You must complete four Gen Ed courses, one from each of the following four Gen Ed categories.

• Aesthetics & Culture
• Ethics & Civics
• Histories, Societies, Individuals
• Science & Technology in Society

Three of these courses must be letter-graded, while one may be taken pass/fail.

You can explore Gen Ed courses by category.  You can also see a complete list of Gen Ed courses, filterable by term offered.

To find information about Gen Ed courses' time and location, please visit my.harvard.

The numbers for Gen Ed courses are randomly assigned.  A higher course number does not indicate greater difficulty.

There are several ways you can learn which Gen Ed requirement(s) a particular course fulfills:

• Information about which requirement(s) a Gen Ed course fulfills can be found on the page for the course on the Gen Ed website.
• Gen Ed courses can be searched by category.
• The description of a course on my.harvard includes information about which Gen Ed requirement(s) it will fulfill at the bottom right.

Some Gen Ed courses are approved for two categories.  However, an individual student will be able to use a particular course to fulfill only one requirement.  For courses tagged for two requirements, you will be able to choose which requirement you would like to use it to complete.  Please contact the Gen Ed office if you have any questions about Gen Ed courses approved for two categories.

Only Gen Ed courses can be used to fulfill Gen Ed requirements.  Departments may elect to have Gen Ed courses count for concentration credit or for secondary field credit.  Please contact the Director of Undergraduate Studies for the relevant department to determine whether a particular Gen Ed course can be used for concentration or secondary credit.

You can fulfill one of your Gen Ed requirements with a course taken Pass/Fail.

Gen Ed courses taken SEM/UEM in Spring 2020 will not count against the limit of fulfilling one Gen Ed requirement with a course taken Pass/Fail.

Only courses offered through the Program in General Education (that is, courses with GENED course numbers) can be used to fulfill Gen Ed requirements.

You must take a departmental course in each of the three main divisions of the Faculty of Arts & Sciences: Arts & Humanities, Science & Engineering, and Social Sciences.  Further information about the distribution requirement can be found on the Office of Undergraduate Education site.

You can determine whether a course will fulfill a distribution requirement by examining the course description on my.harvard.  Courses can also be searched by divisional affiliation on my.harvard:

• Arts & Humanities divisional courses
• Science and Engineering & Applied Science divisional courses
• Social Sciences divisional courses

The College's Quantitative Reasoning with Data (QRD) requirement introduces you to mathematical, statistical, and computational methods that will enable you to think critically about data as it is employed in fields of inquiry across the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

You can fulfill this requirement by completing a course approved for QRD.  A list of courses approved for QRD can be found on the QRD page on the Office of Undergraduate Education website.   Current QRD course offerings can be found through the course search in my.harvard.