<p>I'm currently a sophomore majoring in political science. I want to continue studying political science at the graduate level. However, I have enough elective hours left to double major in something like ethnic studies, area studies, women's studies, or American studies. If I ended up double majoring it would just be for fun. I don't know if I should use my elective hours to take more relevant coursework such as economics, international business, advanced foreign language or if I should double major. Assuming that everything else (GPA, GRE, etc.) is the same, what should I do? </p>
<p>Would graduate schools prefer one over the other?
Does it really make a difference?</p>
<p>You don’t have to double major just because you have elective hours left - you could use those elective hours to just take courses that are interesting to you, regardless of whether or not they area all in the same major. You could take courses across all of those majors. And in general, it’s always better in the graduate programs’ eyes for you to take more coursework relevant to the program. For instance if you’re interested in comparative PS between, like, Brazil and Uruguay it’s to your advantage to take Spanish and/or Portuguese. If you want to do quantitative work you may want to take econometrics, statistics, or calculus. If you’re interested in economic development than the econ and international business classes might be better…get it?</p>
<p>So I think actually taking relevant coursework + plus some just interesting classes is the better bet. I don’t think graduate programs care if you double major unless the double major is actually advantageous to the program in some way (for example, if someone in my program paired psychology with a mathematics, computer science, or biology major).</p>
<p>It depends on what you want to do in the future. If you want to go to graduate school or law school it might be a good idea to double in something relevant. However, one thing you should do is make sure you are pursuing courses that interest you. </p>
<p>Whether or not you go for a double major I urge you to take all junior and senior level classes, taking lower level undergrad classes as electives looks like you are just looking for an easy A. However, beyond that, take courses you are passionate about. Your interest will shine through in your work, if you get a double major but hate the subject, your grades may suffer and it will be obvious at an interview. If you’d rather build a broad liberal arts knowledge source and take classes in Ethnic Studies, Women’s Studies, History and Economics, then do that.</p>