<p>I am an international student at MIT from Vienna who has been admitted EA to MIT class of 2018. I am unfamiliar with the system there. I am planning to double major in economics and mechanical engineering at MIT. Will it be a feasible option ? Please advise otherwise.</p>
<p>Unfortunately the degree charts at <a href="http://web.mit.edu/catalog/degre.human.ch14.html">http://web.mit.edu/catalog/degre.human.ch14.html</a> and <a href="http://web.mit.edu/catalog/degre.engin.ch2.html">http://web.mit.edu/catalog/degre.engin.ch2.html</a> make no sense to me whatsoever. </p>
<p>Do I have to take two sets of GIRs (204 x 2 = 408 units) for the degree along with the subject requirements ? Will the electives of economics satisfy those of mechanical engineering too ? Unable to discern. Sorry. :-< Can someone work out and show me the subjects that I'd need to take to double major in Economics and Mechanical engineering ? Could someone at or from MIT guide me on this ?</p>
<p>Yes, it’s feasible, although any double major is more challenging than a single major. Economics is a common second major, and it should be tolerable to fit all the classes you need into your schedule.</p>
<p>You only need to take the GIRs once – they are institute requirements per student, not per major. So in order to double, you’ll need to take all the GIRs, then take the required courses for both major. You don’t need to worry much about the “unrestricted electives” part of each major, because the unrestricted electives can be any class in any department, so you’ll fulfill those for each major with classes for the other. (Every student at MIT is required to take 180 units aside from the GIRs, so if a departmental program doesn’t fill up all 180 of those units, it will list “unrestricted electives”. But when you are double-majoring, you are almost certainly going to take more than 180 units outside the GIRs anyway, so you don’t need to worry about those unrestricted elective units.)</p>
<p>So for MechE, you’d need to take all of the “required departmental core subject” plus two from the list of “restricted electives”. For economics, you’ll need to take the “required subjects” plus five more classes from the department (“restricted electives”). In addition, you’ll need to take (or, in some cases, receive AP/IB/placement testing credit for) the General Institute Requirements (2 classes in physics, 2 classes in calculus, 1 class in chemistry, 1 class in biology, 2 restricted electives which you will likely take anyway as part of your majors, and 8 classes in humanities/arts/social sciences, some of which will include your economics major classes).</p>