<p>A little background. I want to achieve three bachelors and a J.D in criminal law, all within a 9-10 year period. If not less. I want to receive degrees in poli sci, economics, and international relations. I do not want to get these degrees to make myself more presentable to employers or anything of that nature. I want them so I can acquire the knowledge they bring with them. I believe it will benefit my career in the long run, if not all-around. Does anyone know how I can go about achieving the first step of my journey (the three BA's?) in the shortest amount of time and in the best way?
Also, I was wondering if someone could give me some input on my idea to double major. I would like to double major in Political Science and Economics OR Political Science and International Relations.</p>
<p>Which option would work best? And how long would it take me?</p>
<p>Go to the webpages of the universities that interest you. Look up the relevant departments. Generally they will describe their undergraduate requirements. It shouldn’t be difficult to double major in two closely related fields anywhere. Some schools don’t allow an official triple major even if you’ve taken all the required courses: you can only list two majors on your transcript and diploma.</p>
<p>The quickest way to major in all three things is to find a school with relatively weak general distribution requirements for all students (for instance, Columbia has strong requirements; Brown has weak ones). Then look for departments that allow you to use courses from related departments to fulfill their own major requirements: it’s quite possible, for instance, that you will be able to count the same “comparative economic systems” course or whatever to any or all of these majors. Your plan shouldn’t be impossible because the three majors that interest you have considerable areas of overlap.</p>
<p>If you do a double or triple major, you don’t get two or three bachelor’s degrees. You get one, with two/three majors.</p>
<p>Think hard, though, about whether triple majoring is your best plan. It will certainly constrain your course options. You might, for instance, have to take a course just to fulfill a major requirement, even though the teacher is lousy or the topic doesn’t interest you. Worse, you might have to forego taking a class you would love, in a topic you know little about, because it doesn’t count toward any of your majors. In general, I think most people are better off doing one (or maybe two) majors seriously, and then using the rest of their time to explore the myriad possibilities any university has to offer. When else are you going to get a chance to do this? And if, say, you declare a major in Political Science, nobody is going to forbid you from taking as many Economics courses as you like, even if you don’t declare an Economics major.</p>
<p>You’re somewhat unclear about whether you would like to triple-major or double-major.</p>
<p>Political Science + Economics is a common combination, easily do-able. However, you would probably do just a basic major in economics without the additional math courses that you would need if you ever wanted to go to grad school in economics. That would be OK as your plan is law school. </p>
<p>IR is usually an interdisciplinary major which draws heavily upon courses from the political science and economics depts. Many IR programs require that a major select an area of emphasis, so usually you’ll draw on one of those fields more than the other. A major in a traditional discipline in addition to the IR major is a good idea since interdisciplinary programs draw courses from several depts and sometimes students fail to get a solid grounding in the theory and methods of any single discipline. Also, for your particular area of interest in law, there are relevant aspects of political science that you wouldn’t get in an IR major. </p>
<p>Since IR is also a subfield of political science and international econ is a subfield of economics, you could just do the double major in econ + political science, and supplement it with some electives in history and languages/area studies.</p>
<p>The BA degree should take 4 years. If you enter with credits or you are able to transfer credits, it will take a shorter time. Law school takes 3 years.</p>