<p>I'm a student planning on heading to graduate school, and was considering turning one of my minors into a second major. I feel like it is a good compliment to my basic area of interest, but to complete it would require me to stay for an extra semester. Is a double major something that graduate admissions staff particularly like to see, or is it such a common thing that it has little impact?</p>
<p>If you have the financial support... and...
if it is related and supports your field of interest, taking the extra semester will most likely help you. You will also have the chance to further prepare for graduate school.</p>
<p>@ rkellyloveskids</p>
<p>Depending on the program, some graduate schools do not care if you have a double major or major and minor. They look for what kind of courses you have taken and steady progress on your transcript. Do the double major if it personally enriches you.</p>
<p>It will have little real impact in admissions. Graduate study is about focusing in on one subfield of interest. </p>
<p>However, if the additional courses you are taking in your second major will allow you to gain more preparation for your SPECIFIC subfield of interest in graduate study, then that's a good reason to add the second major.</p>
<p>To expand on profx's comments,</p>
<p>Grad schools could care less what your major is. They care a lot about what your preparation is for the program of grad study. A "major" is a good way, but not the only way, to show this preparation. As a corollary, they could care less about courses outside what you would need for the grad program (other than the obvious, good grades indicate ability and so forth).</p>
<p>It is also a truism that there is a limit to how much preparation one can do at the undergrad level. That is to say one can hit a point of diminishing returns in taking classes while an undergrad that might be relevant to a program of grad study. This is because each program (at each university) has its own approach. Some disciplines may value broader preparation, some may not, so this will vary widely among the sciences, humanities and social sciences.</p>
<p>Your best bet would be to talk to some grad departments to get their advice. You might start at home if your college is a university with the relevant grad program. Even if not, a faculty member in your area of interest may have some good advice.</p>
<p>Well, say for instance you want to go into Biology research. Is it worth it to get a statistics double major, or would one be better off just taking a few classes and not end up using a lot of complex statisticial analysis? Does it depend a lot of the subfield of Biology? If, so, any use in the Cell/Microbiology/Genetics arena? I've been reading some papers and I don't really ever see that much statistical analysis, however maybe its behind the scenes.</p>
<p>From my experience statistics is used more on the Ecology side and not as much in MCB. Not to say we do not use statistics, but at least for my masters it was nothing that a formula or two in excel could not handle. For MCB, I would think a double major in Chemistry would be more relevant, but still unnecessary. You would be better off putting that extra time and effort into a research project getting hands on experience in what you may want to do (and a good LOR) in my opinion.</p>
<p>I think more and more graduate work is becoming highly interdisplinary, especialling in the science and engineering fields. Although being a double major does not help you get into graduate school, a background in a subfield which is very related to your research will. A Ph.D. major in engineering will oftentimes require you to take courses way outside your degree to compliment your research.</p>