Minors, Are they worth it?

Like everyone else, I’m trying to boost my appeal while making my resume more appealing. As a computer science major, I’m trying to set myself aside from others to make myself different. This year(2nd year of college) my college has an engineering leadership certificate or a minor. That being said, I’ve spoken with the professor, and it’s been said it should only be offered as a certificate since most of the classes are 0 credit classes. So I’ve been looking at minors. Embarrassingly though, I had trouble my 1st year and am slowly but surely making my GPA more acceptable. Computer science classes at my school have -40% pass rates, so I’m studying as hard as I can to not fall in that category again. This brings up the question of a minor. Math isn’t my strongest suit. Yet. So taking up to calc 3 isn’t appealing to me at this time. What about a business minor? I have dreams of working for big companies, but I don’t want to always be the one being directed, rather I’d like to direct others. The minor at my school is only 6 additional classes, and would be a GPA boost. Is it worth it? Or should I wait for my math skills to become stronger and further my education with math? I’m not going to finish my degree in 4 years, so I’m not pressured for time.

Thanks in advance to any advice.

-Matt

I thought this was going to be a thread about having children.

I think anything that can you can place on a resume can make the resume “pop”. I actually think a business with an emphasis on finance might really be good. Or, if you plan to go to work in a firm that does actuarial work it might be good to have a statistics minor. I have always thought being able to converse in another language is a huge benefit to an employer. (Spanish is spoken all the time here) It might be useful to you to go to the website for a larger company you would like to work for and look at the resumes of the people who work there to see their backgrounds. Places such as Hewitt really like Math majors so having that as a minor would be a plus.

please excuse my typos…obviously typing was not my forte…

Anybody: what exactly are the advantages to having a minor vs. just taking electives? You would say to prospective employers, “I have a minor in (such and such)” rather than “I have taken (these) courses (in such and such)” - if there’s any difference, the latter seems better, because it naturally leads to the specificity of listing courses. Are academic advisors more tolerant of off-the-major coursework if it is done within the structure of a minor? Do students gravitate toward minors for the sake of the structure of them, because it relieves them of figuring out the best courses to take in this side interest, or because assuming the minor serves as an emblem of an identity the student seeks for him/herself?

@jjwinkle I am in full agreement: courses matter, formal minors don’t.

Some colleges (or schools within colleges) require minors. If yours doesn’t then I agree it doesn’t matter what you call it compared to what you take. For instance, minor at D’s school required 18 hours. If you only have room for 12 hours but they show some kind of emphasis, that’s pretty much the same value. For the future, graduate schools look at actual coursework, not what you call it. I say try different things - business, statistics are good suggestions - and see what is a fit for you and then try to take several courses in that area. If you want to round out your resume something like English or history, look to see if your school has any courses in digital humanities which combines all disciplines with digital emphasis (digitizing historical sites, creating online databases about topics, interactive media etc.)

As a fellow computer science major I’d love to help. I’m not sure of what school you go to so I can only speak from my own school and hopefully can guide you in the right direction. At my school in addition to the core CS courses, we are required to take Calc 1,2, Linear algebra, and stats for an analytical requirement. In addition to this we are required to take 15 outside major hours (or 9 if they’re math). Now for the math minor at my school linear algebra and stats are required and so I realized I was only 2 classes from a math minor, neither of them being calc3+. You should look at your schools CS program and compare your math classes with the minor.