Applied Liberal Arts (ALA) helps clarify connections between your education and your life, your job, and your future. The critical thinking, ethical reasoning, and cultural literacy skills valued by today’s employers are hallmarks of a liberal arts education. Our program also provides courses in high-demand workplace essentials such as project management, data visualization and analysis, design thinking, and conflict resolution.
You'll pursue a major in Applied Liberal Arts while earning a concentration in one of six areas. You'll complete six major requirements and either five or six courses within a specific concentration.
This course takes a 360-degree perspective on project management, incorporating the important peripheral elements that influence the discipline. This course helps students develop practical skills for functioning in a variety of roles on projects, including project manager, while developing an appreciation for the importance of governance and project & portfolio management (PPM) in any work environment, looking at the concept and the practice of projects from the perspective of participant, practitioner, and executive sponsor.
A picture is worth a thousand words. We are in a world full of data and information, the demand for data analytics and visualization skills is growing rapidly nowadays. Data visualization is a critical part of data science, it is an effective way to communicate insights from data through visual presentation,we use data visualization to identify hidden patterns and reveal relationships to show trends in data, and tell the full story of the data. In this course, students are introduced to the foundations of data visualization along with various data visualization tools. We will introduce the key design principles, how to present data using a number of common data visualization tools (such as Excel and Tableau software). This course will provide students from all backgrounds the opportunity to learn data skills and have hands-on experience working with various datasets, creating visualizations and telling data stories. Students will develop data visualization skills that can be applied to their fields of study and future career. Topics covered include best practices in use of color, visualization principles, static and interactive visualizations, visualization types, etc.
This course presents specific tools for improving people skills in preparing for and conducting negotiations. It examines the characteristics of different negotiating situations, leadership and decision-making functions, interpersonal communication, the intercultural community, management strategies, and factors affecting which negotiation style most enhances communication.
This course will introduce students to the basics of data analysis and interpretation. Students will critically engage with actual data from across disciplines in order to develop their own interpretations of the underlying meaning. We will explore how these skills can apply to making decisions in academic, professional, and community contexts. The skills developed and practiced here will assist the students in critically evaluating and drawing meaning from data as well as making well-informed decisions from that data.
Design Thinking is human-centered, creative problem solving. It seeks to tackle tough problems by examining what is economically possible, systemically viable, and desirable to the constituents of focus. It is a process that overcomes many of the challenges to innovation today—preference for or comfort in the status quo—while remaining true to human nature at the center of most problems. This course seeks to introduce students to the concept of Design Thinking, its foundational principles, and the application of these principles to real-world issues. At its heart, this is a methods course that asks students to reframe problems in new ways so that creative solutions might arise from a reframing of the problem.
This course closes out the degree. It's meant to be taken after completing all major requirements (though not necessarily all degree requirements). You may take it concurrently with the final courses for the major if you are scheduled to graduate in the given semester.
A distinguishing characteristic of liberal arts education is a required core curriculum. The Bachelor of Arts programs require the following core courses:
Discern personal and professional responsibilities in order to develop creative solutions that lead to engagement in courageous action that contributes to dismantling unjust structures
Demonstrate a nuanced understanding and respect of diverse individuals and perspectives and the application of this understanding to further equity, human rights, and social justice
If you are mailing hard copies of application materials, please send them to:
Boston College
Woods College of Advancing Studies Admissions Office
St. Mary's Hall South
140 Commonwealth Avenue
Chestnut Hill, MA 02467
*Current Woods College Undergraduate degree students interested in adding a certificate to their plan of study should not use the online application.
If you have been conferred your associate's degree, you may submit an Attestation Form in lieu of an official high school transcript. The completed form can be sent to wcasadm@bc.edu.
Please mail transcripts to:
Boston College
Woods College of Advancing Studies Admissions Office
St. Mary's Hall South
140 Commonwealth Avenue
Chestnut Hill, MA 02467
If your academic institution provides electronic transcripts please indicate wcasadm@bc.edu as the recipient.
Applicants whose Native language is not English are required to demonstrate English language proficiency, for required scores, visit our International Student page.
Please submit one essay by responding to one of the topics listed below. The essay should be typewritten, double-spaced, and should be limited to 500 – 750 words in length.
The essay is essential to the Admissions Committee as it allows the committee to assess your personal goals, your reasons for choosing the program to which you are applying, your commitment to your educational goals, and your writing ability.
The essay must be uploaded as part of your online application.
Application fee: $45
Two letters of recommendation are required. Letters must be sent directly from the recommender through our online application portal or sent directly to Woods College (wcasadm@bc.edu).
Please note: Letters of recommendation should be provided by recommenders who can speak to your professional or academic abilities.
If you are having difficulty securing a second letter of recommendation, please email wcasadm@bc.edu to schedule an interview with the Associate Director of Undergraduate Admissions. This interview will serve in lieu of the second letter of recommendation.
For additional information about scores, visit our International Student page.
For all international students and non-native English speakers, interviews are conducted as part of the application process.
The purpose of the interview is for the admission committee to gain a better sense of an applicant and how the program fits his or her academic and vocational needs. Additionally, the interview provides the committee an opportunity to assess a student’s specific information and to address the unique needs one may have in transitioning to Boston College. The interview will last no more than 15 minutes. Interviews will only be scheduled once an application has been submitted.
All students who have, or are currently attending, an institution outside of the United States must provide a detailed, course-by-course transcript evaluation indicating the following:
For BA applicants: conferral of a secondary school degree that is equivalent to a U.S. high school’s degree from an accredited institution.
For MS applicants: conferral of an undergraduate degree that is equivalent to a U.S. bachelor’s degree from an accredited institution.
This evaluation is not just an English translation, but a document provided by an accredited evaluating agency that shows all grades, course titles, credit hours, United States degree equivalency, grade-point average (GPA), and date of degree conferral.
This detailed, course-by-course transcript evaluation must be submitted to complete the application.
Please request a detailed, course-by-course transcript evaluation for all international institutions where a degree was conferred from one of the following agencies:
Educational Credential Evaluators |
Center for Educational Documentation |
SpanTran |
World Education Services Inc.
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Financial Aid and Scholarship Information
Schedule an appointment with an admissions counselor through our online calendar.
