The breadth and diversity of courses you can take in the College of Arts & Sciences is extraordinary: in addition to more than 2000 classes offered each year by the College of Arts & Sciences, you'll enjoy access to nearly 2,000 additional courses in the six professional and applied colleges at Cornell, many considered the best in the nation in their respective fields.
Academic Distribution Requirements
The College’s academic distribution requirements will give you:
- cultural breadth (both geographical and temporal)
- effective writing and quantitative skills
- facility in a foreign language beyond the introductory level
- imaginative and critical thinking
To choose your courses for a semester, use the Class Roster. It shows the schedule of all classes offered in a particular term, along with class enrollment information and course details. The Class Roster is updated frequently.
To plan your classes over your four years at Cornell, use the Courses of Study. It represents Cornell’s full catalog of courses and is published annually. It provides information on Cornell degree programs, requirements, policies and procedures.
A New Curriculum
On October 30, 2018, the College of Arts & Sciences faculty approved a new undergraduate curriculum to be implemented with the incoming first year class in fall 2020. The new curriculum focuses on the theme of exploration and reaffirms the college’s commitment to a liberal arts and sciences education. Changes have made the curriculum easier for students to navigate, simplified the graduation requirements and expanded student opportunities for interdisciplinary work and faculty opportunities for innovative teaching.
Innovative Learning
If you’re one of the 3,000 students across the university taking biology or physics at the College, you may be part of an innovative classroom project that uses active learning, a new model that is proving to be the quickest path to expert-level mastery.
Your education at Cornell will extend far beyond the classroom, and likely beyond Ithaca. You can join a faculty member’s research team on campus, conduct field study research from India to Maine or spend a semester in D.C. with Cornell in Washington. You could study abroad in one of more than 85 countries or develop your own research project through independent study. Give yourself the freedom to explore.
