Nontraditional Majors (Humanities and Soc Sciences) here?

This forum made possible through the generous support of SDN members, donors, and sponsors. Thank you.

docgoals90

Full Member
Joined
Jul 29, 2018
Messages
27
Reaction score
6
Whats your nontraditional major and why did you choose it? Did you find it benefitted you in anyway?

---
My first degree is political science. I learned a lot and that education has helped me in my career and life in general, but I also had poor work ethic, so Im committed to a second bachelors to improve GPA and demonstrate growth in that area.

Just enrolled in community college to start my second bachelors journey (will transfer to bachelors program after 2 years). I went into this thinking I absolutely needed to major in something sciencey to improve my chances of admission. Then I came across that bit of research that Im sure you've all seen, that shows bio majors have a lower likelihood of acceptance, when controlled by percentage within their major category, and have lower MCAT scores than humanities majors. This makes sense, given that there's a heavy saturation of bio majors, so choosing that or any science at all seems like it would actually not be a benefit to my admissions in some ways. The one of many vs one of few effect of being a nontraditional major. Doing well in my science courses and getting a lot of clinical volunteer experience seem more important than majoring in science, it turns out. I was surprised by the MCAT scores, until I found out about the CARS section. Still, I would have assumed the science majors would pull significantly higher scores elsewhere to offset that advantage, but I guess not. I think math majors ended up with the highest MCAT scores.

Im strongly leaning towards Communications now, as advertising/marketing is appealing as a backup career and builds on my experience in nonprofit work. Either that or psychology, but more leaning toward Comm. I also read that law schools like this major specifically. Obviously, this is not a humanities major, but theres still a similar advantage.

Members don't see this ad.
 
I majored in international affairs and Russian language and literature. I chose it because I originally wanted to work for the CIA/FBI/DEA/State department or the like.

I need to go back to school to take my pre-req's, so I can't say how it has already benefitted me, but I'm hoping the reading/linguistic analysis will help on the CARS section. I'm also hoping it makes my application a little more unique, if nothing else.
 
Top