<p>I am a U.S. veteran majoring in petroleum engineering, I need a minor in order to fulfill full time student status. Therefore I need to pick up a minor, but I am having difficulty deciding on math, business, geology, geophysics, something really easy or just something non-related to my major but interesting to me like writing or journalism. Thank you for reading and any advice is greatly appreciated!</p>
<p>Consider the risk that doing a minor in a totally off-the-wall area (that may be of interest to you) could be detrimental to your GPA because you will be taking courses with people that have taken many a class in that department and have lots of free time…</p>
<p>I’m not saying it WILL happen, but I’m speaking from experience. I consider myself a talented writer and love English (anything from poetry to Computational Linguistics) yet I scored a C in a sophomore English course on Shakespeare… The only A’s were to a handful of English majors and the Nigerian dude who managed to mail order the instructor’s guide to the textbook… The rest B’s and C’s. The prof, an aggresive young dude 25 years ago is now running the English department.</p>
<p>I had a couple of similar experiences in classes that should have been unequivocally easy A’s yet ended up as C’s… Again, this may have just been me (how many people argue with their Geography 101 professor on a regular basis without realizing the guy is a hopeless Rush-bot) but in general this taught me to be very leery of ‘interest’ courses. </p>
<p>Another case in point, DD1 has nearly a dozen years classical music training (piano) and entertained the thought of minoring in it. After researching it and talking to people who tried it she now walks on the opposite side of the Music building :)</p>
<p>I hate to be a cynic but hit the various rate my professor dot com type sites for your school and see what’s available and likely to not be a career in itself…</p>
<p>As a disclaimer, I’m not a huge fan of minors… but if you have extra space in your schedule I’d say go for it (assuming it won’t push your graduation back or keep you from a summer internship)</p>
<p>I’d say the most useful would be geology/geophysics, econ or maybe a computer science.</p>
<p>But it doesn’t really matter, so I’d say go for something that interests you. And even something like journalism might improve your writing skills, which would be a great asset as well.</p>