<p>I have heard that people in quantitative majors like CS are more likely to be hired if they are also strong writers. I am a good writer but I don't like English all that much. I was going to minor in Biology because I find it interesting, but that won't be applicable to my CS job unless I go into biotechnology or something like that. However, English skills would be. Is it fine to just get good grades in my required English classes and do the Biology minor, or would an English minor actually give me a significant leg up?</p>
<p>If you want to study biology, go study biology.</p>
<p>It’s not like English is the only writing-intensive subject in college. In fact, most social sciences and many humanities (political science, sociology, psychology, history, philosophy, film studies, etc) are just as writing intensive as English classes. And many of these subjects have arguably more substance than English. (An English professor at my college conducted an experiment with her students. She had them write about a poem. Half of the students got a copy of the poem, the other half only got a few key pieces of information: format, style, explicit themes. The TA could not identify which students had seen the poem. Social science students can’t bulls**t their way through a paper quite that easily.)</p>
<p>If you want to take writing-intensive classes, you’ll have plenty of opportunity to do so!</p>
<p>You can take writing intensive courses in various subjects without needing any particular minor. Indeed, if there are technical writing courses that give you practice writing about technical subjects to both technical and non-technical audiences, those may actually be the most useful types of writing courses in your career.</p>
<p>To qualify this question, I was thinking about this as a way to boost my resume. I am already confident in my writing skills and have to take a couple as a graduation requirement anyway. I just wondered if having “minor in English” on my resume would help me get a second look and a leg up over a similar candidate without proven writing skills. However, I have no particular interest in English although I have enjoyed some of my English classes. I do plan on taking a technical writing course.</p>
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<p>Did none of the students with the poem quote it…?</p>
<p>I think if anything, a writing-heavy minor in a different subject would be a better boost, as it would both imply that you have honed your writing skills, and it would give you insight into a field that you might be interested in pursuing as part of your career (e.g. biotechnology via bio, as you mentioned, or cognitive psychology via psych, or artificial speech generation via ling). English doesn’t offer that benefit.</p>