Major Help

<p>Alright so I'm currently a rising junior by credits (I walked into undergrad with 35 credits due to AP and a summer school program) but am planning on staying for the full four years because I have a full scholarship. I have also recently decided that I'm not going to spread out one degree because I'm already bored with an 18 credit hour schedule. So I have decided that I want to get a Double Major and Double Minor. I was wondering if anybody knows whether or not this will make my Grad school application (when the time comes) anymore competitive assuming I get good grades. Thanks in advance! </p>

<p>I don’t think so. It really depends on what you are going to be applying to grad school for and if the other areas are relevant or not. Depending on what you are applying for, you might better spend your time getting research experience.</p>

<p>If you need to fill up your schedule more, you may be able to do research for credit, do internships for credit, and/or take graduate courses in your field, which may help your application to graduate school.</p>

<p>Being a double major, in and of itself, won’t help your grad school chances. It might help if you majored in two fields that are complementary for a certain degree - like psychology and mathematics if you were interested in quantitative psychology or statistics in the social sciences, or sociology and biology if you were interested in sociobiology, the biological bases of human interaction, or a science, technology, and society type program.</p>

<p>But you don’t need to double-major to take on classes - you can just take classes that are appealing to you as they come up. The classes will be listed on your transcript and you can talk about them in your application, if relevant. Also, I agree with baktrax - a better use of your time would be to do internships for credit or take more time to work with faculty on research. Heck, you may even use the time to get heavily involved in an extracurricular activity of your choice or volunteer. I used my extra time (also garnered from coming in with AP credit and testing out of a few requirements) to study abroad for a semester; I didn’t take a single class in my major.</p>

<p>Also leave yourself some time to mess up. I was an excellent student in the top 10% of my high school class and the highest SAT score average from my high school. One semester, I got sick and failed a class and had to withdraw from some others. Because I was already ahead in my major, I was still able to graduate in four years. But if I had taken on a whole bunch of other classes early, I may have not!</p>