<p>I was accepted to Tufts ED and have since been weighing out major options for next year. I'm wondering if taking on a double major course load will be too overwhelming for my first year. Initially, I was just going to major in English (something I've always been passionate about), but I'm also interested in studying international relations or anthropology-- topics which I've had little exposure to in high school, but nonetheless would like to study in college. I would ultimately like to pursue journalism after university. </p>
<p>I'm a bit anxious about studying IR at Tufts-- I've heard wonderful things about the program, but I really haven't had any previous experience in the area. Does Tufts make the transition into the program easy? What are the freshman IR intro courses like? Also, how 'doable' is a double major course load in freshman year? </p>
<p>Any insight would be much appreciated! Thanks!</p>
<p>P.S. It's probably also worth mentioning that Tufts does not offer anthropolgy or international relations as a minor.</p>
<p>Well you don’t need to declare a major until the end of your sophomore year, so I wouldn’t fret. Few kids have IR experience going into college, aside from high school history classes, so the transition shouldn’t be a problem.
It should be easy to set yourself up for IR and satisfy some distribution credits in the process.<br>
For your first semester, take Intro to IR - Mufti is teaching it, and he’s pretty good. It’s by far the biggest class you’ll ever take at Tufts, with usually 150-200 students, but its unavoidable for IR majors, counts as a social science credit, and will count towards a political science major if you go that route.
Take a language - you need three language credits to graduate anyway, and there’s no reason to put them off. IR majors need 8 language credits.
I don’t know if you’ve tested out of your English requirement or not, but even if you have you should take a small English course to acquaint yourself with the department if you’re considering it as a major.<br>
An IR major is going to require a non-trivial amount of economics, so in either your first or second semester, you’re going to want to take Econ 5 to see if you like it. Take it as a freshman, then you can take advantage of the ridiculously long add-drop period for freshmen, and if you hate the course and don’t think you can do econ, you can drop the class with no record of enrollment AFTER THE MIDTERM. It might be wise to wait until second semester, though, since Econ 5 is also a very large lecture, and you’ll already be doing one of those with Intro to IR.</p>