Undergrad Minor Forum

[Talarose]

Does this have any impact/effect at all when applying? Is this considered a soft?

[ihenry]

Well, since even a double major at best only has a minor effect...

[sjp200]

a minor, especially in something typically bundled in with a psych/philosophy/poly sci degree, will give you a boost most likely less than one by a hard science degree, which is very, very small to begin with

[brief_little_candle]

i have an engineering degree with a philosophy minor. and i have to admit that advanced-level philosophy classes are freaking hard.

[sjp200]

i have an engineering degree with a philosophy minor. and i have to admit that advanced-level philosophy classes are freaking hard.

The problem is courses in a lot of philosophy departments are not curved or de-curved, making a disproportionate amount of individuals at the high/low ends. Anyone on this forum, probably at the high end of that. The difficulty of the philosophy course is balanced a little more because most times it is writing based with ample time for review before submissions (IE, do the work, put in some effort beyond just writing it, get the grade). Finals often are the deal breaker between A's and B's. Now I wouldn't necessarily say all STEM majors fit a curve because many of the hard science majors are "easier" than others such as a pure math major being harder than bio, but easier than lets say, chemistry or nuclear physics. Speaking from experience with my friend who was a philosophy major at a top-ranked phil. school and my own experience. the majority of my classes in chemical engineering you'd see almost a perfect bell curve in distribution, and then whether that 2nd standard of deviation was a 70 or 90 made it an A, basically the curve is originally set to the numbers, so it could be shifted left or right from the 0-100 point scale, and then the numbers are replaced by the letters so that a 70 in a "hard" class is the same as a 95 in an "easy" one because of your percentile in the class. My friend, on the other hand, received an A in most classes where he made an effort to speak to the professor prior to deadlines on assignments. There was a study done by the Wall Street Journal a year or so ago that shows now, 40-60% of social science/soft science majors in 50% of schools get an "A-" or higher, and less than 5% in most schools ever fail a course outright that actually submitted all required assignments.

Regardless, your minor will not help you, be it philosophy, engineering, basket-weaving, etc. And a bad grade or 2 in your minor can be damaging

[Talarose]

I only ask because I only need two more classes to get my minor, but I would have to take them in the summer. So it's convenient yet inconvenient. If it's going to help at all, I might as well do it, no?

[BigZuck]

It's not going to help at all. By all means do it if you want though.

GPA and LSAT. That's basically all that matters.

[JonTheMandamus]

As intuitively unfair as it feels, your completing the minor won't really have any impact on admissions. They only want gpa and lsat.

[brief_little_candle]

i have an engineering degree with a philosophy minor. and i have to admit that advanced-level philosophy classes are freaking hard.

The problem is courses in a lot of philosophy departments are not curved or de-curved, making a disproportionate amount of individuals at the high/low ends. Anyone on this forum, probably at the high end of that. The difficulty of the philosophy course is balanced a little more because most times it is writing based with ample time for review before submissions (IE, do the work, put in some effort beyond just writing it, get the grade). Finals often are the deal breaker between A's and B's. Now I wouldn't necessarily say all STEM majors fit a curve because many of the hard science majors are "easier" than others such as a pure math major being harder than bio, but easier than lets say, chemistry or nuclear physics. Speaking from experience with my friend who was a philosophy major at a top-ranked phil. school and my own experience. the majority of my classes in chemical engineering you'd see almost a perfect bell curve in distribution, and then whether that 2nd standard of deviation was a 70 or 90 made it an A, basically the curve is originally set to the numbers, so it could be shifted left or right from the 0-100 point scale, and then the numbers are replaced by the letters so that a 70 in a "hard" class is the same as a 95 in an "easy" one because of your percentile in the class. My friend, on the other hand, received an A in most classes where he made an effort to speak to the professor prior to deadlines on assignments. There was a study done by the Wall Street Journal a year or so ago that shows now, 40-60% of social science/soft science majors in 50% of schools get an "A-" or higher, and less than 5% in most schools ever fail a course outright that actually submitted all required assignments.

Regardless, your minor will not help you, be it philosophy, engineering, basket-weaving, etc. And a bad grade or 2 in your minor can be damaging

i think pure math classes are easier than bio lolol. at least in math class you don't have to memorize a lot. as long as the materials make sense to you, you can easily pass the exams

in my opinion, philosophy classes are hard because they deal with tons of abstract concepts and half of them are proposed just for the sake of argument. but, you are probably right in saying that it is graded more leniently. I took a grad-level class and didn't know what's going on for half of the class time, but still i got a B+. ehh, btw, do you think B+ is a bad grade?

[ihenry]

Pure math is the kingdaddy of all majors to me. Not much rote memorization indeed, but exam questions can go crazy hard, including some super lengthy proof. But some math majors seem to struggle with our major courses too, which I sometimes find hard to understand.

In my experience and from what I've seen it's hard to pull top grades (A and A+) in humanities and social sciences, but as long as you turn in homework and show up in the exam you generally won't get very low grades either. For math and engineering, on the other hand, there are people I know who studied and failed.

