If I take a triple major in Nano engineering, neuroscience, bussiness administration, and computer science at Harvard, Yale, MIT, UPenn, etc, Will I survive?
Harvard and Yale do not offer undergraduate business Have you been admitted to these schools?? Worry about majors after you are admitted. You likely could not do a triple major in 4 years at any school.
Why do you want to do a triple major?
It’s not necessary to major in all of these subjects to learn about them, and I think you’ll easily see that once you get to college. There’s nothing wrong with double majoring if you can meet all the requirements, but the fact that you want four majors indicates that you don’t understand how college works.
Are you interested in any particular careers?
I want to start a business in brain machine integration, so basically I’m pursuing learning more than a diploma. I’m currently a High School freshman, and I want to be as prepared as possible.
It is completely possible to triple or quadruple major, but it’s probably not going to happen. You would have very little opportunity to sleep, and so your body would give out in just a few short weeks.
I took four senior level math classes this past semester, and two humanities. My body got slammed pretty hard, and I had to drop one of the humanities classes. I made it through the semester with a 4.0 but quite often I went multiple days without sleep and for health reasons, I had to do it on pure willpower alone. Three times during the semester, I had about 6 exams in 4 days. Consider that in college, exams are a huge majority of your grade, that’s rough.
I DON’T want to do that again, but thankfully I’m almost done with my degree :D. The point is, you can do it, but probability dictates there’s a 0.01% chance you would ever succeed. You’ll feel the grind on your body pretty hard and it’s a nasty feeling to be honest.
First, your desire to learn as much as possible and make a difference in the world is admirable, keep that. You’ll learn how to tame that desire throughout Highschool, hopefully. I can tell you right now that you’ll never survive a triple major, but you won’t believe me. If I were younger and your age, I wouldn’t believe anyone telling me what I can’t do, because I can be the exception! Right?
Look, take the hardest workload throughout Highschool, fill up all those empty hours with AP classes to the brim. Wanna play video games? Nope, sell them all. Wanna play one of those cool sports your friends are playing? Forget about it. Grades, classes, books, study. That will be your life. If you feel at one point that you just can’t do it, rejoice. You’ve just learned you’re not superhuman.
If you manage to do all of that without breaking a sweat, I look forward to hearing your household name in the future. Good luck, and if you have any more questions, throw them our way!
Current college sophomore here. I started out as a math, CS, and music triple major. I had it all planned out and it fit on paper. By the end of my second semester, I discovered that course conflicts and scheduling were going to make things very difficult. I also discovered that, although there are only 2-3 more courses I’d need to take to complete the major that I wouldn’t already take, it wasn’t really worth it. I can use those 2-3 courses to take electives that would benefit me for my career path and higher education, such as linguistics (I want to go into cryptography), statistics, and computer security. Not being a music major doesn’t prevent me from taking the music courses I want to take or from being involved in ensembles. In fact, I’m probably the most involved student in the department, being in 4 ensembles and taking 3 sets of private lessons.
So now, I’m a double major in math and CS (pursuing a BS) with minors in dance and music (the music minor is a requirement of my scholarship). I’m not sure I’m going to complete the dance minor, but I have room to take one dance class a semester (they’re just distributed differently for a minor instead of being all technique classes); I declared it because it helps me get into the dance classes I want. I can tell you, having more than two majors is extremely difficult and time consuming, involving careful planning.
You’re talking about 4 majors, one being engineering. That will take probably at least 6 years to complete. It’s just not worth it. You’re also not going to be able to go into more depth in any of the majors. You may be able to complete the bare minimums, but won’t have room to take additional electives in each of the fields.
For example, at my university, math majors have to take 3 math electives of their choice, but most students take more to cover as much as possible in the major. Music and CS majors, and I’m assuming all the other majors (I don’t have experience with them), have similar requirements and trends. Because of the fact that many of the upper-level courses are only offered once every two years at my university, there are problems with courses filling (understaffed department), and I am trying to fulfill multiple sets of requirements, I can’t do that. I have room to take 1-2 extra math or CS classes, taking into account the course rotation (when the courses are offered) and the fact that it’s hard to get into more than 2 courses of math or 2 courses of CS a semester. As a result, I may need to do a post-grad year at another university (low-cost in-state) to cover some courses that grad schools want to see that I can’t fit in (differential equations, complex analysis, parallel computing, compilers, etc). I’m on a full-tuition academic scholarship at my current university; I can’t stay longer than four years because it’s expensive and I can’t afford it without the scholarship. I’m also involved with on-campus research and have an internship lined up for this summer, which helps counteract the fact that I’m missing a few courses for grad school, but I’m not counting on that to get me in. It’s going to be my grades (which are very good right now), professor recs, and courses on my transcript that will.
So then what would you recommend for starting a brain machine integration business? I know I need neuroscience and business, but should I just take the two then?
Neuroscience and/or CS would be a good choice for undergrad. Then get an MBA in business later down the road if you wish, which you may find you don’t need.
You could also consider pursuing biomedical engineering with a focus in robotics and getting an MBA.
However, from a practical standpoint (and given what I know about the field) if you want to be truly productive in brain machine interfaces you’re going to need a graduate degree in a related field (BME, neuroscience, and robotics stand out). This is especially true if you plan on being part of the initial product development. I may be wrong though since my experience in this area is second hand.