<p>How difficult is it to double major at Colgate? It is one of my top schools right now (I'm a junior) and I am positive that I will major in anthropology and most likely Native American studies. Will I have time to take classes that don't count towards my major or distribution requirements?</p>
<p>Thanks! </p>
<p>Sent from my iPhone using CC</p>
<p>Looking at the requirements, both majors are 9 courses. Since for Native American studies some are also listed as SOAN courses, you may be able to have a few overlap, though this is limited. There may be some overlap for distribution requirements as well, and it looks like there are a few CORE Cultures courses that can also count for the Native American studies major. You’ll have 4-5 other distribution requirement courses and 4 other CORE courses.</p>
<p>So if you assume, say… 17 courses for both of the majors, with 1 of those being a CORE and maybe 2 more as a distribution requirements, 4 more COREs and 4 more distribution requirements, that makes about 25 courses, out of 32 total. </p>
<p>If you double major in two very different things, neither of which have CORE courses as part of the program, then you’d probably have fewer “free” classes, but distribution requirements can be pretty flexible - Basic Acting is a humanities course, for example.</p>
<p>Wow, great! Thanks for such an in-depth response. I assume that you attend Colgate? How do you like it?</p>
<p>I graduated in 2008. I really loved it! I was Japanese major and a SOAN minor, but probably would have double majored if I’d been able, but didn’t figure out I liked Sociology until the end of my sophomore year. The profs in the department are great. I had Prof. Moran for Intro to Anthro and Prof. Hsu for the Sociology theory course. Prof. Hsu has high expectations but in a way that really pushed me to be a better writer - I got a lot from that course beyond just the theories.</p>
<p>I’m in a graduate program at Yale now in classes with undergrads and it’s really different. At Colgate I only had 1 big lecture class (Intro to Psych) and all the rest were more discussion based. It’s weird now just sitting there and listening for an hour and not actively participating! Colgate also seemed more student-focused, if that means anything. I can’t really quantify it, but I’ve thought “Colgate was better at this!” a bunch of times over the last month, especially when it came to the administration/bureaucracy.</p>
<p>As Lydia so well explained, a double major will keep you pretty busy. But, you can do it or something similar – maybe not the entire major in both disciplines. “Majoring” in something isn’t really necessary to get a good education in that discipline. I majored in Engiish (years ago at Colgate) but got involved in art and art history halfway through and wished I’d majored in that so ended up “nearly” doing a second major. You can do that easily. And I took history, philosophy, education, religion, science, and everything else so got a really thorough and broad education. Which I think is the very best approach of all. My daughter is sort of majoring in French but really majoring in Poli Sci. And maybe a couple other subjects, too. Lots of interests keeps you pretty busy.</p>