Prospective Undergraduate Students

Whether you're considering law, medicine, advertising, teaching, or journalism, a background in English can offer you a good foundation for a future career. Majoring in English, you gain strong critical reading, analytical thinking, focused research, and precise writing skills. Our curriculum is designed to be comprehensive, integrated, intensive, and interesting to all English majors. The core courses you'll take will enable you to fulfill requirements for state teaching accreditation, graduate work in the humanities, and admission to a wide variety of professional schools. You'll choose from an array of specialized writing courses, including intermediate and advanced exposition and argumentation, technical writing, legal writing, business and professional writing, and creative writing.

Students today have many options when it comes to their future in higher education, so we hope that you will strongly considering applying to Howard, where you will find the best and the brightest of faculty, students, and staff.

As an English major at Howard, you will come to know what we know—that there is no school quite like Howard and that there are so many things you can do as a strong reader, writer, and critical thinker. You will also come to know that writing and the study of literature empowers awareness, or as W.E.B. Du Bois has put it, "broad sympathy, a knowledge of the world that was and is and our relation to it." The Department of English will help you acquire that awareness, develop and hone critical thinking, reading, and writing skills, participate in intellectual discourses, and prepare you for careers in writing, teaching, law, and publishing among others. In short, upon successful completion of the requirements for the degree in English as a major or minor, you will be intellectually equipped to meet the demands placed on you as a contemporary educated person as well as to share your knowledge and ideas in a post-graduate arena, be it graduate school or the workplace.

As an English major or minor you must be willing to read deeply, critically, and extensively; aspire to write with clarity, depth, and precision; and exhibit professionalism in your approach to the classes in the Department of English. The classroom is a space for you to express your ideas not only through your writing but through verbal participation as a well. At Howard University, there is "openness" where you learn from your teachers and from your peers. Consequentially, there is an expectation that your input and thoughts will be important to your teachers and peers in return.

Your learning experience is not limited to Howard's campus, however, as you will have the opportunity to participate in extra-curricular activities and study abroad and domestic exchange programs offered to expand and enrich your learning experience. Your acceptance into this institution will verify that you have the capability and drive necessary to be a college student. It will be your decision to accept the challenge of becoming a student at Howard University.

There is no place quite like this one, and we hope to have you as a new voice in the Howard conversation.