Tutorial Studies serves as an alternative for students who propose a coherent course of studies that clearly will not fit within a regular major. Students in Tutorial Studies have no major; instead, all students have a tutor. A tutor is a member of the UChicago faculty who has agreed to take responsibility for their work. An individual student’s education is worked out between the student and the tutor under the general supervision of the program chairman.
In the past, successful Tutorial Studies students have generally belonged to one of two categories: (1) students who wish to focus on some relatively narrow topic (the poetry of Baudelaire, for example) but in a rather broad way, that is, in terms of poetics, culture history, psychology, and so on; or (2) students who wish to construct some more conventional program that the College does not offer: American studies, for instance, or education.