What Is the Common Core at Harvey Mudd College?

The Common Core at Harvey Mudd College is a set of coordinated courses drawn from every department—biology, chemistry, computer science, engineering, mathematics, physics, and the humanities, social sciences, and the arts (HSA). Every student completes it regardless of major, and its purpose is to provide a broad interdisciplinary foundation in STEM alongside training in academic writing and critical inquiry.

How the Core fits into the curriculum

Harvey Mudd describes its curriculum as having three components:

• The Common Core — the shared foundation all students take
• HSA — humanities, social sciences, and the arts
• The Major — the student's chosen field of specialization

The Core comes first in the educational experience. Because it draws on courses from every department, students encounter biology, chemistry, computer science, engineering, math, and physics before or alongside committing to a major. That structure is what the college means when it says the Core gives you "a broad scientific background" no matter what you go on to study.

What the Core covers

The inclusion of computer science in this list is notable: CS is one of the departments contributing coordinated courses to the Core, so students across majors meet computing as part of their shared foundation rather than only as a separate track.

Why the college requires it

Two stated goals sit behind the Core:

1. Interdisciplinary breadth. The Core is designed so that a student's scientific training is not confined to a single discipline. A future physicist still takes biology and CS; a future computer scientist still takes chemistry and physics.
2. Writing and critical inquiry. The Core explicitly pairs the STEM courses with academic writing and critical inquiry, so communication and analytical reasoning are built into the foundation rather than left to electives.

How it connects to HSA

The Core is not the whole of the non-major requirement. Harvey Mudd is a liberal arts college, and students take nearly a third of their classes in humanities, social sciences, and the arts. HSA covers fields such as philosophy, psychology, political science, sociology, literature, music, photography, and media studies, and students can take courses with professors at Harvey Mudd and the other Claremont Colleges.

So the Core and HSA work together: the Core supplies the shared STEM base, and HSA supplies the liberal arts breadth that the college treats as central to its identity.

What this means if you're evaluating the school

• If you want to specialize early and narrowly, the Core is a constraint—you will take coordinated courses outside your intended major.
• If you want a STEM degree with substantial room for humanities and social sciences, the Core plus HSA is the structure that makes that possible.
• If you are specifically interested in computer science, note that CS is one of the departments contributing to the Core, so computing appears in the shared foundation and not only in the major.