I’ll be starting college in a few months and I’m wondering if it’s possible to do a triple major quadruple minor. Originally I had planned to double major with international relations and film, but the school I ended up deciding on doesn’t have a film major, only a minor, so I decided to go with environmental science instead. IR is offered only as a co-major, which is sort of like a double major but sort of not there, so I decided to do IR-Economics and Environmental Science with minors in film, marine science, polisci, and french. I had also considered doing IR-French instead of Econ but I think it’s the fluency in french that will matter to employers, not the major. I’m not going to a particularly tough school, so I think it will be possible, but I wanted other opinions.
Also, what are the odds of getting a job with those majors? People say not to do IR but campaign management, which I want to do out of college, isn’t an option at most colleges.
The ability to complete multiple majors/minors depends a lot on how much overlap there is in the requirements. Political science and International Relations may have some courses that can count for both. French, film, and marine science are not going to have any overlap.
Also, most colleges require you complete a certain number of core courses in order to graduate.
What you’re asking is possible, it’s just a matter of how many additional years you want to spend in college to complete all those majors and minors.
You need to think not only about the difficulty of the courses, but also about how many credit hours you can realistically take per semester, and then look at how many core credit hours are required and then how many credit hours are required for each major and minor.
My D was able to graduate in 4 years with a double major, a minor, and an Honors certification, but that was only because she came in with a semester and a half worth of AP hours, which allowed her to gain credit for many core classes, and also many of her courses did double or triple duty because the classes counted towards more than one of her goals. Both her majors were in the History department, so there were several courses that counted towards both, and some of her courses for her English minor also overlapped with History requirements. And she also intentionally chose the sections of her courses that would count towards her Honors requirements.
I would look at one school you’re interested in and get a hold of their course catalog. Look at the requirements for each major and minor, as well as the core, and that will help you understand what it would take to reach your goals.
I already compiled all the required classes for all of these and it comes to 42 courses with overlap (marine sci overlaps almost completely with envirosci), I’d then need about 10 courses (rounding up) for my gen ed requirement (math, science and language requirements are fulfilled by the majors and minors, but I’m in the honors college so I needed a few classes for that), so that comes to approximately 52 classes total. That’s 13 a year, ~6.5 a semester. I’m going to college on an almost full scholarship and they offer a myriad of on-campus jobs that are schedule flexible so I don’t need to work off campus.
Taking 6 or 7 courses a semester - and working, even on campus - is a pretty heavy workload. More than a typical student could be successful with. Do you have GPA requirements for maintaining your scholarship? Do you know if you will be charge for additional credit hours above the standard at the school?
What you have to ask yourself is what are your reasons for taking each of these majors/minors. If you are looking to be part of campaigns, environmental science might be helpful if that’s part of the platform, but what is the benefit from both environmental and marine? Is French really going to be a differentiating factor? Most employers looking for multiple languages are looking for Spanish, Russian, or Asian languages. Is there another way you could develop your language fluency? Many people are fluent in more than one language without having a major or minor in that language - they list the languages they are fluent in on their resume. There’s even a place just for languages on LinkedIn.
As you said, campaign management isn’t a degree program. People come to that position with all kinds of degrees. What will be important would be to volunteer with campaigns in college. Will you be able to fit that in with all the hours you will be in class, doing homework, studying, and working? Volunteering is what is going to give you real life experience and also help you start building network connections.
At many schools if you take over a certain number of credits per semester there is an additional charge. While this may be affordable given your scholarship, it is something you should consider. Also, scheduling can be a problem, especially as you get into higher level courses. What do you do if there is one course needed for one major and there is only one section, and the time conflicts with a course that you must take for a different major. You’ll have to pick one. That can throw the whole idea of finishing in four years out the window.
I agree with thumper that there is no reason for so many majors and minors. Pick one or two majors. Add a minor. Any more than that will look like you can’t make up your mind what direction you want to go in.
This is likely not possible due to course sequencing (without spending a significant number of extra semesters). Not every course is offered every semester, and you need to take into consideration the fact that many courses have prerequisites that you need to take beforehand.
And I agree, 6-7 academic courses per semester is a lot and likely not sustainable, in addition to the fact that there is likely to be an additional charge for that many courses. I double majored (math and CS), double minored (music and dance), and I took 5 academic classes a semester, which is considered a heavy load at my university, and was able to take advantage of AP credits and overlapping requirements. I was close to having the music major, and also the linguistics minor (because of transfer credits from HS), but I had no need for these, plus it would have been very hard to fit in the additional courses I needed. I had reasons to complete everything else- I chose my majors because both of these were relevant to my career field (cryptography), my full-tuition scholarship required me to at least minor in music, and I wanted to continue dance (something I had done since I was really young), and the dance department actually chooses what courses to offer based on what the majors/minors still need to take, in addition to it helping to get into courses if they filled. I had to really stay on top of things as it is, and had a four-year plan from the beginning taking into account the course-rotations. When I had a course conflict or didn’t get into a class for some other reason, I would spend hours reworking my four-year plan to make sure I could still complete everything. It took a lot of planning, and becoming extremely familiar with the course catalog and course rotations. I remember a core course for the CS major conflicted with the next music theory course one semester, and because of that, I had to take over a year break in the middle of the theory sequence-something that was really not ideal. I had almost no choice in what classes I took each semester, as it was all, these are the courses that are offered this semester that I need to take to complete my degree. I think I took a total of 3 courses that were pure electives.
In college, you can take classes outside your major. Why lock yourself in?
