Arabic Studies courses enhance Arabic language skills, prepare students for their future workplaces, and help shape analytical and critical thinking. Readings in historical texts provide students with knowledge about their history and how it extends to the present time. Literature courses enable students to draw parallels between the past and present.

Courses in English, writing and rhetoric help develop verbal reasoning and precision in the use of English. Courses cover a wide range of topics to help students develop their skills in close reading, critical thinking, argumentation and written communication.

French courses emphasize the development of communicative language proficiency and cultural competence through the four language skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing. Students also learn appropriate grammar structures, vocabulary, and discourse strategies that are necessary for communication.

History teaches students to better understand our collective human autobiography, to draw connections between past events and current concerns, and to think critically about how knowledge is created, interpreted and controlled.

Students who study information literacy and research skills learn to find and select their own reading materials and resources, and to critically evaluate all sorts of information sources for bias. They learn to effectively navigate and manipulate information systems like library catalogs, social media, Google, and research databases, and to take control of these resources rather than being controlled by them.

Mathematics lays the foundation for computational and computer science and provides much of the language and quantitative underpinnings of the natural and social sciences, as well as the development of the most commonly used tools in business management. Mathematics courses at Carnegie Mellon Qatar include calculus, integration and approximation, matrices and linear transformations, multivariate analysis, basic logic, algebraic structures, combinatorics, models and methods for optimization, and graph theory.

Philosophy courses at the Qatar campus focus primarily on the study of ethics, both as a theoretical field and in applications to areas such as artificial intelligence, social justice, the environment, and business.

Courses include physics for biological sciences students, general physics for all disciplines and an introduction to astronomy.

Courses include Introduction to Psychology, Social, Cognitive, Health and Sleep Psychology, as well as Face Perception, Research Methods (Social or Cognitive concentration), and Cognitive Neuropsychology.

Spanish courses emphasize the development of communicative language proficiency and cultural competence through the four language skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing. Students also learn appropriate grammar structures, vocabulary, and discourse strategies that are necessary for communication.

As an elective, learning Spanish broadens the students’ undergraduate academic experience. It allows students to experience language and culture learning in a dynamic environment which deepens their creative and critical thinking.

In statistics courses students learn how to collect, analyze, and interpret data, as well as how to present their results. Students learn sampling techniques, various descriptive statistics, exploring probability and probability distributions.