[brief_little_candle]

a lot of advanced-level engineering classes are just like math class: they ask you to prove sets of pde, simplify them, and solve them.

some of my engineering professors are really mean, which i never encounter in other majors. they pass you some sample exams before the real one, explicitly tell you they will be similar, and let you drill on them. they even kindly held study session and talk about things that might appear in the exams. then, the real exam will be something you've never seen in your life. their excuse is that the the real exam shouldn't test students with things they already knew about.

so, in this snese, curve is necessary in engineering classes

[3pianists]

ehh, btw, do you think B+ is a bad grade?

I got a B+ once. I'm still not over it.


In college, from my diet of math, physics, foreign language, social sciences, humanities, and music, I think physics classes have made me work the hardest for my A's, seconded by math.

[PoopyPants]

a lot of advanced-level engineering classes are just like math class: they ask you to prove sets of pde, simplify them, and solve them.

some of my engineering professors are really mean, which i never encounter in other majors. they pass you some sample exams before the real one, explicitly tell you they will be similar, and let you drill on them. they even kindly held study session and talk about things that might appear in the exams. then, the real exam will be something you've never seen in your life. their excuse is that the the real exam shouldn't test students with things they already knew about.

so, in this snese, curve is necessary in engineering classes

Maybe you're just naturally good at pure math. Or you've not taken an actual upper-level pure math course. I'm a math major (2 classes away from completing my major!) and none of my upper level courses have been that simplistic. And, almost every one of them has also required a research project or two.

I don't consider a B+ a bad grade, but I'm disappointed in an A- in my major courses, so I guess it's relative.

[ihenry]

a lot of advanced-level engineering classes are just like math class: they ask you to prove sets of pde, simplify them, and solve them.

some of my engineering professors are really mean, which i never encounter in other majors. they pass you some sample exams before the real one, explicitly tell you they will be similar, and let you drill on them. they even kindly held study session and talk about things that might appear in the exams. then, the real exam will be something you've never seen in your life. their excuse is that the the real exam shouldn't test students with things they already knew about.

so, in this snese, curve is necessary in engineering classes

One of my sophomore courses was taught by a visiting professor. He explicitly stated in syllabus that his midterms and finals would be "similar to" homework questions (and he indeed did that in previous years). During midterm, with the max mark of 70 points none of people I know scored below 65 (well, Asian kids). Then the final.. was completely out of this world. Rumors had it that the faculty urged him to make harder papers... anyway we were all caught off guard. I got a B and there were B-'s and C+'s among those "people I know".

[mornincounselor]

Post removed.

[brief_little_candle]

a lot of advanced-level engineering classes are just like math class: they ask you to prove sets of pde, simplify them, and solve them.

some of my engineering professors are really mean, which i never encounter in other majors. they pass you some sample exams before the real one, explicitly tell you they will be similar, and let you drill on them. they even kindly held study session and talk about things that might appear in the exams. then, the real exam will be something you've never seen in your life. their excuse is that the the real exam shouldn't test students with things they already knew about.

so, in this snese, curve is necessary in engineering classes

One of my sophomore courses was taught by a visiting professor. He explicitly stated in syllabus that his midterms and finals would be "similar to" homework questions (and he indeed did that in previous years). During midterm, with the max mark of 70 points none of people I know scored below 65 (well, Asian kids). Then the final.. was completely out of this world. Rumors had it that the faculty urged him to make harder papers... anyway we were all caught off guard. I got a B and there were B-'s and C+'s among those "people I know".

man, this is so wrong, particularly in your case. i mean verbally conveying an idea is one thing, but explicitely stating in syllabus is a totally different story. However, there may be some ambiguity in the word, similar. maybe its similar in format but different in content. but still, he tricked you

[brief_little_candle]

a lot of advanced-level engineering classes are just like math class: they ask you to prove sets of pde, simplify them, and solve them.

some of my engineering professors are really mean, which i never encounter in other majors. they pass you some sample exams before the real one, explicitly tell you they will be similar, and let you drill on them. they even kindly held study session and talk about things that might appear in the exams. then, the real exam will be something you've never seen in your life. their excuse is that the the real exam shouldn't test students with things they already knew about.

so, in this snese, curve is necessary in engineering classes

Maybe you're just naturally good at pure math. Or you've not taken an actual upper-level pure math course. I'm a math major (2 classes away from completing my major!) and none of my upper level courses have been that simplistic. And, almost every one of them has also required a research project or two.

I don't consider a B+ a bad grade, but I'm disappointed in an A- in my major courses, so I guess it's relative.

you are right that i probably haven't taken an "actual upper-level pure math course". the math courses i took were for engineering applications, like vector calculus, fourier transformation?, and some pde class. so, they probably have high call number but cannot be counted as pure math course.

i guess they are sophomore/junior level math classes, because i remember there was a fat seem-to-know-all junior math student in one of my classes. he always raised his fat finger and started the sentence with "actually" to cut off the lecture.

