<p>What are you feelings about combining East Asian Studies and Economics in a double major?</p>
<p>What kinds of doors would that open for me with respect to internships?</p>
<p>I could always do Economics and a minor in Chinese.. I'm taking Chinese courses now and I love it!</p>
<p>With either combination I'd be studying the Chinese language, but with East Asian Studies I'd be studying the history, politics, and culture of China/Japan/Korea as well.</p>
<p>East Asia is obviously a dynamic and economically interesting part of the world. The fact that one of the top IR programs in the country is devoted almost solely to East Asia (UCSD IR/PS) should demonstrate how seriously it's taken.</p>
<p>The doors to internships are many. Private and public sector jobs will be yours for the taking. USTR, USAID, Sony, Deloitte, State Dept. CIA, DIA, SPAWAR, Barclays, Northrop, HP...you name it, they're interested in East Asia.</p>
<p>Good plan -- the double major. One suggestion, though: do an internship in Asia while in college. And try to spend time in China (or perhaps Taiwan) focusing extensively on Chinese. See if you can get a scholarship or something to the Stanford Center (which is affiliated with 10 or something universities and administered by Stanford) to learn Mandarin, if you want to get serious. Don't waste too much time studying language in college. You learn languages much more efficiently in country. Get the basic grammar down (one year of Mandarin) and then do the rest there. And take the rest of your East Asian major classes in econ, history, poli sci, etc. related to the region. Language learning is just a tool to uncover knowledge in the other areas, IMO, not an end in itself.</p>
<p>learning should be fun if u are interested in your subject.
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<p>BIGTWIX: What planet are from? You think learning should be fun? Are you absolutely crazy?</p>
<p>But an even bigger question arises: how do you put a smily face in here on College Confidential? If I had known how to do this, my irony might have been more understandable to more people. UCLAri got it.</p>
<p>I coupled Chinese Language & Culture with a major in Communication and then earned a master's in RSEA (I am not of Asian descent). </p>
<p>I recommend it, as gaining command of an Asian language (preferably Chinese) and--almost as importantly--an Asian business culture makes for a highly marketable skill set. If you can work in your country of interest for a summer or a quarter/semester, you will be in even higher demand when you hit the U.S. job/graduate school market. I did this (worked and researched my undergraduate thesis in China the summer before senior year), and it was a huge boost to the quality of my resume. It also gave me excellent subject matter for my grad school admission essays.</p>
<p>For me, this combination has offset fairly mediocre academic performance and, I believe, has allowed me to not only enter and graduate from a top East Asia master's program, but now to start my PhD in the fall.</p>