Ensuring a well-rounded education, our core curriculum includes coursework, collaborative projects, and innovative research.Ensuring a well-rounded education, our core curriculum includes coursework, collaborative projects, and innovative research.

Undergraduate Study
Core Curriculum

McCormick’s undergraduate curriculum is carefully designed to help our students become whole-brain™ engineers. We embrace a forward-reaching approach to teaching engineering fundamentals, and continue our longstanding effort to ensure our graduates are great people, not just great engineers.

Our curriculum follows rigorous standards established by professionals throughout the field and includes coursework, collaborative, hands-on projects, and innovative research.

Engineering First® Program

Comprised of two integrated course sets, Engineering Foundations and Design Thinking and Communication (DTC), our innovative curriculum provides students with the fundamentals of a successful engineering education, and lets them experience real engineering early in their undergraduate careers.

Social Science / Humanities Theme Requirement

To help our students become well-rounded engineers, the Theme Requirement calls for McCormick students to develop an area of competency related to the humanities. To fulfill the requirement, each student selects a set of related courses built around one central “theme” or topic of interest to the student.

Requirements for the Degree of the Bachelor of Science

Students must successfully complete all 48 units of the curriculum or have equivalent academic credit. 

All curricula leading to a bachelor of science degree in engineering or applied science have the same basic components. General requirements are as follows:

  • Core Requirements (26 units)
    • Mathematics (4 units)
    • Engineering First
      • Engineering Foundations (3 units)
      • Design, Communication, and Innovation (3 units)
    • Basic sciences (4 units)
    • Social sciences/humanities (7 units)
    • Unrestrictive electives (5 units)
  • Major program (22 units) - requirements vary by major program

Specific requirements vary by year, please check the appropriate catalog for details.

See the Office of the Registrar for complete academic details.