<p>Hey everyone. I think I need some lessons as to majors and minors.
1) How are they different?
2) How many students have minors?
3) Is a student allowed to have a major in one school/college and have a minor in another school/college? For example, can I major in accounting (School of Business) and minor in political science (School of Liberal Arts)?</p>
<p>And please also talk about dual degree and joint degree programs.</p>
<p>Hi allan - Hope all is going well for you as things wind down and you get ready to graduate.</p>
<p>Majors and minors are different simply by the number of courses required in that area of study. Here are the definitions from the Tulane handbook:</p>
<p>Major: The primary field of study; students will take the majority of their required courses in this area.</p>
<p>Minor: The student’s field of secondary academic emphasis.</p>
<p>I am sure you get what a major is, so here is more about a minor:</p>
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<p>They went on to list the departments that offer minors, but no reason to list those here. So for example, a major in history requires 30 credits and a certain distribution over different sub-fields of history, while a minor is 18 hours and has slightly less requirements regarding the sub-fields you must cover.</p>
<p>It is hard for me to say how many students have minors, but I do know a great many graduate with double majors (not to be confused with dual degrees) so I am sure a very large number graduate with either double majors or a major and a minor. Some even manage double majors and a minor.</p>
<p>A student can absolutely have a major in one school and a different major and/or a minor in another school. Ultimately your degree is from Tulane University and Newcomb-Tulane college, not from the school of Liberal Arts per se.</p>
<p>For dual degrees and joint degrees:</p>
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<p>President Cowen, in his address at a recent Destination Tulane event, spoke about this topic. He noted there are are many, many students at Tulane who pursue dual majors and major/minor studies. He told a funny story about a student who was an Accounting major to please his parents and a philosophy minor to please himself. Obviously, he told the funny part of it better than I did!</p>
<p>Haha. That was funny and brought a smile to my face this morning.</p>
<p>I know that we can pursue double majors, dual degrees, and even triple majors at Tulane. My question is what exactly is the difference between double majoring vs. a dual degree? I couldn’t find anything on the Tulane University website that distinguished the two.</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure a double major is majoring in two areas within the same school (i.e. English and Political Science, both within the School of Liberal Arts, or Chemistry and Neuroscience, both within the School of Science and Engineering). Dual degrees would be pursuing two degrees in two different schools, thus having to complete the core curriculum for each school (like Business and Philosophy, or Public Health and Cell Bio).</p>
<p>About the two different schools/same school thing: Not quite, tigerlily, although often it turns out that way. Dual degrees can be in the same school, as it says it the quoted area above, and double majors can be in different schools. The real difference is that with a double major you have one Bachelor’s degree, which is telling the world that you completed all the requirements for both majors and for the BS or BA, which is 120 hours minimum. For the dual degree, you actually get two seperate Bachelors, and have to complete at least 150 hours. Admittedly most of the world wouldn’t know the difference, and you can say “I have two degrees” or “I have a degree in history and a degree in chemistry” 100 times and 99 will assume you meant you double majored. But you would in fact have 2 diplomas instead of the one you get with a double major. For dual degrees, your last statement about having to complete the core curriculum in each school, if the two degrees are from different schools, is absolutely correct.</p>
<p>Thanks tigerlily and fallenchemist!</p>
<p>Thanks everyone. I was surprised to come home from school and find this big conversation here!
How busy would one be if, say, he chooses to major in consumer behavior/marketing in the Freeman School of Business and history in the School of Liberal Arts, as a dual degree student?</p>
<p>Many, many thanks.</p>
<p>You would be busy, but since you are a DHS winner I am going to make the leap that you are going to have at least a semester’s worth of credits from your AP tests, probably more. That makes it doable. You will always be writing papers, most likely. I know as a history major there will be a lot of research papers, and possibly the same in the business courses. Not as sure about the latter. It will be important to have good coordination with your advisors in all areas (you might have as many as four: Business school, Liberal Arts/History, Newcomb-Tulane College, and Honors Program. LOL, that’s kind of wild). This will help you make sure you are fulfilling all requirements and on track to (hopefully) graduate with honors. If you plan to study abroad, that is another reason to coordinate very carefully, because that can create a few complications regarding getting credits, and since you need 150 for a dual degree, you have to keep on top of that.</p>
<p>Sounds like a fun combination. History actually is a very useful area for marketing, as is psychology. I keep hearing and reading articles about the research going on in brain research and human reactions, and how that impacts our decision making. Marketing people certainly are paying very close attention to this kind of research. OK, I am digressing.</p>
<p>Thanks fallenchemist. I was just mentioning that consumer behavior-history combination hypothetically to illustrate my question. I’m a total outsider when it comes to majors and minors and all the complex ways students combine them.
