The College of Arts and Sciences, one of seven undergraduate colleges at Cornell, provides students a liberal arts curriculum of foundational and theoretical knowledge. The other six colleges – Architecture, Art, and Planning; Agriculture and Life Sciences, Engineering, Hotel, Human Ecology, and Industrial and Labor Relations – offer focused pre-professional curricula. Majors in these colleges range from Materials Science and Engineering to Hotel and Restaurant Management to International and Comparative Labor and beyond. In addition to majors, the undergraduate colleges house many interdisciplinary programs, descriptions of which you will find in Courses of Study. The combination and range of theoretical and applied subjects at Cornell are unparalleled. Because of this, and because of Cornell’s flexibility, students can almost always complete their requirements while finding a way to devise interesting and highly individualized courses of study for themselves.
Students are encouraged to apply their education in the liberal arts and sciences to “real world” case studies through courses or informal minors in "applied" or "practical" subjects taught in the other colleges. Sometimes a few such courses can be included in a student’s Arts and Sciences major (particularly in mathematics, the physical sciences, and the social sciences); usually such courses are electives. Students may also design their own interdisciplinary college majors, if what they want to study is sensible, coherent, in the spirit of the liberal arts and sciences, and, given the courses available, possible, but not already organized into a formal major.
Of course, some things that seem sensible, interesting, and in the spirit of the liberal arts and sciences to a student or parent may not seem so to faculty and advisors. Flexibility is not infinite, and the college's ideas about where sensible flexibility ends and essential standards and values take over will prevail. To ensure the feasibility of ideas about programs of study, students should discuss them with faculty advisors and advising deans.
Conflict sometimes arises regarding student attempts to design a major around a particular career. We believe an education in the liberal arts and sciences provides transferable analytic and creative skills our graduates can apply in any profession. We do not allow students to structure a major curriculum in, for example, accounting or counseling. If you and your student are looking for direct preparation for some particular career, you have several options:
Many of our students choose the first two options. Some transfer to one of the undergraduate professional schools at Cornell.