Hi, I’m a senior in high school. Right now my choices are between two academically good schools, but they are also party schools. To be completely honest, I want to have fun in college. I want to go out and have some great memories. I want to be in a sorority, having fun is very important to me. I also, however, care a lot about my grades. I am hoping to double major and go pre law. My two majors would be interdisciplinary so that requires a little more work (I would have to cover different core classes for each of the schools.) Is this dream of mine impossible if I want to participate in greek life, hopefully student government, and go out at least three nights a week? Let me know if it’s at all possible to play hard and also work really hard.
What you have written sounds like a good way to start college and burn out after first semester. Seriously, don’t overload it. It’s better to do LESS your first year and get your bearings straight.
Sure, it’s possible on paper but the time drains of real life will suck you dry.
Why do you want to double major? About 90% of the time someone wants to double major, they don’t really need to. If you just take classes in the less preferred major, you can still fulfil your interests without burning out.
A major/minor combo with pre-law and a sorority / one other activity would be a good option IMO. Very busy yet still balanced.
Sure, it’s possible to work hard and play hard in college, but how much you can handle depends on you. Being pre-law doesn’t add anything to your schedule because it just indicates that you want to go to law school, not that you have to take extra or harder classes or anything. You’ll be more stressed when you have to take your LSAT but that’ll only be temporary stress. Double majoring just means that you have more requirements to meet, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that your classes are harder or that you have to overload on your classes. But, of course, that depends on what your double major is. But if you enjoy both majors and your good at both majors, then it shouldn’t be that much more difficult than a single major. Make sure you make a four year plan to figure out what classes you would have to take to graduate on time. You may find that it’s way too much or you might find that it’s totally manageable.
After your first semester, you’ll get a better idea of what you can handle.
Double majoring, joining a sorority, doing student government, doing a club sport, AND going out three times a week sounds like way too much to do as a freshman.
I agree that you probably only need one major on a pre-law track; you can always take classes in the other major to explore that interest. If you really want to join a sorority, go to NPC recruitment in your freshman year (assuming you want to join an NPC sorority, which most sororities are) and join one. Then see what happens. Sororities offer opportunities for many social events, so you might go out or do fun things 3x a week just through the sorority itself. After you’ve gone through recruitment and the new member program in your sorority, then reevaluate and see how much extra time you have left over - and that’s when you can decide whether and when to add extra opportunities. As an added bonus, a lot of times Greek membership can boost your chances of getting positions on student government and such later in your academic career. It’s unusual for freshmen to have significant positions in university SGAs anyway.
If you have any intention of pursuing law school, understand that law schools care very little of what you do outside of the classroom and freshman year burn out isn’t going to excuse an abysmal GPA.
I also plan to double major with Mechanical engineering and industrial design.do you think it will be a nice to double major.At the same time I want to join clubs and play tennis.I just want to go out 1 night per week.
What’s the obsession with double majoring? If you’re in high school, you really have no idea what college level courses in a major consists of - hence the reason why so many students go into college undeclared.
Double major if your passion is Ukrainian poetry but you’re also passionate about stable employment - so pick up a second major in accounting. But It’s far better (in my opinion) to be a master of one major and take a myriad of upper division courses and electives in one field than two divide your attention between the two (assuming the two majors don’t have substantial overlap.)
Good points here. You don’t necessarily need a double major to take classes in two fields. The sorority expectations will eat a chunk of your time. Decide what your real priorities are. You have to be aware of requirements, possible schedule conflicts, other expectations like meetings, study groups, various projects, etc. It sounds super duper to overload- and kids dream of succeeding at all if it. Reality gets in the way.
I want to double major in political science and marketing. I want to double major because I want to expand job opportunities coming out of college. I don’t want to be stuck within one field.
Here is a summary of some research on the economic returns to double majoring. But at the same time, I don’t think the benefits of double majoring are high if your goal is to go to law school where the GPA and LSAT matters more than what your major or majors were.
From the paper, which you can access through your university library, this was stated about the benefit of double majoring for those who later go to grad school: “Even though the rate of double majoring is higher among those who achieve graduate degrees, having a double undergraduate major does not increase earnings controlling for level and/or field of the post-bachelor’s degree.”
