My name is Victoria Farhat, and I study Business Administration and Economics at Colorado State University. I am also an international student from Brazil, and I will explain some of the steps that made me decide to be a dual major. Yes, it is possible to be a dual major at Colorado State University without overwhelming yourself.
Once you arrive at CSU, you will receive your four-year plan. That is a plan – that you can (and will) change during your college life – and contains all classes required for you to graduate within that major.
When I received my Business Administration four-year plan, I decided to print it out and study all the possibilities there (also because there are elective classes you need to choose). And while reading through it, I saw many Economics classes on that plan, which confused me: how can a Business Administration graduation plan contain so many classes from another major? And that was when I decided to investigate adding Economics as a second (dual) major.
All four-year plans can be found at in the CSU General catalog, which allows you to read about any existing college, major, minor, or certificate at Colorado State. And when I started reading the Economics four-year plan, I confirmed my biggest question at that time: yes, there were the same economic classes in both four-year plans that I was looking at. So, I decided to meet with my advisor and ask her about it because, in my head, it makes sense to take one class and have it count for more than one purpose – in this case, towards two different majors.
And that was true. If I decided to be a dual major, every Economic class present in my Business Administration four-year plan would also count towards my Economics major. And that was when I decided to be a dual major.
Every major has its graduation plan, and there will be classes that work towards other majors, but there will also be specific classes that will count only for one major. After deciding that I wanted to be a dual major, I printed the Economics four-year plan and, with both on hand, counted how many “specific” classes I would have to take for each major. By doing so, I would see if the number was reasonable, meaning could be added to my four-year plan without overwhelming myself or not. And the answer was yes.
This was just one of the multiple majors that could work together at CSU — which is one of the many benefits of studying here as an international students. Before you apply, we encourage you to take a look at the different majors available and find which ones you may wish to combine. To get an idea of which major (or majors) might be right to you, you can also take the My Majors Quiz.
Once you arrive to campus, you’ll be able to connect with your advisor and see if it is worth it to add a second major to your studies to enhance your education.