<p>I'm likely going to attend Stanford this coming fall as a freshman and was looking into the classes I could be taking and the majors I could be completing. And...well, I have a few questions.</p>
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<li><p>Would a double major in Linguistics and Neurobiology with a minor in Italian be extremely difficult to complete in 4 years? Any suggestions on a simplified version if this won't work?</p></li>
<li><p>For current Stanford students, would you recommend using a summer or two to take classes?</p></li>
<li><p>For my neurobiology concentration, should I go with the Human Biology and get a B.A. or go with regular biology and get a B.S.? Would one be less credit requirements so I would have more flexibility for other classes?</p></li>
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<p>It may be possible, but I’d imagine it’d be insanely difficult. Since they’re such opposite majors with no overlap, you’re definitely going to be doing a lot of work between them. Also, anyone going into Bio or Chem majors has a lot of prereqs to fulfill, so there are quite a few times where you’ll have to take this certain class at this specific time, which doesn’t allow for much scheduling flexibility. Although, if you’re coming in with a lot of AP credit, it’ll definitely help you out. Even if you don’t double major, nothing’s stopping you from going after Neurobio and just taking Linguistics classes for fun. Even though you won’t get a piece of paper that says you majored in it, you’re still learning it. </p>
<p>Just by looking at the numbers, HumBio has less units required than Bio (87 vs. 100-115). Not quite sure if that leads to less work/more flexibility though since the difference is pretty small. </p>
<p>(I have no clue about Summer classes, sorry!)</p>
<p>In short, yes. It’s gonna be difficult if you want to have a social life and find internships, etc. I’m currently majoring in CS with a secondary major in MS&E, and it’s already pretty difficult (18.5 units per quarter every quarter for the rest of my time here).</p>
<p>Also, wait til you get here, and take a few classes before you decide what you want to do. I started off wanting BME, but realized I hated Orgochem but loved CS and finance, which is what I’m doing now. You never know until you’ve actually taken some classes. What you want to do/are good at in high school is likely not representative of what you really like.</p>
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<li><p>Yes, that would be quite difficult, especially if you don’t bring a lot of transfer credit here. Any techie major + a minor is quite a bit to chew on, especially for something like Linguistics and Neurobiology which don’t have too much in common. Honestly for a proposed double major like that, I’d suggest you just major in Human Biology instead, which combines a lot of physiological components of biology with sociology, linguistics, etc. There’s another major here too, Symbolic Systems, which involves neuroscience and a fair amount of CS, that you might be interested in. As Whan mentioned you can certainly take coursework in an area even if you don’t accumulate enough for a minor.</p></li>
<li><p>It’s possible, though I’ve heard the quality of some of the summer courses isn’t as good as the school year ones (the summer quarter is shorter than regular quarters so the material has to be condensed even further than the quarter system ordinarily does!). Also you have to pay out of pocket for summer courses. No aid given for those. It should be possible to plan for any major/minor combination and leave your summers free for internships, research, etc. I think there is a way, though, to take 1 summer course at a discounted rate if you are also doing summer research here, though I’m not too sure on that.</p></li>
<li><p>See above; Whan covered that pretty well.</p></li>
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