Brandeis University Paper Format & Writing Requirements

Brandeis University at a glance

Founded in 1948 as a nonsectarian research university sponsored by the American Jewish community, Brandeis pairs a small undergraduate body of about 3,600 with graduate strength in the sciences and an International Business School.

The campus sits in Waltham, Massachusetts, operates as a private institution, and enrolls about 5,300 students — a scale that directly shapes how writing support works. Founded in 1948 with an acceptance rate around 34%, Brandeis University pairs selective admissions with the large-course writing loads typical of its category.

Citation styles Brandeis University actually requires

Brandeis University courses predominantly require MLA 9 or APA 7. That is not a trivial preference: it decides your title page, heading levels, in-text punctuation and reference format on every graded document.

• MLA 9: used across humanities and writing-sequence courses
• APA 7: used across social science, nursing and business courses

Verify against the specific course syllabus anyway — instructors can override departmental defaults, and the first paper is where they enforce it.

The writing requirement, decoded

Every first-year takes a Writing Seminar that satisfies the writing-intensive requirement, and most majors stack two more WI-designated courses on top; the Writing Center in the Goldfarb Library tutors drafts at any stage.

Plan the sequence early: composition requirements compound, and students who defer them discover the advanced seminars — where the writing-intensity lives — conflict with major courses later. The registrar's degree audit shows exactly which flags remain; check it each semester.

Three things about Brandeis University papers that surprise new students

• Brandeis teams are called the Judges in honor of Justice Louis Brandeis, making the mascot one of the few in college sports drawn from the federal bench.
• Eleanor Roosevelt served on the founding board of trustees and helped set the university's 1948 nonsectarian charter.
• The Rose Art Museum opened in 1961 and built one of New England's strongest collections of postwar American art, including major Warhol and Lichtenstein canvases.

None of these appear in the course description. All of them appear in the rubric. Students who learn them in week one report smoother first-semesters than students who meet them at the deadline.

Assignments Brandeis University students face most

• Research Paper — most frequently assigned across Brandeis University's programs
• Essay — most frequently assigned across Brandeis University's programs
• Literature Review — most frequently assigned across Brandeis University's programs
• Annotated Bibliography — most frequently assigned across Brandeis University's programs

Popular programs at Brandeis University include biology, business (international business school), economics — each pairs the assignment list above with its own capstone or practicum expectations, detailed on our subject pages.