Understand how AUP's liberal arts undergraduate degree opens up the world for you. Your AUP experience in and out of the classroom will support you in your chosen area of academic specialization and will provide the international perspective and skills invaluable for your future professional or advanced degree path.
We want you to have the best of the theoretical and the practical. AUP鈥檚 tools, resources, and networks will help you develop your critical thinking and innovative problem-solving skills, so that you can follow your passions and create positive change in an increasingly globalized and international world.聽Our undergraduate degree programs are based on the American model, where you can explore and choose from a multitude of academic disciplines in small classrooms of peers from around the world. Your classroom work will be applied to real-world situations in a range of local and continental settings from Parisian museums to the Medina of Fez to the halls of the European Parliament in Brussels.聽聽
At AUP, we believe聽in the American pedagogical model of the liberal arts curriculum, which has you sample a broad array of courses in different academic disciplines before making a final decision聽on your area of specialization, or major. The purpose of a liberal arts education is precisely to expose you to the big questions that only a broad sampling of courses can provide. You should come to AUP prepared to be changed by the transformative power of our liberal arts curriculum as much as by the demographic diversity of the students and scholars that make up our university community.聽聽
Your undergraduate program at AUP consists of three components divided approximately into a third of your courses for each component:聽one聽third that satisfy general education requirements, another third of courses that satisfy your major requirements, and the remaining courses that you choose聽(electives).
You will develop language, writing, public speaking, quantitative and technological skills and explore disciplines you may not have known about or fields that you wish to sample.
You will work with your academic advisor and professors to choose your area of specialty among AUP鈥檚 25 majors and develop deep competency in this area.
You will choose elective courses that deepen or broaden your knowledge in fields related to your major, or in other disciplines that attract your interest. You can use your electives to take sequences of courses on the same topic in different disciplines, or to complete a minor or second major.聽
In the following videos, you will meet AUP students and alumni, and see that there鈥檚 no such thing as the 鈥渢ypical鈥 AUP student. Our students hail from big cities, small farms, countries you鈥檝e never heard of, islands you鈥檝e always meant to visit; they arrive at AUP knowing exactly what they want to study, having no idea what they want to study, thinking they know before being compelled towards something completely new; they go on to graduate school, to volunteer, to give back to their nations, to lead, to explore. These are their stories; we can鈥檛 wait to hear yours.
There is literally nothing like the undergraduate experience at AUP. You鈥檒l learn from professors whose passion for their subjects is matched only by their enthusiasm for teaching: they will act as your mentors聽as you collaborate on projects both in and out of the classroom. Your classmates will come from every corner of the globe and bring with them a diverse鈥攁nd sometimes challenging鈥攁rray of experience and perspective. Paris, Europe and beyond will be your classroom, your laboratory, your source of (endless) entertainment, and your home.
We are unbelievably proud of our alumni, who have come to us from all over the globe. For some, coming to AUP was the first time they鈥檇 stepped foot out of their hometowns; for others, Paris marked the 18th city they鈥檇 lived in since birth. Some arrived speaking one language and left speaking five; others arrived speaking five and are now inching towards seven. Some knew what they wanted to study, some didn鈥檛, others are still figuring it out in graduate school. Take a look at their first-person accounts below, as they describe their journeys to, through, and from AUP. We hope you鈥檙e just as inspired by them as we are.