The Ins and Outs of Engineering Degree Sheets
Are you a curious high school student looking into Tufts' School of Engineering offerings? Or perhaps a matriculating first-year student unsure on what to major in? Good news for you: you arrived at the right place!
As a refresher, students in the School of Engineering are required to declare their major in the spring of their first year (although they're free to switch their majors after). That gives students a semester to shop around, take classes, and check out clubs before committing to a specific engineering major! Engineers can choose from 16 different majors across 6 departments from Computer Science to Environmental Engineering to Human Factors Engineering.
While students from the School of Arts & Sciences have general Distribution Requirements as guidelines for picking classes, engineering students have Engineering Degree Sheets, which lists class requirements and outlines a recommended (not mandatory!) semester-by-semester schedule for those who'd like to plan ahead. This doesn't mean that your classes are locked in place! Coming in with pre-matriculation credits and a general idea of the technical electives (biology and chemistry classes) I wanted to take, I was able to play around with the degree sheet and still be on track to graduate.
Another thing to note: you can use any degree sheet from your matriculation year onwards; for example, if I matriculated as a class of 2025 student, I can use the Chemical Engineering degree sheet for the class of 2025, 2026, 2027, so on and so forth!
Now, all that info sounds so abstract, so let me do an example with my degree program: BS in Chemical Engineering! Let's take a look at the core classes:
You'll notice the "Engineering Fundamentals" section at the top left. First-year engineering students are required to take a course in the fall called Introduction to Engineering (EN 1). EN 1 is meant to help first-year students become familiar with the engineering majors through fun applications (coffee engineering, LEGO robotics, and self-driving cars are some of the topics covered). In the spring, they then take a Computing in Engineering course, known as ES 2, taught Python and MATLAB, to encourage fluency in a computer language and understanding tools for engineering computing.
The "Mathematics" and "Natural Sciences" may vary across the other engineering majors, but in general, the first semester typically looks the same for all engineering students. Students usually take a writing class, a physics class, a chemistry class, a math class (typically Calc 1, 2, and/or 3), and an EN1 class. For instance, other majors may require Linear Algebra or Discrete Mathematics or Physics 12 (General Physics 2).
"HASS"—or Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences—requirements are pretty consistent across the engineering majors. Engineers are also involved in the liberal arts; every engineer has to take the equivalent of about 6 to 8 HASS classes of their choice during their time at Tufts. Because of their HASS, many engineering students have a second major or a minor from the School of Arts and Sciences like Economics, Entrepreneurship, and Music Engineering. .
Moving on to semester-by-semester class recommendations, here's a sample:
You'll notice that the first two to three semesters are usually general requirements common to engineering students. As students approach their junior and senior year, there's more flexibility (e.g. "Program Electives") on what classes they can take.
Personally, I feel secure knowing that my academic plan is fluid and flexible, and that I can take a lot of electives outside the traditional scope of my major. I reference the degree sheet frequently prior to course registration time in late fall and spring, and I took advantage of the HASS requirement to take interesting classes from "Averages" to "Japanese Popular Culture"!
The key takeaway is that at Tufts, your Engineering Degree Sheet is your best friend! If you plan ahead, you can make the most of Tufts' offerings from classes to internships and co-ops to study abroad. Hope you learned a lot!