Check Your Graduation Audit
If you log onto SAGE, you can check your progress towards graduation. Just go to Undergraduate Degree Audit, and from there, you can see how you are progressing toward your university requirements. If you have declared a major, you can also see how you are progressing toward your major requirements.
Graduation Requirements
To earn a Bachelor's degree, students must satisfy all of the following requirements:
Complete at least 128 credits
The average courseload is four or four and a half classes each semester, though a student may take as few as three classes in one semester of an academic year or as many as five and a half courses in an academic year. If a student completes four full credit classes each year (four credits for each class), he or she will have enough credits to graduate in eight semesters. While PE classes are required, they do not carry any credit hours. In addition, a student must have a minimum cumulative grade point average of 2.00 to graduate.
Fulfill Semesters Required for Graduation
Brandeis prides itself on the rigorous academic training that undergraduates receive. Therefore, at least 112 credits of the required 128 credits must be completed at Brandeis University in Fall or Spring semester classes. Students may bring in a maximum of 16 credits from external sources, such as summer study abroad and AP or IB credits; however, there are limits on how each of these credits may be applied to the Brandeis degree.
More Information about Semesters Required for Graduation (including a full list of external sources of credit)
University Bulletin with the Full Explanation of Credits and Semesters Required for Graduation
Complete Requirements for at Least One Major
To graduate, students only need to complete a single major, though some students do decide to have a double major or a major and a minor. To encourage exploration of different academic fields, students are not required to decleare an inital major until the end of their fourth semester. Students may then add an additional major or minors until the first semester of their senior year, though it is strongly encouraged for a student to declare majors and minors early in the process, rather than waiting until they are in their last semesters at Brandeis.
Complete General University Requirements
The general university requirements reflect Brandeis' committment to a liberal arts education. To be an educated citizen, it is not enough to have only depth in a single subject such as a major or minor but breadth in one's studies. Brandeis general requirements provides this breadth while still allowing for flexibility for each student to pursue their own individual interests. Students are required to complete a UWS in their first year, but the rest of the requirements do not need to be completed until senior year. Students who are interested in studying abroad, however, should enroll in a foreign language in their first year to ensure that they have enough language credits to gain admission to study abroad programs in their junior year.
The requirements for the incoming class are:
- University Writing Seminar (UWS)
- One Class from the School of Science (SN)
- One Class from the School of Humanities (HU)
- One Class form the School of Social Science (SS)
- One Class from the School of Creative Arts (CA)
- One Quantitative Reasoning Course (QR)
- One Non-Western and Comparative Studies Course (NW)
- Proficiency in a Foreign Language
- University Writing and Oral Communication Requirement (varies by year)
- Two Physical Education Classes
Those students who entered the University prior to Fall 2009 must also complete a University Seminar (USEM) course by taking a First Year Seminar (FYS).
You can learn more about how the core curriculum is structured and what courses fulfill these requirements: