Hi, I’m new to the forums and I was wondering if anyone could give me some advice for scheduling courses for my freshman year of college. I’m going to be majoring in Biology, and am registered for twelve credits of prerequisites for my major (freshman biology, chemistry, and bio-statistics). Most of my core courses have already been taken care of through AP credits, so I was hoping to use the rest of my available course space toward a minor in music. I’d like to schedule my music courses so that I could switch over to a music major in the future if I wanted to, after getting a feel for the music program. I’ve spent the majority of my middle and high school years working toward a career in the music industry; studying classical guitar, performing both the guitar ensemble and advanced choir, and taking AP Music Theory my senior year. The past few months however, I decided that I would rather pursue a different career path with a bit more stability and money in it, and changed my focus to biology. However, I still want to study music at some level in college. I spoke with the music adviser, who suggested that I take private music instruction for either one or two credits, a chamber ensemble, a large ensemble, and a recital attendance course during my first semester, in order to make the transition to a major easier if I chose to do so in the future. I’m worried that this may be too heavy of a course load though. In high school I managed to balance two ensembles as part of my schedule and take private guitar lessons on the side while still keeping high grades, but it seems like my college course work may require a lot more time than my high school course load. If I were to add these music courses in full to my schedule I would spend nearly the entire day rushing between lab classes, and ensemble rehearsals, some days of the week would require 8 hours straight of back-to-back classes. I assume on top of attending class I would also have to set aside time for rehearsals, studying, homework, and of course practicing my instrument, as well as performances. Am I being too ambitious with my schedule? Are there any people who have managed to balance two disciplines such as music and science while not overworking themselves, and keeping their grades up?
Biology is not the major to go into if well paid job and career prospects at the bachelor’s degree level are a major consideration in choosing the major. If it is not a primary interest of yours, do you really want to be in large classes filled with grade-grubbing pre-meds trying to protect their 3.6+ GPAs, only to graduate looking for jobs at pay levels only slightly higher than what music majors tend to find, due to the flood of biology majors who did not get into medical school looking for the same jobs?
http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/info-Degrees_that_Pay_you_Back-sort.html
Math or statistics (with electives in applied areas which employers like, such as finance, economics, operations research, and computer science) tends to be much better, and there are many people who are talented in both music and math (though not everyone talented in one is talented in the other).