Why Triple Major?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Someone on the Northwestern thread said it was easy to triple major there.

My question is why? Do employers now want/w pect this? Or are students driving this for done reason.

To me, triple majoring seems so limiting to me. Doesn’t all that focused effort remove the opportunity to try/explore new areas or to learn just for the sake of learning?

FWIW, loved my major in college. And it served me well after I graduated. But I can say the same about most of the electives I took - across many different areas. They helped expose me to the wide world of ideas, and engaged my mind and curiosity, too. I still refer to many of those classes now, 25 years later, though I ne er officially used them “professionally.”

I could have done this, and my college recognized triple majors. I took six classes a semester most semesters and didn’t need that many classes per major.

I took all of the classes I took for fun, and I thought about being a triple major because it sounded silly and fun. The idea that it would be something to brag about seems odd.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ones with curious minds, would have many unrelated courses in addition to their major, may be a minor but they don't tend to care to collect majors. Ones collecting majors and minors tend to be lost or insecure resume builders. Most likely they have a tiger mom or a helicopter dad driving their decision wagon.

This is patently false. The handful of triple majors are truly gifted. They have a passion for learning, understanding, and creating while having the time management skills to complete a tremendous amount of deep coursework.

Some schools only require, maybe, eight courses per major. It doesn’t take Steven Hawking to take three major-related classes per semester and choose the other classes based on what sounds good.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ones with curious minds, would have many unrelated courses in addition to their major, may be a minor but they don't tend to care to collect majors. Ones collecting majors and minors tend to be lost or insecure resume builders. Most likely they have a tiger mom or a helicopter dad driving their decision wagon.

This is patently false. The handful of triple majors are truly gifted. They have a passion for learning, understanding, and creating while having the time management skills to complete a tremendous amount of deep coursework.

I suspect they are the same kids that valued themselves (and expected everyone else to value them) based on the number of APs they could rack up. It’s about outward appearance and external validation.

Childish reasoning exhibited in the post above. How would you know why an individual earned more than one major ?

[Anonymous]

I did Spanish, Econ, and IR. IR is interdisciplinary so, I had to take quite a bit of foreign language and econ for that major. I never planned to triple major, it just sort of worked out.

I would guess that people who triple major are able to use a lot of overlapping credits along with having flexibility with senior capstone/thesis projects. At my Uni, Spanish did not have a senior thesis, and IR did not require a senior thesis IF you were double majoring in a related field (like Econ or History) that also required a senior thesis.

[Anonymous]

The beautiful thing about triple majoring is that you can explore subjects that are entirely different from each other. Maybe you’d like to study computer science, but you also have a passion for creative writing and psychology. By triple majoring, you don’t have to sacrifice any of these interests. If you have a love of learning that spans various fields of study, then a triple major may be right for you.
Scholarships360