Tufts University Top Questions

The academics at Tufts are extremely rigorous.

Academics will take up a large portion of your time at Tufts. That being said, it's as challenging as you make it, and the same goes for most upper-tier colleges.

The academic life was a sad disappoinment. The teachers were all miserable and dishonest. I wouldn´t have hired any of them.

Classes, well they're classes! Don't get it twisted! What ever you take at Tufts : YOU'RE GOING TO BE CHALLENGED!! But you always feel great about it knowing that you've really earned all your grades! But Tufts has an amazing Liberal Arts Program and you will probably find almost everything you can dream of especially through Ex-College! I definitely recommend those classes!!!! Professors are great and will get to know you especially if you want them to. I have gotten to know professors in huge seminars by taking the time to meet with them! If you address a concern and put a face to a piece of work, you'll get the help! Requirements can suck sometimes, but over all you do get a well rounded education even in the Engineering Department. Some of my fondest moments was that of sitting around with friends or suite mates and just talking about a whole range of topics triggered by class discussions: from politics, to culture, to pop culture, etc! I definitely recommend that everyone take a class that addresses the history or culture of another community: My African - American themed Classes were my favorite!!!

I'm not going to lie. The school is hard. Engineers pretty much need to take 5 classes (or 5 full credits) a semester and liberal arts students need to take 4. There are a lot of very hard classes and only a handful of those easy classes you want to take to boost your GPA. That being said, you are actually learning a lot and getting a good education. Even in classes that I bombed I still come out learning a lot of interesting stuff. Plus the fact that there are the 2 schools gives you a huge range of classes to chose from. Like I said before, I'm an engineer but I still took a psych 55: Human Sexual Behavior (or "sex class" as I called it) and it was awesome. Companies and employers know that this is a hard school too. A lot of places recruit at Tufts and some other NESCAC schools. A lof of professors actually do know me by name. It's nice because you will take classes with the same professor a few times if they are in your major. Because of this, they do get to know you by name and thats helpful. They will also make fun of me for my stupid haircuts that I rock at the end of the swim season before I shave my head.

I pretty much took all of the distrubtion requirements through the courses I wanted to take anyway, and I didn't regret the few extra I needed to. Tufts has a big language requirement (6 semesters) --but that wasn't a problem for me either, I'm a language major :) I was very appreciative of the lack of competition at Tufts --especially because I'm pre-med, and that was a big concern of mine. However, even among that subset of the student body, I felt like there was more collaboration than competition. Tufts students definitely have intellectual conversations outside of class. Most of us are dorks in some way, or policy wonks, or passionate about what we're studying-- and we share it with one another. I've said this in interviews that asked me to describe my undergraduate experience-- Tufts's two big "pushes" are internationalism and active citizenship. I definitely felt like those ideals translated into my experience even though I wasn't an International Relations major (the most popular major --in large part due to the proximity of the renowned Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy) or involved in the Tisch College of Active Citizenship. And I'm glad that they did.

For first year engineering students, the experience is a little different than that of a liberal arts student. Most initial classes are intro classes in sciences, which take place in a lecture hall. Despite this, all of the professors were very approachable, and if the student makes any effort to have a personal relationship with the professor, the professors usually responded warmly. Professors are also required to hold office hours during the week, and almost all of them are quite happy to do so. Students are often encouraged to ask questions, even in lectures, and participation only goes up when classes are in smaller numbers. Students often talk or debate points brought up in different classes, but its always good natured and never competitive. Students are generally supportive of each other, and competition is never with the guy next to you, but with yourself.

Academics have a huge range on campus. The intro science classes are ridiculously difficult at times and can be really big. On the other hand, there are plenty of "joke" English classes that only have ten or so students. Participation is common and even required in smaller classes (especially language classes and bigger classes' recitations). Big intro classes are lecture format and discussion is limited to a few questions per class. Some professors really want to get to know their students, but in bigger classes, getting to know your professor is dependent on you and visiting office hours. Difficulty wise, classes are what you make of them. You can take three or four easy classes and rarely do work or spend your life in the library with six hard ones. Again, generally students aren't competitive with grades and it lends to a nice, helpful, study environment. Engineers and liberal arts students have different mentalities towards academics. Engineers are focused on learning skills for jobs, while many LA students don't mind writing history papers, waxing philosophy, and worrying about jobs later. I've noticed also that many engineers choose Tufts because even they have humanities distribution requirements - many want a broader education than more technical schools focus on. But LA students should be forewarned about the intense six semester language requirement! As a side note, the ExCollege at Tufts offers the most interesting classes usually taught by professionals in the real world. I took a journalism class last semester by a Boston Globe investigative reporter. It was awesome, and we even got to tour the Globe and a TV station.

Upper level classes are 100 times better than introductory. Favorite class was a focused clinical psychology seminar. Teachers in upper level classes know your names. Class participation is common, unless the class is early in the morning. Yes ppl have intellectual convos outside of class. Not too much competition. The language department is extremely difficult and the requirement in this area is way too heavy. I got a decent job right out of college, so i think it helped.

Students are competitive but not madly so. Most professers do know your name except for the ones teaching really large weed-out freshman classes. Favorite class: 20th Century Mexican Art History; Least favorite: Calculus II (It wasn't the class I disliked as much as the fact that it was at 8:30 in the morning and I really don't believe grad students should be allowed to teach actual courses...they just don't have the experience necessary.) Education at TUFTs is geared towards both employment and learning for fun, more of the former perhaps, but every single student I've interacted with love learning something new.

