<p>Is it a bad idea to double major in fields that aren't related and will not help to provide one job? I really enjoy business and technology and was plannin on doing a double major in econ and engineering... what are your views on this?</p>
<p>Only double major if you really really enjoy the second field enough to add it on to your first major. From what I hear no one really cares if you have a double major, so there's no additional benefit to it unless you're truly passionate about the subject.</p>
<p>I don't quite agree with that. My W majored in math and finance for her undergrad (wto different colleges at the uni). For various jobs she has had she was interviewed based on the finance degree but hired based on the math. I can think of at least one area where econ and engineering would work that way as well - industrial cost estimating. Especially true if the econ degree gets into econometrics.</p>
<p>I can't really speak from an American perspective, seeing as I have lived and studied in Australia for the majority of my life. However over here combining an Engineering major with a Commerce (business) major creates a myriad of extra opportunities for graduates. I am familiar with numerous cases where Engineering/Commerce students were earning nothing but average grades throught university, and yet upon graduating were immediately snapped up for $70,000+ jobs. It's definately a lot more work, but as with anything that requires greater effort, it pays far better dividends.</p>
<p>I agree that it is useful to have skills and background in multiple disciplines. However, I don't know if it's entirely necessary to double major. You could have an engineering degree and take a ton of relevant economics courses, or vice versa. It's your skills, knowledge, and most important of all imo, your ability to learn, that matter. It's not what you're listed as having a degree in.</p>
<p>I remember reading a statistical study which estimated that the average college graduate will have 10 different jobs in their lifetime, of which 4-6 on average will not have been discovered when the student gets their Bachelor's. So, allowing this hypothesis to be true, with a certain margin of error, I think it is safe to say that it's very unlikely that having a double major will be THAT significant of a difference when it come to job preparation and skills. What will be important is that, when you leave college, if you needed to you could learn all the material necessary for an engineering-economics double major. </p>
<p>Again, this is not to say that you should ignore economics and focus entirely on engineering, or vice versa. It's just that I don't believe being able to say that you have two Bachelor's degrees is a necessary condition for a solid knowledge background and undergraduate experience. All things considered, I'd say that a single major with significant supplemental coursework in a second area is not that much different from a double major in it's strength of preparation, if in the end you are capable of learning on your own.</p>
<p>It depends totally on what that major is, to the title question.</p>
<p>I know that at Stanford, more than 25% of music majors major in a totally unrelated field as well. But econ and engineering would be probably be near impossible, and at least completely draining to attempt. It's not going to be worth the huge amount of extra work, because when you get a real job, you won't be using both majors at once to their full potential. You'll be an engineer who knows a lot about business, or a business man who knows a lot about engineering.</p>
<p>At USC, when you major in widely divergent fields, it's called a renaisance scholar & you can compete for a $10,000 scholarship for your last year of study.
It may be tough to complete all your requirements in a reasonable amount of time when the fields & requirements are vastly different.</p>
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I agree that it is useful to have skills and background in multiple disciplines. However, I don't know if it's entirely necessary to double major. You could have an engineering degree and take a ton of relevant economics courses, or vice versa. It's your skills, knowledge, and most important of all imo, your ability to learn, that matter. It's not what you're listed as having a degree in
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<p>This I completely agree with, and I would add that the vast majority of people do not end up working in a field that is directly connected to their major. Let's face it. Most history majors do not become professional historians. Most poli-sci majors do not become professional political scientists. Most sociology majors do not become professional sociologists. The truth is, whether we like it or not, we live in a world in which the major differentiating factor is simply having a degree (no matter which subject it is in) than in which subject the degree is in. </p>
<p>Put another way, few companies will say "Oh, you have the exact skillset and personality that we want, but since you didn't major in the right subject, we're not going to hire you." Except in the rare cases of professional licensiture (i.e. for a minority of engineering jobs), few firms will do this. </p>
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I don't quite agree with that. My W majored in math and finance for her undergrad (wto different colleges at the uni). For various jobs she has had she was interviewed based on the finance degree but hired based on the math. I can think of at least one area where econ and engineering would work that way as well - industrial cost estimating. Especially true if the econ degree gets into econometrics.
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<p>I'll give you the counterexample. I know people who have doubled in management and engineering at MIT, arguably the strongest engineering/management combination you can get, and STILL ended up losing out on the job they wanted to people who just had a single major. The truth of the matter is that most employers aren't really looking for the most singularly intelligent candidate. Rather, they are looking for somebody who displays strong interview skills and social fit, and those are skills that take time to learn. In fact, I will always remember one of those MIT double-major guys bitterly saying that he should have spent less time studying in order to get his double, and more time practicing his interview skills and learning how to play golf, attending social functions, and other activities to build a network. The truth is, business success is often times less about what you know than about WHO you know, and you don't get to meet people when you're studying. </p>
<p>Furthermore, majoring in a subject is not the only you can learn about it. You can learn a lot about any subject simply via self-study. Just get the books and read them yourself. The truth is, if you're self-motivated, you can probably learn just as much just by reading about a subject than by taking classes. I know one guy, who never majored in history or poli-sci (he actually majored in physics at MIT), but who knows so much about history and poli-sci by self-study that most people think that that's what he studied it in college. Heck, I know some people who actually did major in history who have said that they think that guy knows more about history than they do. All this despite never having taken an actual college history class. That's the power of self-study. </p>
<p>My personal take is that double-majors are overrated. If we're talking about employment purposes, you're probably better off taking the time that you would have spent completing a double and instead using it to do more networking, because good networking is how you can REALLY get a good job. Either that, or take that extra time to get a master's degree. You should pursue a double-major only because you really are interested in both fields. If the issue is to secure employment, there are better things to do with your time.</p>
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Furthermore, majoring in a subject is not the only you can learn about it. You can learn a lot about any subject simply via self-study. Just get the books and read them yourself. The truth is, if you're self-motivated, you can probably learn just as much just by reading about a subject than by taking classes.
