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Originally Posted by Matt Krass
Majors, Minors, Bachelors, Masters, wow…so confused.
I’m going in to my senior year in a little over a month and a half and I’m faced with picking which schools to apply to, and what to do once there. I’ve narrowed my choices down to electrical and mechanical engineering. I can’t seem to pick either and I’m a little confused about exactly what a major and a minor is, as well as the various degrees I could earn. Anybody have a nice outline of the college process for me? And any suggestions on picking my major?
Thanks.
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Major - What your degree is in. Your "major" education focus. Usually require 120 total credits, with ~50 in the field.
Minor - Something you have a concentration in. A minor shows that you have had some education in something, but not enough for a full degree. Usually ~20 credits in the minor field.
For example, a
Bio Minor at VCU is 19 bio credits. A
Bio Major requires 120 credits, with more than 40 in biology.
Often times, a minor will share a lot of classes with a different major. For my Nursing major, I will only need 3 additional classes for a minor in Biology. However, I planned it this way and took harder bio classes than I needed for the nursing degree, but they count for both the nursing major AND the bio minor. I took Bio 151-152 (Intro Bio for Bio Majors) instead of Bio 101-102(Intro Bio). Both count toward my major (nursing), but 151-152 count for the Bio minor AND allow me access to higher level bio classes.
If you are not sure what you want to take, take classes in both, hopefully some that count for both. Most majors require x Humanities, x art and so on. Look at the different majors(degrees) you are interested in and try to pick classes that overlap the diffrent majors. This will allow you to look around early on and get a better idea what you want to do and the most flexibility later. If you have played Civilization, taking classes is a lot like the technology tree. If can be confusing when you first sit down to look at it, but a short bit of study will show you what counts where.
A bachelors degree is a 4 year college degree. A masters degree is typically 2-3 years of college after you get your bachelors. Different programs and schools are different. Some schools offer 5 or 6 year combined bachelors/masters programs.
As you can guess, a masters degree is more in depth and shows a "mastery" of a subject then a bachelors degree.
Any idea what you want to do eventually? That would be a good place to start when figuring out what degree to pursue.
Good Luck,
Wetzel