Double Majoring Worth It?

College Majors
1

Here is my current situation…

So in high school, I’m accumulating a ton of college credits from AP, IB, College in School (CIS), and Articulated Credit (AC) courses, along with DSST and CLEP exams I’ve taken over the summers. I’m also going to skip my senior year at high school and going to do full-time at a community college (tuition-free) – PSEO program. Now I plan on going to the University of Minnesota Duluth because it’s somewhat affordable and because they accept all these credits. My liberal arts requirements will all be fulfilled along with my degree prerequisites.

I plan on going into the program: Bachelor of Business Administration in Organizational Management. I’ve calculated that I’ll only need to do 31 credits, which can be easily done in 2 semesters. So I’ll get my first bachelor’s degree after 6 months of entering college.
https://onestop2.umn.edu/pcas/viewCatalogProgram.do?programID=642&strm=1163&campus=UMNDL

Now my double majoring dilemma. I’m also interested in doing another program they offer Bachelor of Business Administration in Financial Markets.
https://onestop2.umn.edu/pcas/viewCatalogProgram.do?programID=3577&strm=1163&campus=UMNDL

These two degrees would add up to 52 credits total. This would take me about 3 semesters to complete if I do 17-18 credits each term. Now it may seem too much but I think the two internship courses I’m planning on taking (6.0 cr) should be easy; In reality, I would only be doing 46 credits of college coursework (15cr-16cr/term) and the other 6 would just be work experience. Now the downside of all this is that my student debt would be somewhere around $30,000.00 after scholarships and grants.

So I have a few questions that I’m In need of an answer for:

  1. Now as you can tell from the title, is this worth it?
  2. Does it pay more if you have more than one major?
  3. Would this help my chances in getting into Harvard Business School – impressing them by graduating in a year with 2 majors at the age of 19?
  4. Or, should I just move onto a MBA program after getting my Organizational Management B.B.A.?
2
  1. Depends why you are doing it
  2. No
  3. No
  4. Most of the name brand MBAs want you to have worked several years before you enroll. Take a look at 'what Harvard looks for' here:

http://www.hbs.edu/mba/admissions/Pages/who-are-we-looking-for.aspx

Scroll down the page and you will see what the ‘pre-MBA industry’ (ie, work experience) was for admitted students. 100% had work experience.

3

I find it hard to believe that you would get your BA in 2 semesters/6 months, and I think you are underestimating what you actually need to complete at UMN-D to get the BA. Most colleges have a residency requirement, which is how many credits you have to take at the college before you can graduate. At most colleges, it’s 60 credits - so in other words, even if you have taken 90 credits of college coursework elsewhere, you’d still have to take 60 credits at that particular college in order to get a BA from there. Most colleges don’t want to award you a degree primarily based on the work that you did elsewhere!

Secondly, most colleges have general education requirements. While your AP, CLEP, and community college classes may satisfy some or even most of them, they probably won’t satisfy all. For example, UMN-Duluth has a required first-year experience course that all freshman are required to take, and it’s two semesters. There may be certain divisions that you haven’t satisfied the requirements for, like fine arts or physical education or social sciences. There might be other requirements - for example, my college required all students to take a women’s studies course. You can’t just count the number of credits in the major.

Thirdly, even within the major, many of those classes may be sequential. Just because a major only takes 31 credits, for example, doesn’t mean you can evenly split them into 15 one semester and 16 the next. For example, three of those courses might be a three-semester sequence. Or one of the required courses may require two prerequisites which are a two-semester sequence. Or there may be scheduling conflicts because no one expects students to attempt to take the entire major in just two semesters, so two of the classes you need may be scheduled at the same time.

Also, I wouldn’t assume that those internships are going to be “easy”. You haven’t even gotten to college yet. Slow down.

To answer your questions:

  1. Depends on what that means. If it's really meaningful for you to have majors in both, it might be worth it. Most employers probably won't care that much.
  2. No.

3 & 4. No, it won’t impress them, and no, it’s not that easy. You need work experience in the business world to be a competitive applicant to top MBA programs, so plan to work for at least 2 and more realistically 3-5 years after college. Honestly, for that goal spending MORE time in college will be more advantageous, as you’ll have more time to do internships and build the skills you need to get a good job.