No, I don’t have any AP, and even if I choose to have dual degrees, I probably won’t choose two subjects that both require substantive paper writing. I’m clear that college life is more about studying, although I think it’s predominantly about studying.</p>
<p>Oh, OK. Well, whatever you pick, 150 hours without previous credit is tough. That’s almost 19 hours a semester, or 6 courses with one of them being a 4 hour course. That is a huge load. Of course there is summer school, or you take 5 years in school. The latter would be 15 hours a semester, the normal load.</p>
<p>Well, I get it - it will be very busy to study for dual degrees, although the numbers make little sense to me. I’m Chinese, so I’m quite new to this credit system, or whatever the rest of the world may call it : ). What image does the phrase “19 hours a semester” create? I mean, if I have to do 19 hours a semester, what will my daily schedules look like? What about 15 hours a semester?</p>
<p>Most courses meet 3 “hours” a week. Technically they meet either 50 minutes 3 times a week, or 75 minutes 2 times a week. Both obviously total 150 minutes of class time. So that is called a 3 Hour, or 3 Credit, or 3 Credit-Hour, course. You will see all these terms and they are interchangeable. Now while most fall into this paradigm, you cannot take it completely literally. There are courses that meet 4+ hours a week but are still considered a 3 credit-hour course. For example you might meet in class 3 hours and then have a 2-3 hours film session in the evening once a week, if that is pertinent to the course. But most common by far is that you have a history class that meets, for example, MWF from 9:00-9:50, while your English class meets TR (R=Thursday) from 1:00-2:15. You might also be taking Introductory Spanish, which meets MWF 10:00-10:50 and T from 9:30-10:45, and that is considered a 4 credit-hour course.</p>
<p>The general thinking is that most students are going to get one degree and therefore have to complete 120 credit-hours of coursework. That averages 15 hours, or 5 courses of 3 credit-hours each. That is considered a normal load, although as few as 12 will still maintain your status as a full time student. You cannot take less than 12 hours a semester and still be full time, normally, and your scholarship requires that you maintain full time status. So as I said, with 19 hours in a semester, you would be taking six classes of which one would have to be a 4 hour course. Also, know that labs are never counted for as many hours as they actually require your physical presence in the lab. So for example the 1 credit-hour General Chemistry lab course that goes with the 3 hour Intro Chem course actually requires 3 hours a week of being in the lab.</p>
<p>This may seem complicated, but you will quickly get used to it. It is much harder for science majors to load up because those lab courses block a lot of scheduling. So for example if your Chem Lab is 12:00-3:00 on Tuesdays, you cannot take any courses offered on TR that overlaps with that.</p>
<p>I think that covers it, but if I have left anything unclear, get back to us and I or someone else will clear it up. This is standard at most US universities, so most of us are very familiar with it. It is not at all unique to Tulane. In fact when I was at Tulane they used a different system, not sure when they changed. But there is a great story of something I went through because of that old system, but too long to post I think.</p>
<p>Have you looked at the course offerings yet? They give the credit-hours and meeting times assiciated with each course. You should start looking for classes you think you might want to take and start working out a schedule. The site has a nice Planner tab that shows your course blocks as you start choosing. You can play with it without fear, it doesn’t actually sign you up until you log in and are ready to do that for real. <a href=“http://classschedule.tulane.edu/flex/ClassSchedule.html[/url]”>Tulane University Schedule of Classes;
<p>You’re extremely helpful, fallenchemist. I’ll try that planner soon. Passed by but didn’t type a word in there.</p>
<p>Glad to help.</p>
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<p>Somehow I chopped part of that off and didn’t catch it. What I meant to say was:</p>
<p>The general thinking is that most students are going to get one degree and therefore have to complete 120 credit-hours of coursework. That averages 15 hours, or 5 courses of 3 credit-hours each semester if you are going to finish in 4 years.</p>