<p>I am a TOTALLY CLUELESS hs junior and I need someone to explain all the difference between a minor and a major. and their definitions. I know the major is obviously more concentrated on than the minor, but what are the other great differences?</p>
<p>-marie</p>
<p>At some colleges a minor is required, at others it isn't. The college bulletin will lay out how many credit hours are required for each. Often a minor will be something related to your major, such as a piano major having an organ minor, or music arranging, or other useful skill. But sometimes you can choose a minor just because you want to increase your knowledge in an area that wouldn't be practical to major in. I have a son who is a computer science major; he is a music minor because he loves music and is fairly talented, tho not enough to be a major! Other minors that might have been useful to him would have been business or math. Some students choose a minor when they realize they have been taking electives in an area they love and find out they just about qualify for a minor.</p>
<p>I hope this helps!</p>
<p>yes it did help. but do students who take a subject as a minor get put into a class where the students are taking that same subject as a major? equal workload? and does the college have to have that subject under "MINOR" or the applicant to take it as a minor?</p>
<p>i'm sorry if that was confusing -___-</p>
<p>With a minor, you just don't need to take as many credits... there aren't seperate classes or anything, for example, there wouldn't be two calculus classes, one for majors, and one for minors. You just take fewer classes to be qualified as a minor... Like, if I wanted to major in journalism and minor in business, I might need to take 60 credits for journalism and only 30 for business. (in no way is that the actual credit number, i just made that up... so yeah.)</p>
<p>It depends. Generally, you're right up there with the majors--same classes, but you might only have to take the first couple years in a sequence, not the higher level classes. Though you might, if you're really good in a subject, qualify for upper level courses already by having taken APs in high school. Foreign language, for instance. But if your minor is a musical instrument, you would be taking private lessons and the teacher would of course teach to your (lesser) ability/experience. </p>
<p>It's confusing because every college differs in its requirements and so much depends on the qualilty of the program. A minor in music at a small school not noted for its music program will be much less demanding than a minor in a school where you would be swimming with the big fish. And at some schools they won't even LET you swim with the big fish--for instance, an engineering major at a university which also has a conservatory for which admission requirements are quite separate would not be allowed to "minor" in music.</p>
<p>A lot to think about. Sorry if I keep giving music scenarios--it's what I know best.</p>
<p>in college pretty much all the classes are open to everyone - there are very few classes that are majors-only, although many give preference to majors so they are de facto majors-only. but most of your classes will be taken with majors, minors, and people who are just plain interested.
at my school, you are required to declare a major.. this is a subject closest to the career you are interested in, where you complete anywhere from 8 to 10 courses. those courses would probably include some intro classes, some advanced seminars, and a cluster. for instance, if you were a political science major, you might have to take both intro to american politics and political theory, then some seminars, and you'd have to take 3 or 4 courses focused on something specific, like international relations or urban politics, something like that all related. but if you were a political science minor, you wouldnt have to formally declare this, it would just become apparent as you completed all the required courses, which might include a few intro courses and electives but without the cluster to make maybe 5 total courses for the minor. it depends on the subject and on the school.
most schools have you write a senior thesis in the topic of your major; you dont do this for your minor.</p>