<p>I recently received a letter from the engineering department telling me that I received a 6K per year scholarship and admission to EHP. However, I was also recently admitted to Dean's Scholars and attended the Open House event in mid February. Does any current EHP or Dean's Scholar know if it is possible to double major and do both? 6K a year would be really nice, but since EHP is a non-degree program and basically just a name, I would really love to participate in the research opportunities Dean's Scholars presents. </p>
<p>Also, does anyone know the work load of a Dean's Scholar? How tough would it be to double major?</p>
<p>First off, congratulations on getting accepted to both programs. I could try to answer some of your questions with what you’ve given us, but it’d be a lot better if you could explain what your career goals are, and more importantly which two degrees you would plan on double-majoring in. Double-majoring is all about the overlap. For example, DS Chemistry and Chemical Engineering might be feasible while Electrical Engineering and Neuroscience would probably take about 6 years.</p>
<p>What’s nice about DS is that they offer a great degree of latitude in course selection. A good deal of upper division natural sciences credit is left wide open to the student’s personal discretion, provided that the faculty adviser consents. This greatly eases double or triple majoring, as many, many DS’ers do. It sounds like your heart is in research but you’re having trouble turning down 6k/year in scholarships. Keep in mind that engineers have plenty research opportunities as well and that many natural science labs would be more than happy to take on an engineer in the same field.</p>
<p>To answer your question of the work load of a DS’er, I don’t feel as though the degree plan is any heavier than any of the other natural science degrees. A lot of the work comes from research, which requires a wide range of dedication depending on the lab and how much effort you’re willing to put in to it (from 3 to 20+ hours/week). While it is the focus of the program, there is no explicit requirement for research besides the Senior Thesis. I know a few students in DS who participated in FRI freshman year and went on a research hiatus until their late Junior year, only returning to prepare for their senior thesis.</p>
<p>So again, to answer your questions fully, it is important to consider which two majors you hope to complete and what you plan on doing with those degrees.</p>
<p>Thank you so much for the reply! Sorry for not mentioning this before, but you were right on. I hope to major in either Chemistry or Chemical Engineering or both, but I have not settled on my future career objectives, whether it be in engineering, research, or even something medicine related.</p>
<p>With this in mind, how does a double major work exactly? Wouldn’t I basically be doing double the work? Also, because research is such a large portion of being a DS’er, do you think it is even feasible for a double major? When I went to the open house in mid February, I asked a similar question and it seemed like they discouraged double majors in anything apart from Plan II due to the amount of work.</p>
<p>As you can see, there is a lot of overlap between Chemistry and ChemE, like frever mentioned.
I’m fairly confident that you get the DS Physics requirement waived. You could email them about that to check.
If you have a lot of AP credit, it looks like it might be doable in 4 years, but you’d probably have to work your butt off. 5 years is probably the more feasible option though.</p>
<p>It is my impression that a decent amount (>1/3) of DS’ers are planning on double or triple majoring. However, the overwhelming majority of these are confined to the natural sciences, Plan II or business. I’ve heard of a couple tacking on an engineering degree, but the rigid curriculum that engineering demands doesn’t make the process very comfortable. </p>
<p>One thing you’ll notice if you compare the degree plan of a natural science major with that of an engineer is that the engineer follows a mostly predetermined timeline with just few forks as they specialize Junior/Senior year while the natural science major is presented with a multitude of courses that can be taken in nearly any order after freshman year. This is because the engineering degree is laden with pre-reqs that must be satisfied in a certain order while the natural science degree opens up pretty early. </p>
<p>What this means is that if you wanted to maintain an accelerated pace of 16-18+ hours a semester (to graduate with both degrees in 4 years), you’d likely find yourself with a swath of chemistry courses to load your schedule with, but you’d find yourself “stuck” on the engineering side, blocked by prerequisite after prerequisite. </p>
<p>An important thing to note is that double-major =/= double work. If you compare the degree plans that nghiaxngo linked to above, you’d see that courses such as intro chem and bio, organic chem, physical chem, and others appear on both. In these cases, you can kill two birds with one stone because taking each course with satisfy the requirements for both degrees. This is the “overlap” I spoke of: the more there is, the easier your life will be. This is why it is relatively common for students to double major in both Chemistry and Biochemistry, for example.</p>
<p>I am not a big specialist in all these chemistry degrees but I would strongly recommend to look at core classes. Many of them will not be needed due to AP, IB, SAT I/ACT, and SAT II scores.
Especially English.
I would recommend to check if you could get credit for:
RHE 306, Rhetoric and Writing (English Composition)
E 316K, Masterworks of Literature (Humanities)
GOV 310L & GOV 312L (American and Texas Government)
American History
M 408C, Differential and Integral Calculus
Chemistry, Biology, whatever classes are there if you took AP/IB/SAT II</p>
<p>Most likely you’ll get at least one semester of credits, probably 2, depending on the number of tests you took or going to take.
Besides AP you can consider taking CLEP. It is cheaper to take a test than to take a class.</p>
<p>Also, my D had a conflict at school in 11th grade so she took 8hrs of Physics in community college last summer (Summer1 and Summer 2). There was a bunch of guys from A&M in her class who took Physics before their A&M freshman year because they heard horror stories about crowded classes taught by TAs who failed third of the class.
So if you have an extra thousand bucks (aprox cost of 8 hrs at CC) you can take something in advance from that list. What my D took counts for two 3hrs classes and two 1hr labs.</p>
