general education requirement, so I really only had to take four more courses to fulfill that. The rest were general education requirements in English, math, humanities, foreign language, behavioral and natural sciences, government, and so forth. The low number of courses for my major left more room for interesting electives. The advantage is that I was able to graduate relatively quickly. ---
**Author:** ![IvoryTowerDenizen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ivorytowerdenizen/32/17937_2.png) [@IvoryTowerDenizen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IvoryTowerDenizen)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2011, 10:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-classes-did-you-take-in-college/597147/14 "2011-09-22T10:23:20Z")
I don’t know the actual number of classes, but I went to a very Liberal Arts oriented school, so was required to take many, many courses outside my major. My science classes were: 1 year organic (with lab) 1 year inorganic chem (with lab) 1 year genetics/cell bio (with lab) 1 year physics (lab) 1 semester biochem 1 semester neurology 1 semester bio statistics 1 semester Advanced genetics 1 semester Advanced cell bio 1 year calculus I also worked in a research lab from 2nd semester soph year on, which counted as an elective Lab classes were 2X as long as regular classes, but the lab part got minimal credit The other requirements were in: Humanities (2 semesters+ freshman writing), language (4 semesters), arts (2 semesters); Soc/Phl/Psyc etc (2 semesters), History (1 semester). And then open electives. My SAT scores/AP English placed my out of Freshman Writing seminar, my high school French placed me out 2/4 required semesters of language, my AP BIO just gave me credits, but not the class. (Which was good, as I took a reduced course load one semester when I had surgery and I still graduated on time). I bombed the AP test in calculus, so it did nothing for me. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![FairyChatMom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fairychatmom/32/21906_2.png) [@FairyChatMom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FairyChatMom)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2011, 11:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-classes-did-you-take-in-college/597147/15 "2011-09-22T11:11:22Z")
I took whatever I needed to get my engineering degree, plus a couple of semesters of German for fun. It was over 30 years ago, so unless I dig out my transcript, I couldn’t even begin to guess. ---
**Author:** ![IvoryTowerDenizen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ivorytowerdenizen/32/17937_2.png) [@IvoryTowerDenizen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IvoryTowerDenizen)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2011, 11:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-classes-did-you-take-in-college/597147/16 "2011-09-22T11:26:36Z")
What flavor of Engineering did you get? ---
**Author:** ![amarone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e0b2c6/32.png) [@amarone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amarone)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2011, 11:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-classes-did-you-take-in-college/597147/17 "2011-09-22T11:44:15Z")
I am English where degrees are much more focused on the particular subject than in the US, and finish in 3 years. In my Biochemistry degree I did: Year 1: 50% Chemistry, 25% Biochemistry, 25% Physiology (an elective) Year 2: 50% Biochemistry, 25% Chemistry, 25% Pharmacology (elective) Year 3: 100% Biochemistry High school is also more focused - in my final 2 years the only subjects I studied were Maths, Biology and Chemistry. ---
**Author:** ![kferr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/71e660/32.png) [@kferr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kferr)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2011, 12:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-classes-did-you-take-in-college/597147/18 "2011-09-22T12:02:04Z")
I got a BSc in Computer Science in 1984 from UMR (now the Missouri University of Science and Technology). The CS courses included pure language courses in Fortran, PL/I, Cobol, Assembler (both 8080 and IBM S-360), and Lisp. Then there were CS courses where you just used languages such as alorithm design and computational mathmatics. From the math department I had all the calculus available, differential equations, prob & stat, and partial diffy-q. From the science departments there was 2 general physics, 1 chemistry, and astronomy as an elective. From the Electrical Engineering dept there was circuit analysis and digital circuit design. One required Philosophy class was Formal Logic. There were a couple English requirements and a choice of electives to fill it out. A strange thing about the CS degree is that we couldn’t take foreign languages. I mean, you could take French or Spanish, but it wouldn’t count towards your degree in any way. ---
**Author:** ![FairyChatMom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fairychatmom/32/21906_2.png) [@FairyChatMom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FairyChatMom)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2011, 12:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-classes-did-you-take-in-college/597147/19 "2011-09-22T12:27:12Z")
> [@IvoryTowerDenizen](#): > > What flavor of Engineering did you get? BS in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering. I guess that makes me some kind of rocket scientist… ---
**Author:** ![IvoryTowerDenizen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ivorytowerdenizen/32/17937_2.png) [@IvoryTowerDenizen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IvoryTowerDenizen)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2011, 12:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-classes-did-you-take-in-college/597147/20 "2011-09-22T12:33:40Z")
That’s what my son wants to do. Can I PM you some questions about educational path? [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-classes-did-you-take-in-college/597147.md?page=2)