A double major won’t yield a major job difference out of college. 2.3% is not worth all that stress and time, and if you’re going for pre-law, it seems like that 2.3% goes out the window.
Read preamble’s posts^^^^. Your posts indicate that you have no idea of the level of work expectations at the colleges. Your GPA has to be up high for most profitable careers; they do ask for GPA. Being pre-law tells me that you haven’t researched that the job market is weak for attorneys, and that marketing careers are competitive.
Minor “details” like getting good grades may impact your social greek life:
You can’t cram, like you did in high school. (My kids had 40 pages of intense reading per night just for their poli sci general ed classes; not including the films and articles they had to allude to in their papers.) Labs take a huge chunk of time. You will be assigned to groups, within your marketing classes, and you will be expected to meet with them on your off time. Group meetings are a pain and not everyone contributes fairly, which impacts your grade in class. Not everyone assigned to your group will be able to meet around your sorority events.
The “A” students read their syllabi and go to “office hours” or to the tutors. Believe it or not, these schedules actually impact your social life. How dare the professors schedule office hours that are inconvenient for your rush schedule!
My daughter had a class that only had one test for the whole semester. If she failed that test, she failed the class. Was it fair? No. Did anyone complain? No. Was it a good class? Yes.
Sports practices were held 3 times a week and the travel (yes, by flights) cut into their schedules, but they did read and try to study on the planes.
You need sleep at some point during the week, and with your proposed schedule, something will give; I predict that will be your GPA.
My genuine advice is to stick to one major. You aren’t double majoring in Political Science and Petroleum Engineering; Marketing isn’t going to drastically supplement the employability of a Pol Sci degree. Do whatever it takes to excel in that one major, gain interesting and abundant internship and work experience, and build meaningful relationships with your major professors. That’ll make you more employable and it’ll matter a lot more to law schools (at least the ones worth going to) than a second major, sorority involvement, how many times you go out with friends, etc.
I don’t know if you’re being facetious, but I don’t think you should be advising people to take on schedules that might require more than 24 hours in a day when you’re considering using online essay services because you don’t have time to do your own assignments. @LizzieElizabeth
Not to.mention that a HS junior has neither been to college nor applied yet.
OP, you don’t need an official double major to take the classes in mktg. You use contacts to get real internships or projects. The employers don’t just say, ooooh, she had a dbl major. They look for how you got real life experiences. You can list lots of relevant details on LinkedIn.
At some colleges, candidate mktg or the promotion of causes is already built into the poli sci curriculum. Or were you thinking of being counsel for a toothpaste mfr? Even then, the law school record trumps. (Or a JD/MBA.)
Honestly, I went to a really really hard high school where they schedule every inch of our free time, I’m used to getting work done. I want to double major in the case I come out of college and all of a sudden decide maybe I don’t want a job in field x. That’s what happened with my cousin and he had to go back to school.
@stressednblessed - Even Phillips graduates have to get acclimated to the college environment - you might be used to a rigorous high school schedule, but the nastiest of AP classes can’t really compare to what real major courses in college like.
Political Science (or any social science/humanities major) isn’t like nursing - you aren’t bound to any one field (whereas nursing majors tend to become nurses with little exception.) You can work in any number of fields - even fields that don’t seem directly related at all to political science. That’s where internships come in.
What if you don’t end up wanting a job in either of your majors? Would you tack on a third? A fourth? You can’t plan for everything. You can’t PREPARE yourself for a job in any given field. If you get to the end and decide you don’t want a job in field x, you might not have chosen your major well enough…but that’s why you usually have four years in college, not one or two. The first bit, a lot of people are changing their minds and their majors.
@LizzieElizabeth Settle down, it’s not like I quoted a post from three years ago. I had answered the thread I quoted 10 minutes prior to using that thread in my response to this thread. Find the time? It took less than two minutes.
You can’t plan for everything. You can’t PREPARE yourself for a job in any given field. If you get to the end and decide you don’t want a job in field x, you might not have chosen your major well enough…but that’s why you usually have four years in college, not one or two. The first bit, a lot of people are changing their minds and their majors.