I've been seeking help from a variety of sources and decided to just say "fuck it" and ask Reddit. What should I major in?
I attend a "liberal arts" university designed deliberately to force students to have a very broad education. I have to date completed 25/40 courses for my undergrad. The courses in question are:
5 Psychology
3 Neuroscience
3 Biology
6 Philosophy/Logic (which means I have already completed a minor in Philosophy)
2 New Media
1 independent study in Sociology
1 English literature
2 Spanish Literature
2 transfer courses, one in economics and one in writing.
I have 15 courses left in my degree.
If I major in Psychology, I will have 5 more courses to do in either psychology or neuroscience, and 10 courses to screw around learning Japanese or Web Design or Narratology or something. I have gotten mostly A-minuses on Psychology courses, with a couple of missteps, so my GPA is more or less guaranteed to be around 3.2 if I do this.
If I major in Neuroscience, I will have to do 10 more courses in my major, 5 outside, including chemistry and biochemistry, which I find interesting but believe will lower my GPA. Odds are I will be struggling to keep it at 3 at all.
If I major in General Sciences (streams: Neuro, Bio, Psych) I still need 10 courses, but one of them would be a biomedical ethics or philosophy of science course, and I can probably pick more courses that interest me because fewer specific courses are required (it's just "X many courses in Y subject" for General Sciences). The GPA would probably be the same as Neuroscience.
If I major in Philosophy, I will have 7 courses in Philosophy to do, one of them being 3rd year logic, and 8 remaining whatever-I-want courses. This would guarantee the highest GPA, as my current average for Philosophy courses is 3.33, and that's with one C+ bringing it down.
If I double-major in Philosophy and Psychology, I will have 12/15 courses be either Psychology, Philosophy or Neuroscience from here until graduation time, with 3 options, one of which I'm taking over the summer (I'm doing an independent study in Computational Narratology over the summer).
Choosing Philosophy or Psychology may also allow me to have a minor in New Media/Cinematic Studies, or in Spanish (6 courses are required to have a minor, since I have 2 of each I would only need 4 more). Also, for the General Liberal Education Requirements, I need one social science course, which means all of my "outside the major whatever-I-want" numbers of courses need to have two subtracted from them (one for the social science course, and one for the independent study over the summer). For Psych, that makes it 8, for Phil, 6, for General Sciences and Neuroscience, 3, for the double-major in Psych and Phil, 1.
I am hoping to become a science journalist after graduating, and would like to get into what looks like a very nice program with relatively mild requirements (their minimum GPA seems to be 2.7) at UWO (http://ift.tt/2plMquH ). Given that they do not require any specific major of you, I am essentially free to pick any of these. I have heard the horrors of graduating with a Philosophy degree and asking for fries with that, and I also know for a lot of things having only an undergrad is useless and general degrees come off as dilettante-ish. There is no Journalism degree offered in my university.
So... the question stands. What should I major in?
Submitted May 01, 2017 at 06:13AM by Eager_Question
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