<p>I'm considering doing a double major in Engineering and either Humanities or English.</p>
<p>This is purely because I am equally torn between an interest in both subjects, and not due to "resume-building" or anything like that. </p>
<p>Is this too much to take on? Or are people at Yale able to successfully complete two majors at Yale within the four years, even in completely unrelated departments?</p>
<p>Any input would be greatly appreciated (especially from current Yale students!)</p>
<p>I'm curious about this too. I want to double major in mathematics and creative writing. I'm hoping this will be feasable at Yale, because it looks extremely difficult at MIT.</p>
<p>I recall that about 15% of graduating seniors have a dbl major. Not uncommon. Over-achievers and driven folks -- can't swing a dead cat w/o hitting 'em. I almost did it too but chickened out when faced w/the workload my Sr year. If I could go back, I'd pushed myself and done it.</p>
<p>Did it seem like they were able to handle two majors without too much difficulty, or were they working like all the time? While I'm not afraid of doing extra work, I still want to be able to experience the rest of Yale and college life.</p>
<p>I'm not sure about the course load, but when I was looking through the Blue Book I looked at the double majors section. You basically have to take around 12-13 term courses for each major, and they cannot overlap, even if the subjects Are similar. So you have at least 24 of your 36 taken up by major courses. Then since you'd complete two of the distributional areas through your major, you have the other 3 x 2 courses/area to worry about plus foreign language (you have to take at least one class, even if you're fluent I believe--maybe you can test out I'm not sure). Anyway, that's over thirty of the 36 set in stone, and not much flexibility to explore other areas. That's why I'm thinking of doing a single major of Sociology with ERM instead of Sociology and ERM. I guess I'll just see how things go though.</p>
<p>Besides the whole two senior theses thing, it seems like the courseload would be pretty much the same. I mean, if you have to take 36 courses anyway, what's the difference if you focus them on two specific subjects rather than taking a bunch of random courses? </p>
<p>The only real problem I see is the limited course schedule, but since the two subjects are completely different, I think I'll get a good amount of diversity in my schedule (rather than double majoring in two engineering sciences or something.)</p>
<p>It's not more work, except that you have less flexibility, so it's more difficult to get a balance of harder and easier courses, or courses with different formats/schedules, to make your workload more managable and give yourself time to focus on courses that you know are going to be tough.</p>
<p>The big downside is not being able to just take a course that seems like it will be interesting or is taught by someone you'd love to learn from. One of the benefits of Yale is that there are so many interesting courses and interesting people, and you do feel that you are missing out if you aren't able to take all those opportunities that are really integral to the whole Yale experience.</p>
<p>A lot of people think they will double major, but ultimately they don't. They decide to only take the courses that really interest them in one area to give themselves more credits to distribute in other areas, or they find they really only like one of the subjects, or they discover a whole new subject that they didn't even know they would like, etc. Personally, I have gone the other way, and while I didn't intend to double major, I now am, although one of the subjects I would not have predicted before I started. </p>
<p>You have a long time to decide though, as you only petition when you are absolutely sure that you want the two majors, and you can delay that decision until senior year if you want to (although of course you would have had to have planned before then to have completed all the reqs). All you really need to know now is whether it is possible to do should you ultimately decide to, and, with some limitations, it is.</p>
<p>My experience mirrors tli83. I decided on Econ 2nd semester Freshman year. In the meanwhile, I thoroughly enjoyed the flexibility of my schedule to "shop" interesting classes/profs. It led me to a ton of History classes. Come my Jr year, I saw that I was on a trajectory to fulfill the reqs for majoring in Hist too. But the daunting task of a 2nd Senior thesis is eventually what dissuaded me. I didn't feel that my schedule was constrained from that much (because the classes I loved were in Hist)</p>
<p>Frankly in hindsight, my enthusiasm was greater in Hist than Econ and I think I would have enjoyed finishing in Hist more than in Econ. C'est la vie!</p>
<p>Thanks so much, everyone. This really helped, especially tli83... your answer was exactly the information I needed. I never knew you could wait so long to declare a double major, that's interesting.</p>