The College has never strayed from the liberal-arts tradition, with its emphasis on breadth, enduring ideas, and critical thinking. Every major and every course instill these abilities. Students have a good deal of freedom in planning their academic programs, with the help of their faculty advisors . In addition, students fulfill requirements that are intended to insure competence in a foreign language and in quantitative reasoning. Approximately 20 percent of the College's students choose a double major or design a synoptic major.
Minors are also available in many fields.
A distinctive feature of Kenyon's curriculum is the senior exercise, required in each major as a culminating experience and an opportunity to demonstrate the breadth and depth of the student's encounter with a field of study. Depending on the major, the senior exercise may take the form of a research project, a thesis-length paper, an examination, a multimedia presentation, or a creative work such as an art exhibit or a performance. A particularly challenging, and stimulating, curricular path at the College is the honors program within each major. Students who are selected for the program enroll in honors seminars during their senior year and sometimes in their junior year as well. They produce a more rigorous senior exercise that is judged, in part, by outside evaluators.