My first piece of advice is get to know your professors. They are awesome people who are dedicated to thier fields and to educating you. Tufts is a school full of smart, interesting and very opionated people. This is a good thing and bad thing. Good because many students are brave enough to question things which I feel is very important. Bad because a few students are very close-minded because of thier views. But Tufts is a wonderful environment to learn all you need in life. Not only will you learn in the classroom but all over the campus!

In all of my classes of 25 students or less my professors knew my name. In the larger lectures where there can be 150-200 students, they usually don't unless you go to their office hours. My favorite classes have been extremely small ones. I loved my Beginning Italian classes, my English 1 and 2 classes, and most of my Art History classes. My least favorite class has been Astronomy (as I only took it to fulfill a natural science requirement). The key thing to know about classes at Tufts are that they are not easy. Even the ones that are designated as "Joke" classes just to fill requirements I have had to work hard in to get that "easy" A. Academic wise, while I love most of my classes, I do not love the distribution requirements. I often find that I have to take classes in subjects I am not interested in because many classes that fill requirements that I would have been interested in are "weed out" courses for majors. Basically these courses are designed so that only the truly interested stay on in that subject. Sadly I often have to pass up on these courses and take things such as Astronomy or Plants and Humanities just to get my requirement, instead of taking Biology or Physics which I would find my interesting, but much harder and more time consuming, especially with labs. Tufts students definitely have intellectual conversations outside of class. I haven't found students to be competitive so far mostly because in general you do not know each other's grades and often don't take that many classes with the same people. Most professors are definitely available outside of class.

freshmen year i was not that impressed by the classes, but it was very hard to get into the classes i wanted. professors are pretty approachable, students do discuss issues outside of the class there are always only 1 or 2 students that are actively participating during class, however everyone seems to be concerned about their grades which is kind of annoying...people seem to want to get their work done, but not care about what they are learning

Classes vary from awesome to not so awesome. Same with professors. I'd say I've learned the most outside of class from my pears. The academic experience is really what you make of it, professors are very open to get to know students and there are tons of resources, but you can easily go through four years not taking advantage of any of it.

Academics are very varied. I would say the ost challenging in the science (pre-md) department. Departments like Bio are not out to help you and weed out their students. Our hard bio classes usually have a drop rate of about 50{4a082faed443b016e84c6ea63012b481c58f64867aa2dc62fff66e22ad7dff6c} and half of the people who stay in, 150, or so, get a B- or below. There is little effort to do anything but weed and therfore many people at this top college will do poorly in science. Other classes like english, which is one of the distribtuion requirements, can be so varied that one teacher teaches one thing and the other says the opposite. Grading between seciton or labs is usually pretty different. Language is emphasized but the classes have more work then anyone would ever expect for a language class and turn out to be just as time consuming as everything else. Anthropology is great and you could find classes related to almost anything you want to study. So in all honesty it depends on what you want to do. If you are pre-md or a dancer the departments there will not be suitable for you.

Academics is Tufts's strongest category. The classes are small after the intro classes, and you feel like you can connect with your professors. There are enough different types of classes for you to take pretty much whatever you like. This is helped by the affiliation with the Museum School for Fine Arts, and the Experimental College. The Ex-College is where I took such courses as Improv Comedy, Video Game Development, and The Analysis of Baseball. One possible drawback which is not singular to Tufts is that there is not much focus on the usefulness of the academic material once you leave the classroom. This is the positive and negative of a Liberal Arts education however.

classes at tufts really range in size. there are some intro classes (i took intro to psych and it had like 150 people in it) but then my english class the same semester was 6 people. ive really liked most all my professors (minus 1). class participation in smaller classes is common, in big lectures most people just shut up and listen .. or there is one kid who answers like every question and nobody likes that kid. students are not competitive with each other but with themselves (everyone pretty much likes to do well). Tufts core requirements are pretty stiff and you'll have to use a decent amount of credits to fill them (unless you were an AP allstar or something) a tufts education can be practical or just for the sake of learning depending on your major. (engineering stuff is pretty practical... philosophy is not as much).. you get the idea.

Professors will always know your name if you are in a smaller-sized class. The only time my professor didn't know my name was when I was in a lecture hall. Then, my TA knew my name. What I think is best about the teachers at Tufts is that they all truly care about your progress in the course. I can e-mail my teachers and have a response within a day or two. I can always ask them for help after class or during office hours and they are more than happy to help. Once, when I did badly on a math test, my math professor approached me after class and wanted to make sure that I understood the material, since I normally did better.

I haven't been to other colleges, but I really like the academics here. Speaking for the Chemical Engineering program, there are impossible problems that we are expected to solve. Of course we can't do them, but it at least shoots our arrogant asses down. Then we learn that someone eighty times as brilliant as we solve those problems for breakfast. Humility is a wonderful trait. I highly suggest the Japanese program. It's like a family there. Some students can be overly competitive, but where's the university where there aren't your average buttheads proclaiming that they know and do more than you. At the end of the day, you get laid more often than they, and that's how I sleep at night.

There's a natural curiosity in Tufts students. They love learning for learning's sake and like to be challenged. Often, class discussions carry on outside of classrooms, even into the early hours of the morning or at parties. Jumbos generally try to apply what they learn in their daily life. The cut-throat spirit of competition is mostly absent from Tufts students, but certain majors do breed it more readily (pre-med, BME). Still, most people are more than willing to share notes and form study groups. Professors are accessible and do care, but effort has to be made.