Declare your major for the right reasons

The deadline for sophomores to declare their majors looms as March 6 draws nearer, raising questions like “Is this major enough?” or “Should I declare something else?” The programs you declare lay the foundations for your academic journey at Duke, and, so, today we reflect on how students choose their majors, minors and certificates and explore what is important in ensuring the combinations therein are intellectually beneficial to students.

Duke allows students to declare a combination of up to three programs. Ever the overachievers, students tend to consider a rigid schedule of courses before considering a program's actual value because of the allure of a rigorous combination. As always, credentialism drives students to add programs to take “full” advantage of Duke’s allowance. Exacerbating this ambition is the fear that not adding programs might render one’s resume less competitive for internships, jobs or graduate schools though adding them may actually do more harm than good. Such pressures are not a healthy foundation for a vibrant academic culture.

The drawbacks of cramming credentials are manifold: On one hand, taking on a requirement-heavy combination can problematize academic exploration through electives. Be it simply the reduction of free slots available for classes pursued out of pure interest rather than fulfilling a major or graduation requirement across eight semesters—a biology major taking an astronomy course, for example—intense program combinations reduce curriculum diversity by cordoning off 20 courses or even 30 for some combinations. Fewer free electives effectively means fewer exposures to other subjects, a deficiency that even the newly revamped MCAT tells us is not rewarded.

Moreover, some students accept this challenge and resign themselves to several overloaded semesters of five or six courses. While this is good for requirement check boxes, repeated overloading can leave GPAs, friends, extracurriculars and happiness levels hurting after multiple semesters. Furthermore, overloading causes students to spread themselves too thin, providing a surface breadth of understanding but hardly the depth and rigorous comprehension merited. Grasping too many programs risks loosening your grip on each. Do not be afraid to tone down a second major or third program. If a student’s academic plate is full for the wrong reasons, doing less could very well be doing more.

Still, taking on additional programs beyond a single major can be commendable if done for the right reasons. Many students stand to increase their breadth of knowledge across fields with “passion minors,” diversify skillsets by drawing from multiple fields, complement their primary subject with another like history or political science or innovate by creatively blending disciplines—medicine and sociology, for example. These motivations produce better intellectuals and more driven life-long learners, making the work of additional programs an enriching experience instead of a source of stress, particularly the customized work of interdepartmental and Program II majors.

Any professor or professional will tell you that your particular program combination will not dictate your long-term career or life prospects, so pick the combination of majors, minors and certificates that fits you. And for first-years, we recommend asking an upperclassman if they wished they had taken more interesting and exciting courses using their free electives; you might save yourself some common regrets of unnecessarily overcommitting. Duke should be about learning well, with passion and interest fueling our academic decisions. Ultimately, if you decide to add a major or minors and certificates, feel free to do so, but with the right reasons in mind.