POL Major and Minor Requirements

Declaring POL as a major or minor is easy. All you need to do is complete a form in Ashe 140. You do not need a signature from anybody in the POL department to complete this process.

Political Science Minor Requirements

15 POL credits are required, at least 9 of which must be taken in residence. At least one course must be taken from among the department’s introductory sequence (POL201, POL202, POL203). All courses must be passed with a grade of C- or above.

Political Science Major Requirements

  1. 30 credits are required for the POL major
  2. At least 21 of these credits must be taken in residence.
  3. All courses must be passed with a grade of C- or above with an overall GPA of 2.0 or above.

All majors must take the department’s three introductory courses POL 201, POL202, and POL203 (9 credits). The remaining courses must include classes taken at the 300 level or above from at least three of five sub fields of political science: Political Theory and Methods, American Politics, International Relations, Comparative Politics, and Public Policy, Administration and Law. All majors must also complete two 500-level seminars (6 credits). Note that 500-level seminars may fulfill the sub-field requirements.

All majors must complete a quiz for graduating seniors (to be used for assessment purposes) during their last semester of coursework.

To satisfy the Advanced Writing & Communication proficiency requirement, students majoring in political science must complete at least one of the four required writing-intensive courses in the Department of Political Science.

A student may only share (i.e., "double count") a maximum 6 credits between majors and minors offered by the Department of Political Science/ College of Arts and Sciences.

Detailed Requirements For Current Majors

Required Introductory Courses:

  1. POL 201 Introduction to American National Government
  2. POL 202 Introduction to Comparative Politics
  3. POL 203 Introduction to International Relations

500-Level Seminar Requirement:

Six credits must come from two 500-level seminar courses offered by the University of Miami. This includes any 500-level seminar offered by the Department of Political Science or cross-listed with Political Science.

Subfield Requirement:

At least one course above the 200-level must be taken in three of the following five principal sub-fields of political science:

  1. American Politics
  2. Comparative Politics
  3. International Relations
  4. Public Administration, Policy, and Law
  5. Political Theory and Methods

These can include courses used to fulfill used to fulfill the 500-level seminar requirement. However, students may not use a single class to fill two sub-field requirements.

See the University of Miami Bulletin for the a list of our course offerings and the subfield designation of each course.

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