You sound like someone who is intellectually curious. You can explore best if you are only taking classes that stimulate you, not if you are meeting requirements that don’t have to be requirements.
With respect to your question about job prospects for one with three majors & four minors, professional student is the only one that comes to mind. The concern being that you lack focus.
Before you make any decisions, take gen ed classes that overlap with your intended major. You may be surprised at how your expectations are very different from what being x major means.
If your scholarship covers 4 years, that’s what you will get.
You will be responsible for the rest of the charges.
Taking courses and the requirements and the labs isn’t the only issue.
When you are in your classes, you will have to work in teams or groups. The reason professors do this is because of feedback from employers stating that many graduates have minimal experiences working with people in teams.
So you may have team requirements where you HAVE to meet and plan and organize. All three of my children, who have all attended VERY different schools, with different majors, in different locations, said that this was the worse part of their courses: coordinating team time.
Plus: Who is going to do your laundry (a maid service)? When do you plan to sleep? Eat? There is such a thing as being a human being and taking care of your personal needs.
Doing 3 majors, (which I believe is ridiculous) will limit your availability to course requirements and internships. Do you plan on working three different jobs at once? Future employers will wonder if you will stick with them because your resume will be all over the place.
What if I dropped marine science and polisci from the minors? Then it’d just be a double major double minor (IR-Econ is one major, not two at this schools setup).
What does the school allow? My daughter school limits students to two majors.
My concern is that you are just doing the bare minimum to get a major. My suggestion is to do deeper into your major to get more knowledge of the field to set yoursel apart from the rest. Right now your approach seems to be jack of all trades but master of none.
Try to take courses that are complementry and build on a common core strength.
Also depending on your high school and college, you are likely to find that your college courses are on a whole another level then high school. Taking 6-7 courses every semester is not feasible for most. Just the shear amount of reading and writing required in some courses will make it difficult to maintain that type of courseload.
I agree with the posters above who suggest you take the courses that interest you rather than trying to maximize the number of majors and minors. Your resume will look silly with 3 majors and 4 minors listed on it.
I would usually just toss out the resumes with more than just 1 major on them. I figured that when they figured out what they really wanted to do, reapply. I didn’t want to waste my companies time and money unless the person had a true passion for the job I was offering. I was also looking for the best prepared candidate which was the one who do more than the minimum for the degree field I was looking for.
You become a well rounded individual thru a lot of activities during and after college and for what you do outside the classroom.
I really did. I would get about 10 or more resumes for every job I had to offer; and that was after HR screened them. It was an engineering job with a big, nationally known company that was considered a premium job. I was looking for candidates that were truly committed to the job as it was going to cost a fair amount of money to train a new engineer (engineering school only teaches you the basics and we were doing much more than the basics). With the number of resumes I had coming in, I could afford to be selective; so I was.
A bit of clarification, IF the two majors were VERY close, I might not toss it. However, I can’t recall any that were that way. The most common double major was engineering and business which definitely went into the round file. I didn’t need business skills, I needed engineering skills. In fact most double majors would be the lower end of the number of engineering classes taken. Not what I was looking for. BTW, the company required a transcript with the employment application for new and recent college grads.
I will say that I’m pretty sure most employers won’t toss your resume because you had a double major. (Most companies also don’t require transcripts of new grads.)
I will also say, though, that I’m pretty sure most employers don’t really care about your multiple majors and minors unless some of them have a specific interest/overlap with the skill set (e.g., a foreign consulate post for a major in IR and Arabic). And even then, you don’t need the second major - you just need the skills - as you mentioned yourself.
Simple course counts are not enough to see whether or not the feat is doable. There are also course schedules to take into account. Some colleges don’t allow you to count major requirements towards certain general education or divisional requirements (e.g., a psychology major would need to take an additional social science course in a different department to get that credit). There’s also the point that as an IR major with a real interest in French, you should probably study abroad for at least a semester. That may not be doable, but it’s something you should at least consider - the experience would be more valuable than the extra majors.
Especially with majors that have a lot of overlap, my question is always why? What extra do you have to gain from that? If environmental science and marine science have almost 100% overlap, why not just do environmental science and take the marine science classes as electives for the major?
At some point you will have to make a decision and pick something, so now is as good a time as any.
Oh, the confidence of the incoming college freshman - it should be bottled and sold! Slow your roll, OP. I don’t know how academically challenging your college is, but I think doing more than a double major is a bit insane. Granted, the overlap for some majors is considerable at some schools - take an extra class or two and you have a whole other major. But a 6-7 class semester, semester after semester, is going to kill you. Your physical body needs to 1) GO TO CLASS (no, not skipping lectures and hoping you can catch up), 2) homework/study/write papers/etc., 3) eat, 4) sleep, 5) adult (laundry, clean your living quarters, other stuff that keeps the engine going). And this doesn’t include having to perhaps do study groups and/or tutoring and any extracurricular activities you may want to do. Nor does it take into account setbacks - illness, family issues, etc. A week can fill up very quickly with just the stuff you can schedule - why build a house of cards that can come tumbling down with the merest whisper of a breeze?
I do not think the perceived benefit of triple or quadruple majoring in anything is worth the toll this could take on your body, psyche and GPA.
If you have an academic interest and sufficient time, take elective classes in several years. Broadening you academic and intellectual horizons is real!y good but seeking multiple majors and minors could make you seem scattered. Think about the goal of theme of your major and long-term plans and then lay out a plan for taking classes you can explain, even defend if necessary. You may also find that some graduate program meets your goals and contribute to organizing and expanding your interests in a career focus.