Brown vs. Wesleyan: Which Has the More Flexible Open Curriculum?

Brown has the more flexible curriculum in the clearest formal sense. Brown’s Open Curriculum has no college-wide core curriculum and no distribution requirements, so students can choose courses across fields without having to check off required categories. Beyond completing a concentration and meeting its requirements, Brown students have unusually wide control over what fills their schedule.

Wesleyan is also notably flexible and does not impose a traditional core curriculum. Its General Education Expectations encourage students to take courses across the humanities and arts, social and behavioral sciences, and natural sciences and mathematics, but they are framed as expectations rather than a standard set of graduation distribution requirements. That leaves substantial room to explore, especially for students who want to combine arts, sciences, and social sciences.

The practical distinction is that Brown makes unrestricted choice the central structure of its undergraduate education: a student can pursue a highly individualized path from the beginning, including courses far outside a major. Wesleyan offers much of that freedom as well, but its academic culture more explicitly encourages breadth across its three curricular divisions.

At either school, your major will still shape some of your options. A concentration or major with sequential courses, prerequisites, laboratory work, language study, or professional-school preparation can make a schedule less open regardless of the institution’s overall policy. But for a student whose priority is having the fewest university-level requirements outside the major, Brown is the more permissive option.