2025-2026 Course Catalog

Welcome

You are currently viewing the 2025-2026 Wellesley College Course Catalog.

Wellesley College reserves the right to make changes at its discretion.

To assist students in their course selections, we offer this link to the Wellesley College Bookstore.

 

About Courses of Instruction

A semester course that carries one unit of credit requires approximately 12 hours of work each week spent partly in class and partly in preparation. The amount of time scheduled for classes varies with the subject from two periods each week in many courses in the humanities and social sciences to three, four, or five scheduled periods in certain courses in foreign languages, in art and music, and in the sciences. A 0.5 unit course requires approximately 6 hours of work each week, including scheduled class time and preparation. A semester course that carries 1.25 units of credit includes at least 300 minutes per week of scheduled class time as well as significant work outside of class. Classes are scheduled from Monday morning through late Friday afternoon.

Academic Distinction

Honors in the Major Field

Students who have shown marked excellence in their major filed may earn honors in the major. The usual route to honors, offered by all departments and programs, involves writing an honors thesis and successfully passing an oral examination by a thesis committee. To be admitted to the thesis program, a student must have a grade point average of at least 3.5 in all work in the major field above the 100 level. Some departments and programs require a higher average. Departments may petition on behalf of exceptional students whose averages fall between 3.0 and 3.5. Students enroll in Senior thesis research (360) in the first semester and carry out independent work under the supervision of a faculty member if sufficient progress is made, students continue with Senior Thesis (370) in the second semester. Specific requirements vary with department and programs: see the relevant sections of the catalog for details. Some departments and programs offer other routes to honors in the major; these are described in their Directions for Elections.

Catalog Archive

Previous course catalogs are available from the Wellesley College Digital Repository.

 

Contact Us

If you have questions about this site or the curriculum, please contact the Office of the Registrar (registrar@wellesley.edu).

Legend

Distribution and Other Degree Requirement Abbreviations

ARS = Arts, Music, Theatre, Film, Video distribution attribute

EC = Epistemology and Cognition distribution attribute

HS = Historical Studies distribution attribute

LAB = Natural and Physical Sciences Laboratory

LL = Language and Literature distribution attribute

MM = Mathematical Modeling distribution attribute

NPS = Natural and Physical Science distribution attribute

QR = Quantitative Reasoning

DL = Data Literacy

REP = Religion, Ethics, and Moral Philosophy

SBA = Social and Behavioral Analysis distribution attribute

W = First-Year Writing requirement

Standard Course Suffixes

Suffixes used within one department or used for a single course:

 

Complaint Procedures for Online Students

As an institution operating under NC-SARA policies, Wellesley provides all online students with complete information regarding complaint procedures on the Complaint Procedures web page.