Hunter College Core Requirements
Hunter College of the City University of New York is located on Manhattan's Upper East Side. According to Princeton Review's "Best Value College" category, Hunter is ranked No. 2 in the nation for public schools. There are three stages of the core education requirement at Hunter, followed by a foreign language requirement and a pluralism and diversity requirement. All information is relevant as of 2010; examples of courses do not include the full list of available options.
Academic Foundations
This is the first stage of the Hunter College core requirements. Hunter recommends that this stage be completed as soon as possible in the student's career at Hunter. Specifically, the school recommends that it is done within the first 30 credit hours. The categories of classes are in English composition, quantitative reasoning and U.S. history. English composition is one course, and teaches the basics of writing, style and grammar. Quantitative reasoning is the required basic math course, and there are several calculus and statistics options based on the student's math level. U.S. history also has different options based on the time period studied. A political science course may be take in lieu of a history course.
Broad Exposure
The broad exposure stage has English composition as a prerequisite. The school recommends that these classes be completed within the student's first three semesters. The student is required to take one course in the survey of literature of written language, which can be a secondary English course or one that centers on African and Puerto Rican literature. The student must also take six credits in a social science, such as history, economics, psychology, sociology or geography, and three credits in the humanities, such as philosophy, theater, or classics. Three credits must be taken in visual and performing arts, with options including art, dance, music, and film and media studies. Finally, the student must take a science course that includes a lab component. This course can be in biology, chemistry, geography, geology or physics.
Focused Exposure
The focused exposure stage seeks to increase the depth of the student's knowledge pertaining to the sciences and humanities. This stage requires two courses (six credit hours in total); one course must be beyond the entry level in the humanities, such as religion or philosophy. The second course must be beyond the entry level in either the social or natural sciences. This can be a secondary course in economics, sociology, physics, chemistry or biology.
Foreign Language Requirement
Hunter college offers foreign language classes in Chinese, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Latin, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Swahili, Ukrainian and Yoruba. The requirement entails four semesters of a foreign language, all in the same language. This requirement is often bypassed. If the student has completed two to four years of a foreign language in high school, he may apply for partial or full exemption from this credit. The student can also take a proficiency exam in any of the languages. If test show that the student is proficient, he will be given credit for this requirement. Courses taken at other colleges may also transfer over and take the place of Hunter's foreign language classes.
Pluralism and Diversity Requirement
Hunter College has compiled this category to achieve an understanding and respect for diversity among its students. This combination of courses requires that the student study several different cultures from around the world to broaden his horizons on different world experiences and beliefs. The total number of credit hours that must be taken is 12. This entails four courses of three credits each. The broad categories of these courses are practical and theoretical issues in non-European societies, women and/or issues of gender or sexual orientation.
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