<p>Hi,
Let's say I have zero starting credits, and I intend to, stubbornly :3, double major.
One must be Mech Eng.</p>
<p>Any advises? Haha :D</p>
<p>You’re probably going to have a heavier course load than most other students and you might have to stay an extra semester in order to graduate. But if you work hard then you should be fine.</p>
<p>One piece of advice: If you plan on double majoring with one of the majors being mechanical engineering, your second major should be something closely related to it, like physics or chemistry. That way some of your courses can overlap and you will have to take less overall classes. </p>
<p>If you want the second major to be something unrelated like history or art, then I suggest you consider minoring instead of doing a double major. It’s still possible to double-major, but a bit harder. That’s just my suggestion.</p>
<p>@ThePainter7, Thanks! Weird that only Rice community responds to double major (even with engineering as one of them) as though it is normal for a sane person… :D</p>
<p>I’ve seen the course outline, and mechie have quite a lot of core classes that do not overlap with physics. 
It is the only engineering, I supposed, that’s kinda broad…</p>
<p>I’m a bit late here, but I agree that the second major should be closely related to mechanical engineering, but off the top of my hand I’m pretty sure than MECH and chem/physics really don’t share many classes aside from the intro calc and chem/phys courses.</p>
<p>I’m actually double majoring in mechanical engineering and computational/applied math, so I can give some insight. I can in with a fair amount of AP credits, so that lightened the load considerably for me. Without AP credits, I’d expect pretty much every semester to be very busy for you, but still doable. The mechanical engineering major alone is not that much work compared to the other engineering disciplines at Rice. If you survive the onslaught of intro calc/chem/physics freshman year, there really aren’t many weed-out classes in the curriculum. The only one I can really think of is the intro mechanics class, which has only gained a bad reputation in the last couple of years since the new professor teaching it is supposedly awful.</p>
<p>Junior year is very hectic since there are a lot of required courses and while each doesn’t have an unbearable workload, combined they result in quite a few late nights. Senior year is capstone design, which may or may not force you to spend entire nights in the design kitchen (depending on how motivated your team is…).</p>
<p>In comparison the computational/applied math (CAAM) curriculum is quite light, but the material (I found) was much more challenging. There is a small bit of overlap between MECH and CAAM (3 core courses), but what was nice was that I was allowed to substitute some of the higher level MECH courses as CAAM electives if the material was appropriate. </p>
<p>If your second major isn’t a science/engineering discipline, I think that’s still okay. Every undergrad at Rice is required to fill distribution requirements (D1 = humanities, D2 = social sciences, D3 = natural sciences/engineering), so the other major can overlap with these requirements, which would save some time.</p>
<p>One last thing I would caution is to make sure that you’re actually going to get something out of the double major. Ask yourself: how will the second major help you? Are there interdisciplinary opportunities that would enhance your experience with mechanical engineering? Are you genuinely interested in the material, or are you doing it just to have the dual degree? </p>
<p>@HKCool, Thanks.</p>
<p>Anyone has any opinion on what other major is closely related, or share the most classes, with MechEng? :)</p>
<p>It looks like a B.A. in Civil/Environmental Engineering (Civil track) has a lot of class overlap with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering.</p>
<p>You can compare the suggested schedules to get a better look.</p>
<p><a href=“George R. Brown School of Engineering | Rice University”>George R. Brown School of Engineering | Rice University;
<p><a href=“Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering | Rice University”>Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering | Rice University;