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<p>Another excellent post by sakky. Yeah, the power of self-study cannot be underestimated. Actually, you learn so much more stuffs by self-studying, reading books, solving problems by yourself, than listening & watching other people do them for you. One more thing: the things you learned by doing-it-yourself-by-trial-and-error tend to become a part of you and stay within you longer than things other people spoon-fed you. I will always remember my uncle who told me Homework is very important. He also told me that college education is also basically a self-study. Your professor can guide you. However, its you who will spend the endless hours in the lab, failing more than succeeding or in front of the computer, writing/rewriting/debugging programs all night long- reading books till your eyeballs fall out- oh those endless all-nighters. Basically, its a self-inflicted struggle. Now I see the truth of it.</p>
<p>Speaking of self-study... Im a senior in high school and self-taught myself and mastered over 5 programming languages and proficiency in programs such as Flash, Photoshop, and Illustrator... That is why I wanted to study engineering or something technology related along with econ or a business course. What I think I am going to do is do an EE (or something similar) major with a Business minor. My dream in life is to found a technology-related company. I know there is a lot of work prior to that to gain success, thats why I want to prepare myself. Please base your input off of that.</p>
<p>That's pretty ambitious man. I'm impressed.</p>
<p>I still maintain that having a double major is not necessary (your goal of EE with business minor seems good), and I think for you that's even more the case. To found a company, I expect you have to have a lot of creativity, be able to think on your feet, and overall be self-sufficient. If you need to take classes in subjects in order to learn them, then you are not self-sufficient.</p>
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My dream in life is to found a technology-related company.
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<p>I think that if this is your goal, then, frankly, what you major in matters even less. Heck, you don't even really need to graduate from college. Technology, of all of the business fields out there, is chock full of highly successful entrepreneurs who never even graduated from college. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Michael Dell, Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), and many other tech entrepreneurs never graduated from college. Although I admit that it may sound irresponsible, I have to say that, given the track record, if you want to start your own tech company, I would say that you should just go ahead and do it. </p>
<p>I think essayist and computer entrepreneur Paul Graham said it best in the following snippet from his column:</p>
<p>*
"I can't imagine telling Bill Gates at 19 that he should wait till he graduated to start a company. He'd have told me to get lost. And could I have honestly claimed that he was harming his future-- that he was learning less by working at ground zero of the microcomputer revolution than he would have if he'd been taking classes back at Harvard? No, probably not.</p>
<p>And yes, while it is probably true that you'll learn some valuable things by going to work for an existing company for a couple years before starting your own, you'd learn a thing or two running your own company during that time too.</p>
<p>The advice about going to work for someone else would get an even colder reception from the 19 year old Bill Gates. So I'm supposed to finish college, then go work for another company for two years, and then I can start my own? I have to wait till I'm 23? That's four years. That's more than twenty percent of my life so far. Plus in four years it will be way too late to make money writing a Basic interpreter for the Altair.</p>
<p>And he'd be right. The Apple II was launched just two years later. In fact, if Bill had finished college and gone to work for another company as we're suggesting, he might well have gone to work for Apple. And while that would probably have been better for all of us, it wouldn't have been better for him." *</p>
<p><a href="http://www.paulgraham.com/hiring.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.paulgraham.com/hiring.html</a></p>
<p>Yes, I know.. I've thought of all of this, many times. I am not exactly sure on what products / services I want to sell for a company, although I have several ideas. I would like to go to college first to network and learn some things and also give me some time to think. I may not graduate.. who knows? On the other hand, some billionaire entrepreneurs also have their Ph.D. in fields not even related to what they do.</p>
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On the other hand, some billionaire entrepreneurs also have their Ph.D. in fields not even related to what they do.
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<p>Also true, which is another reason why I think obsessing over what major you should be in is wasted energy. The fact is, plenty of people become successful in industries that have nothing to do with what they studied in college. Tom Anderson, founder of MySpace, was a Rhetoric/English major, and also got a master's degree in film. Chad Hurley, founder of YouTube, majored in Fine Arts.</p>
<p>I agree, but for me to go to college for something that I wouldnt want to get something out of would just be a waste of my time.. ill only go to college if i major in something that interests me</p>
<p>royal-- look into Brown. With the Open Curriculum, you will not only major in what interests you, <em>all</em> your classes will be those that interest you. Should you decide to double major, you will find it quite easy with no core and no requirements.</p>
<p>Brown has a very entrepreneurial environment. The students are extremely self-motivated. There is a lot of freedom.</p>
<p>i have a situation similar to the OP's i cant pick b/w civil engineering and env.science/atmos. science... i was kinda thinking i could double major in them because there both things that i enjoy and it would make it easier to find a job or quit and switch to the other profession without going back to school...is this totally irrational or is it an okay idea</p>
<p>I think that instead of spending six years to get a double major in two disparate areas that interest you, you should consider trying to get a bachelor's degree in the first area and a master's degree in the second area.</p>