<p>I was wondering what I should do in my case:</p>
<p>the one major I am absolutely decided upon is I want to major in Aerospace Engineering.</p>
<p>but I also greatly enjoy meteorology and nuclear engineering is of interest to me. I've heard a lot about double majoring but since engineering majors have been known to take 5 years to complete in the past, I was wondering if double majoring (or doing minors) would even be sane in my case with my options.</p>
<p>In engineering, double majors or minors should only be pursued at your own interest. When you graduate they aren’t going to help you get “an edge”, and often times you will only use the things you learned in one of those majors towards your career. In general, unless you have the time and money to pursue other majors, I wouldn’t do so. Do a minor if you are interested in something else, or just self learn the other material. Your curriculum in Aerospace Engineering will be plenty time consuming and challenging enough, trust me, I’m a senior in the same major.</p>
<p>Here’s the deal: choose one and just go with it. Engineering is going to be so challenging that you are not going to want to worry about the immense amounts of extra work involved in a double major. </p>
<p>My question is this: Why do you want to double major? Just having an “interst” is not enough to even consider doing a double major. Think about what your ultimate career/life goals are and then evaluate whether a double major will be of any utility. I will tell you now that NukeE (my major) and Aero will not have much overlap if any beyond the first two years so you can expect to be in school well well beyond four years. </p>
<p>As for minors, I am going to start a Russian minor beginning my second semester. My ultimate career goal is to work in international nuclear nonproliferation relations between russia, former soviet countries, and the US. So is a minor worth your time: of course if you have a specific motive and find that there can be utility in doing so. </p>
<p>I am not trying to downplay the importance of interest because of course you should only pursue what truly interests you. However, this choice is much more about utility. gstein makes a great point when saying that most of the time there will not be any special edge in getting a minor/double major, especially with engineering. </p>
<p>Good luck, and if you have any NukeE questions let me know!</p>
<p>well ultimately I want to work at NASA so I’m trying to format what I do in college to help me succeed later on. I’m not totally sure what exactly I want to do at NASA yet other than I really enjoy building and designing stuff but I definitely know that it’s my end goal.</p>
<p>the reason I’ve been trying to figure what to do with my other interests is simply because I really have enjoyed learning about both in the past and wish to learn more. but as it’s been pointed out, there isn’t much overlap and that was making me hesitant in the first place. while I love both meteorology and nuclear engineering I also don’t want to be in college forever and I definitely don’t really want to end up doing something that will have no use to me later on so I’m trying to decide whether I should just pick Aero and maybe a minor or what.</p>
<p>and if there are any other options that would make me a better candidate for getting a good job at NASA, feel free to let me know.</p>
<p>For NASA I would definitely do AeroE. Or MechE. Or EE. Pretty much every major is used in every field… though some definitely more than others. (won’t see too many Aero in Natural Gas… though I’m sure there are some).</p>