Skip to Main Content

Academic Rigor

A supportive community of scholars dedicated to intellectual inquiry and the independent exploration of ideas.

Here’s what makes UD different.

Academic rigor is the foundation of all our programs, a fact that has enabled us to enroll one of the nation’s highest percentages of National Merit Scholars as compared to other Catholic colleges and universities. All undergraduates participate in our nationally recognized Core curriculum, a two-year, 60-credit sequence of classes focused on the Great Books of Western literature and culture. Our student:faculty ratio of 10:1 means that Core classes are kept small, allowing students to participate in thoughtful, meaningful dialogue with their peers and their professors. Because all undergraduates take these Core courses, discussions usually continue outside the classroom and serve to create a tightly knit community of scholars sharing a common intellectual experience.

The Core curriculum typically culminates with a semester abroad on our 14-acre Eugene Constantin Campus (informally known as Due Santi) located just outside Rome, Italy. During their Rome semester, students are able to experience firsthand the roots of Western culture, immersed in the architecture, culture and history of the place where so much of Western tradition began. In Rome, students learn to meld intellectual inquiry with an independent spirit of exploration in a way that is truly the heart of the University of Dallas experience.

DBA classroom

While our graduate students come from a wide variety of diverse backgrounds to study an equally wide array of subjects, all of them find the experience of being a graduate student at the University of Dallas just as rigorous, thought provoking and spiritually grounded as the undergraduate. Whether studying literature, ministry, cybersecurity, business or art with world-class faculty who are truly thought leaders in their fields, graduate students are members of a unique community that values the pursuit of wisdom, the quest for truth and the importance of virtue equally in both their professional and their personal lives.

Learn more about our academic rigor through our legacy, points of pride and merit:

News