How important is it to double major or minor?
If you’re majoring in something with low employability prospects, double majoring or minoring in something with higher employability prospects could help.
Beyond that, no importance.
could you give an example please?
Majoring in interpretive dance. Might wanna add a computer science minor to that.
Columbia/Cornell? What are your intended double majors?
Depending on the person and the combo, there’s the potential intrinsic reward of studying two subjects that you love.
Besides that, pretty much what @CourtneyThurston said.
Having a double major isn’t inherently better than just having one major, but there are some cases where it makes sense. For example, someone who wants to get a Ph.D. in economics could double major in economics and math. Your actual classes and experiences are more important than credentials, though. A computer science minor (or any other minor) probably won’t help you get a job unless you also do projects outside of class.
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If you are majoring in something interdisciplinary and you are considering grad school, it may also make sense to double major. For instance environmental science is very interdisciplinary so it may also be helpful to concentrate in one discipline in order to have a solid understanding of it. Same thing with self-designed peace and conflict studies majors or whatnot just to make sure you have a background that graduate schools may want. Alternatively certain majors like education are considered secondary majors and you should add another major ontop of that one based off the area that you are interested in
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Thank you for raising this question @kalecutter123 !
D wants to double major in Engineering and Business or Engineering and political science. All through high school, she has been participating in ECs on all three, robotics, math competition, girl leadership org, campaigning for political candidates, FBLA, etc. She has passion, time commitment, leadership positions and awards to show for all three. How does double major affect her admission and merit chance?
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@SincererLove don’t think indicating a desire to double major will really impact decisions for admission outside of which school she is applying to. For example, if the uni has a school of engineering and a school of business, the engineering school being far more prestigious than business, then it could have an impact. Otherwise probably not.
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I mean if you want to go for it. Several of my friends and I are going to grad school. We only have one major and that didn’t seem to be a problem. Our major is geology though and we applied to related programs.
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I double majored in undergrad, and it actually turned out to be a wise way to take the required 124 credits or whatever needed to graduate. My primary major needed 40 credits while my second major only required 32 (plus some prereqs). My college also had this requirement to take a certain amount of credits outside of your primary major, so when it came down to it, taking the few more classes to double major helped keep me focused (instead of just taking random classes to reach the magic credit number). But this probably varies by institution.
Re: how it looks to grad schools, only one of the schools that I was admitted to for grad school even mentioned it. It was more along the lines of, “Oh, you double majored in French and studied abroad in Quebec? That’s nice. Anyway, so your conference presentation at XXX Conference Directly Related to Field…”
French doesn’t directly relate to my field (composition and rhetoric), but it probably helped me stand out and showed that I was able to do very well in two different subjects.
I also just like speaking a pretty language and eating croissants and baguettes, so there’s that, too.
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