<p>Hello.
I'm currently a freshmen at a small liberal arts college. I am planning on double majoring in Economics and International Affairs and double minoring in Spanish and English. Does this seem too hard of a course load? I know for sure that Double Majoring in the two and minoring in one is very doable at my University, but I'm not quite sure if I should minor in English yet. Any suggestions?</p>
<p>Depends on the college. Look at all the requirements for all the majors and minors you will have to take. Then take a look at all the GERs. An average course load is probably 4 courses per semester. Plan out your schedule for the next four years, do you think it is feasible and possible? You don’t have to decide right away and you may find you have different interests later on. The major is more important than the minor to be honest, and the IR/Econ classes are likely to overlap, which is good. Double majoring and minoring is rare, and part of the reason is because it is alot of work if you want to graduate in time and certain schools require you to do research, internships, or a senior thesis if you are in that major</p>
<p>The requirement for my school is at least 150 credit hours for a double major which actually is probably closer to 160+ if the majors don’t match up a whole lot. Then one minor would be 16 credit hours.</p>
<p>All in all, it should be somewhere around 190 credit hours + or - 10. Over 9 semesters that’s about 21 credit hours per semester. which would be 6-7 courses per semester</p>
<p>It helps if you come in with a lot of credits form AP, IB, and Dual enrollment.</p>
<p>P.S. It might be a lot less of a workload like I said depending on how much the Economics and international affairs majors overlap but even then the best scenario is 180 credit hours and the worst is 200+ credit hours.</p>
<p>What are your goals? The issue with this plan is that you will only be able to meet the bare requirements for each. That could be a disadvantage for grad school or the job market. I would suggest considering getting more in depth knowledge in your majors.</p>
<p>My daughter is also an economics major. She is finding that she needs to go way beyond her degree requirements in order to be able to competitive and prepared for graduate school which is her goal. She plans on taking a considerable amount of math courses to keep that door open.</p>
<p>Taking seven courses a semester is rough and beyond most students. It will be hard to master the material and to maintain your GPA. </p>
<p>It depends - if you want to finish in 4 years and take more than 16 credits per semester it could be hard particularly if you have a job too. I’m going for not only a double major but a double degree and a minor, but I’m willing to graduate a semester late. It’s not a picnic but it’s doable if you are willing to give up most of the freedom of choosing electives. You’d have to get most of those credits anyway (at least at my school that is the case). Double major is definitely a smart move though for future marketability.</p>
<p>It’s not impossible. But it wouldn’t be easy. </p>
<p>If you figure 120 hours for the first major, and another 30 hours for the second major, that’s 150. A minor is typically around 16-18 credits, so we’ll call it 17 for simplicity. The double minor alone would be another 34 credits, making a total of 184 credits for the double major/double minor. </p>
<p>To finish in 4 years without summer courses, you’d have to take an average of 23 credits per semester. That’s a heavy load. </p>
<p>If you took a couple of courses every summer (for 3 summers) you’d be able to knock out 18 credits. That would make 166 credits left for the regular semesters. That would still leave an average of 20-21 credits per semester during the regular semesters. That’s still a really heavy load, especially when you’re into your upper level course work. Even with an extra semester, it would still average to around 18 credits each semester. Still not a light load by any means. </p>
<p>As others have said, taking on this double major/double minor would mean that you’d be sacrificing extra depth within your major(s). Taking extra courses within your majors or participating in research would practically be out of the question. </p>
<p>At the very least, I’d forget the English minor. </p>
<p>I think the better question here is why would you want to do this? It may look nice on paper, but as previously mentioned you will have only the base requirement for all four. I would focus on two of the four (double major if you want) and rather than minor, take classes in them on your own terms when there is a space. Much less stress, the important stuff will be there and in depth, and you don’t have to drop any subject completely.</p>
<p>It totally depends on the school and their GE requirements. At my university, I’ll graduate with a double major at around only 128 credits because a lot of my writing/rhetoric classes double-counted as gen ed requirements, as did one French class. I also took a total of 8 credits over the past 2 summers so that I can take 12 credits each semester next year. </p>
<p>This worked out for me since I had so much overlapping with the writing, and that’s honestly the only reason why I’m double-majoring. I wouldn’t spend TOO much extra time if it didn’t work out this way. I’d probably just have French as the minor. </p>
<p>Like the others said, analyze why you want to attempt such a degree plan and figure out the logistics at your school. If it can work out reasonably, then go for it. If not, play around with the possibilities and see what can work. </p>
<p>Your undergraduate catalogue is your friend 
</p>
<p>It all depends. If there is a lot of overall in terms of the requirements for each (for example, a course for Spanish also counts towards the International Affairs major), then you’ll be able to handle it and finish within 4 years by “klling two birds with one stone” (I hate this phrase actually lol). I’m a Public Health majoring, double minoring in Biology and Psychology, so there are tons of overlap and I’ll be able to finish in 4 years with no problem. Also make sure to see your advisors before making a final decision. </p>
<p>also do you need to minor in English?or can you just take some extra english classes for your general electives?</p>
<p>Yeah, I agree with @PengsPhils who asks why would you want to do this?</p>
<p>In theory, if economics and international affairs had a lot of classes that overlapped or could be double-counted, it might be possible. At schools where classes are about 3 credits a piece and you need ~120 credits to graduate, a major is usually 40 credits, and a minor about 15-20 credits. Two majors plus two minors with no overlap would be 40 + 40 + 15 + 15 = 110 credits. You’d have to take a minimum of 6 classes a semester (~18 credits) to make that work with GE requirements at most colleges.</p>
<p>But let’s say that there’s a 12-credit overlap between your two majors (that’s four classes, which would be a pretty decent-sized overlap. I can’t imagine that there would be any overlap between an English minor and a Spanish minor, but hey, let’s say that there’s a 3-credit overlap (one class. 110 - 15 = 95 credits, which gives you much more room to play.</p>
<p>I also just want to note that at my liberal arts college, NO classes that you took to satisfy a major or minor requirement could count towards your GE requirements. In fact, your divisional requirements had to be outside of your major, because the whole point of a liberal arts education is breadth. So for example - let’s take an econ major. Economics classes would not count towards our social science divisional requirement; you’d have to take a class in political science, sociology, anthropology, or psychology. Economics classes also couldn’t satisfy other GE requirements we had like your international/women’s studies class (at my college, one of our GE requirements was a class in either international studies or women’s studies. It was a women’s college). Extra economics classes could count towards general electives that you had to take to get to 120 credits, but they would have to be economics classes that you took over and above the 40 for your major.</p>
<p>If you were a double major I think that NEITHER of your majors’ classes would count - so an econ/sociology major couldn’t use an econ or soc class to count towards social science divisional requirements. There weren’t many double majors at my college, lol. They made it very difficult to double major. (They also did not double count any classes. If you wanted to complete two majors, you had to complete 40 hours in each.)</p>
<p>So yeah, you might want to check your college’s specific requirements. They might not be as strict as my college’s, but there are likely some restrictions that might influence your decision.</p>
<p>But, more importantly, there’s no reason to do this. You don’t have to major or minor in something to study it. You can major in economics and take some classes in international affairs to enrich your economics major; you can take four years of Spanish language if you want to learn to speak it without having to take the literature classes you typically take in a minor; and you can take some English classes as fun electives and/or to satisfy your GE classes. Frankly, jobs don’t really care what’s on your transcript re: minors. If you can speak Spanish fluently, they don’t really care that you minored in it or took the classes for fun.</p>