[PoopyPants]

a lot of advanced-level engineering classes are just like math class: they ask you to prove sets of pde, simplify them, and solve them.

some of my engineering professors are really mean, which i never encounter in other majors. they pass you some sample exams before the real one, explicitly tell you they will be similar, and let you drill on them. they even kindly held study session and talk about things that might appear in the exams. then, the real exam will be something you've never seen in your life. their excuse is that the the real exam shouldn't test students with things they already knew about.

so, in this snese, curve is necessary in engineering classes

Maybe you're just naturally good at pure math. Or you've not taken an actual upper-level pure math course. I'm a math major (2 classes away from completing my major!) and none of my upper level courses have been that simplistic. And, almost every one of them has also required a research project or two.

I don't consider a B+ a bad grade, but I'm disappointed in an A- in my major courses, so I guess it's relative.

you are right that i probably haven't taken an "actual upper-level pure math course". the math courses i took were for engineering applications, like vector calculus, fourier transformation?, and some pde class. so, they probably have high call number but cannot be counted as pure math course.

i guess they are sophomore/junior level math classes, because i remember there was a fat seem-to-know-all junior math student in one of my classes. he always raised his fat finger and started the sentence with "actually" to cut off the lecture.

Sounds like a douche nozzle. But yeah, upper level applied math courses aren't that difficult if you have requisite foundation. My 400 level pure math courses are a little more challenging lol. It's not that they are impossible (I mean I have As while on deployment and raising a one year old, so let's not overstate things), just a bit more rigorous.

[PeanutsNJam]

Not even your major or your UG institution matter lol (excepting extreme cases where you triple major in BME, Physics, and Finance at Cal Tech and finish in 3 years). So no, 100% for sure minor is irrelevant. Completely.

[haus]

Does this have any impact/effect at all when applying? Is this considered a soft?

I am fairly sure that an undergrad minor has never had an impact on anything anywhere.

[sjp200]

Not even your major or your UG institution matter lol (excepting extreme cases where you triple major in BME, Physics, and Finance at Cal Tech and finish in 3 years). So no, 100% for sure minor is irrelevant. Completely.

BME is one of the easier engineering majors. Prob the next easiest after civil (which is literally the same class for 4 yeas). This of course doesn't take into account "industrial" and "packaging" engineers because I don't really consider them an actual engineering degree. Material Science Engineering, as weird as it sounds, is hard AF and i felt bad for those guys

[brief_little_candle]

a lot of advanced-level engineering classes are just like math class: they ask you to prove sets of pde, simplify them, and solve them.

some of my engineering professors are really mean, which i never encounter in other majors. they pass you some sample exams before the real one, explicitly tell you they will be similar, and let you drill on them. they even kindly held study session and talk about things that might appear in the exams. then, the real exam will be something you've never seen in your life. their excuse is that the the real exam shouldn't test students with things they already knew about.

so, in this snese, curve is necessary in engineering classes

Maybe you're just naturally good at pure math. Or you've not taken an actual upper-level pure math course. I'm a math major (2 classes away from completing my major!) and none of my upper level courses have been that simplistic. And, almost every one of them has also required a research project or two.

I don't consider a B+ a bad grade, but I'm disappointed in an A- in my major courses, so I guess it's relative.

you are right that i probably haven't taken an "actual upper-level pure math course". the math courses i took were for engineering applications, like vector calculus, fourier transformation?, and some pde class. so, they probably have high call number but cannot be counted as pure math course.

i guess they are sophomore/junior level math classes, because i remember there was a fat seem-to-know-all junior math student in one of my classes. he always raised his fat finger and started the sentence with "actually" to cut off the lecture.

Sounds like a douche nozzle. But yeah, upper level applied math courses aren't that difficult if you have requisite foundation. My 400 level pure math courses are a little more challenging lol. It's not that they are impossible (I mean I have As while on deployment and raising a one year old, so let's not overstate things), just a bit more rigorous.

u r right. i haven't touched the real hard stuff. maybe that fat math student did have reasons to look down on us. lolol

[salander]

I find this entire discussion a bit ridiculous. Doesn't the difficulty of a major depend completely on whatever school you attend? (And even then, things can be quite subjective.)

[ihenry]

I find this entire discussion a bit ridiculous. Doesn't the difficulty of a major depend completely on whatever school you attend? (And even then, things can be quite subjective.)

For instance:

BME is one of the easier engineering majors. Prob the next easiest after civil (which is literally the same class for 4 yeas). This of course doesn't take into account "industrial" and "packaging" engineers because I don't really consider them an actual engineering degree. Material Science Engineering, as weird as it sounds, is hard AF and i felt bad for those guys

Opposite for my school in terms of the reputations of BME and materials science and engineering.

Well true. At the time when I entered college Industrial Systems Engineering was the most prestigious major and one of the hardest to get into in my school. On this basis I suggested a friend in another university to choose it over CS... which later became one of his biggest regrets

[salander]

Well true. At the time when I entered college Industrial Systems Engineering was the most prestigious major and one of the hardest to get into in my school. On this basis I suggested a friend in another university to choose it over CS... which later became one of his biggest regrets

Haha, admittedly, I don't believe that there is a more employable STEM major than CS right now (at least in the US).