To earn the Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Science degree, a student must complete 120 credits are required. Every student will have a major, and major requirements will vary, but a typical major consists of 10-15 classes, and a typical class is worth 3 or 4 credits.
Beyond the primary major, students select the classes of their choice, sometimes opting for a second major (about a third of all students will have a double major) or a minor (about half of all students will have a minor), while fulfilling several general education requirements: writing, language, world civilizations, and distribution. We summarize the requirements below. For a comprehensive look at the requirements for graduation, please see the Tufts Bulletin.
Foundation and Distribution Requirements
| First-Year Writing Requirement |
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| English 1, English 3, or exemption due to course equivalents |
| English 2, English 4, Philosophy 1, exemption due to A or A- in English 1, or exemption due to course equivalents |
| Language and Culture Requirement |
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| Part 1: Competence equivalent to three semesters of college language courses |
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| Part 2: Competence equivalent to three additional semesters of college language or culture courses |
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| World Civilizations Requirement |
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| 1 course on a non-Western civilization or the interaction between non-Western and Western civilizations. The class may overlap with the language requirement or distribution requirement, but not both. |
| Distribution Requirements |
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| 2 courses in the humanities, 1 of which can be a course equivalent |
| 2 course in the arts, 1 of which can be a course equivalent |
| 2 courses in the social sciences, 1 of which can be a course equivalent |
| 2 courses in the natural sciences, 1 of which can be a course equivalent |
| 2 courses in the mathematical sciences, 1 of which can be a course equivalent |
| *No more than 2 of the distribution courses may be from a single department |