<p>I'm a senior, and next year I plan on double majoring in physics (concentration in nuclear) and computer science at Michigan State University. I'll be in the honors college and have a professorial assistantship (8-10hrs/week).</p>
<p>Am I going to be able to double major or is that too much on my plate?</p>
<p>some of those classes will overlap for sure. At least the prereqs (math ones). If i were you I would make a list of all the classes you'd need and see if you'd be able to fit it in for 4 classes/sem + the gen ed requirements.</p>
<p>It's certainly doable, like anonymous1214 says, the key is planning ahead.</p>
<p>Yea, basically plan out your courses early, and you probably can't take toom any purely fun electives, but it is definitely doable.</p>
<p>The "is this hard/possible?" questions are tricky, because the response REALLY depends on one's school, schedule, and work ethic. I went to a college where double majoring was extremely rare because of a heavy thesis requirement, so even though getting the courses and making the time was possible, students often changed their minds during senior year. The posters who said to plan ahead are right. Familiarize yourself with degree requirements (for example, a number of pre-req courses might overlap, but your school might cap the number of courses that you can count toward multiple degrees...mine did), try to "front load" a bit (jumping right into GEs and basic requirements rather than electives), and talk to your academic advisor (if you're in an honors program, you should have access to some good advising).</p>
<p>Good luck!</p>
<p>It depends...
Are Physics and Computer Science in the same college at the school you will be attending? If so they will have the same general ed requirements which means it won't be anything extra there. If they are in separate colleges (like at UCD physics=college of letters & science, while computer science=engineering), well you'll run into some issues because letter's & science has a unit cap - engineering does not. Engineering has more GE requirements. You also have to think about class time conflicts... with majors like that you might have some conflicts which means you'll have to plan on staying in school longer just to take the necessary courses (some upper devision ones are only offered once per year).</p>
<p>Other than that... I know people who have doubled in electrical engineering & physics... or mechanical engineering & physics... it's doable - just stressful. Preplan your entire schedule if you can.</p>
<p>Why don't you check out Lyman Briggs College at MSU while at the ADS competition? You might be able to do both physics and computer science through LBC.</p>
<p>Hey man,</p>
<p>I too am double majoring in Physics and Computer Science. I'm also in the Honors college, and I too have a professorial assistantship (8-10 hours per week) and a few University-sponsored tutoring jobs. I take 17-18 hours per semester, and have made almost universally A's in all my courses (I made one B, fall freshman year, in Music Appreciation, because I didn't take it seriously). I will also have to write a thesis (I might even write two. I love writing research papers).</p>
<p>That being said, it isn't bad at all. If you're good at physics, then the physics curriculum won't be too bad at all. Most of it is just intuition, if you pay attention in class and do homework from time to time. If you like programming, CS won't be bad either; the first class might bore you a bit, but all subsequent ones will prove interesting, I reckon.</p>
<p>Go for it and the best of luck to you. Just out of curiosity, what do you plan on doing with your double major? I've been looking into programs in computational science/physics and scientific programming, and there seem to be lots of interesting graduate programs out there. I'll probably end up staying where I'm at, though, for personal reasons, and studying applied math... but that's discursive.</p>
<p>I'm planning on going to the University of Michigan for grad school to study nuclear engineering. The computer science degree is mostly because I'm interested in software engineering as well as physics...but nuclear engineering is my long-term plan.</p>