HSOC Major Policies and Rules

The HSOC major completes Sector IV: Humanities and Social Sciences. You cannot choose to complete any other Sectors with your HSOC major.

HSOC 0480 (HSOC 010) or HSOC 0490 (HSOC 145): There is no exception to the rule that in order to declare the HSOC major, a student must have taken or be currently enrolled in HSOC 0480 or HSOC 0490 after the end of the drop period.

Core Courses: there are no substitutes for courses fulfilling quantitative and core discipline requirements.

HSOC Electives are fulfilled with courses on this list of HSOC electives (substitutes cannot be petitioned). Electives are also tagged with the "AHSM" course attribute code in Path@Penn. 

Concentration courses: There is a list of pre-approved courses for each concentration, but these courses are not required, and students may petition other courses for the concentration. Check out your concentration's page for more information.

Petitioning courses: Petitions are only accepted for concentration courses, and seniors may not petition courses after the add date of their last semester.

Non-College courses: Students may have up to three non-College courses in their concentrations.

Transfer courses & Study Abroad courses may count if approved through XCat for the major. For Study Abroad programs, up to two courses may count if approved through XCat but only for the concentration. EXCEPTIONS: up to three courses from IHP may be counted in the major. Unless a course is accepted as a direct equivalent to an HSOC elective or core course, all transfer and study abroad credits will count towards the concentration requirement. 

AP courses do not count toward the HSOC major.

Minimum Grade required for credit in the HSOC major is a C-.  Courses with less than a C- or taken pass/fail do not count toward the HSOC major.

Double-counting courses: You cannot double-count within the HSOC major--you need 14 separate courses to complete the major. 

Double-counting with MINORS: HSOC majors may only double count three (3) courses between an HSOC major and the BIOE minor and two (2) courses between an HSOC major and the STSC minor. Students with the Bioethics & Society concentration may not minor in BIOE.

Double-counting with other MAJORS: Please check with the College office on how to manage double-counting between two majors.  There must be at least 9 courses for the HSOC major which are not double-counted.  Double-majoring between HSOC and STSC is not permitted.

Incompletes: An incomplete grade in a course is at the discretion of the instructor; students may not choose to take an incomplete.

 

How your HSOC Degree Audit works:

• HSOC is a highly-individualized, high-advising major. Please check your Degree Audit regularly and reach out to the Associate Director if you see any problems or discrepancies that need attention.
• Petitioned courses must be added to your Degree Audit manually by the Associate Director.
• Just because a course shows up in one spot on your Degree Audit doesn't necessarily mean that is the only place it can count. 
• Please reach out to the Associate Director whenever you have any questions, doubts, or concerns about the appearance of your HSOC major in Degree Audit.