Hey everyone! It’s Fahad again with the peer advising blog! This week, I wanted to talk about my experiences being a Math, Computer Science, and Statistics triple major, and my recommendations for anyone who’s considering doing more than one major! If you’re wondering about my experiences, head to the next paragraph. If you’re wondering about my advice, check out the third paragraph!

I’ll start with my experiences and some of the myths I learned really weren’t true. The first thing I want to talk about, and probably the most important, is the course load and time commitments.  I will warn you, more than one major definitely takes up a significant amount of time; just fitting in the classes itself is a pain. But as a triple major, I was able to plan out a 4 year schedule in which I got to take a couple of classes for fun and stay at 4 courses per semester, and it only required me to take all technical classes two semesters and a couple of summer classes! This might seem like a lot for some people; which is why the option of taking a 5th or 6th semester exists, but at no point should you have to take 20+ grueling units for multiple semester (unless you want to!). It’s about planning correctly. Overall I’ve had a positive experience doing a triple major, and it’s because, as I’ll touch on in the next semester, I was truly interested in everything I’m studying.

So, on for some practical advice. The biggest, most important piece of advice I can give is to actually be interested in what you’re majoring in. You’re not cooler because you’re a double or triple majoring and almost no employers will bat an eye if you aren’t truly enthusiastic about everything you’re studying. Your coursework will come easier as well as either your majors will be similar and you’ll have one specific topic you’re focusing on, or your majors are very different and you’re truly passionate about everything you’re studying, making class less of a necessity and more of a fun task. For reference, when I was thinking about triple majoring, it was because I had already taken some core classes and I went through all of the department courses and listed all the classes I was interested in taking. After looking at this list, the triple major just came naturally. This is something I would definitely recommend, as you get to know whether you have enough classes you’re actually interested in. It makes the experience worth it, and much easier. College is amazing because you are not forced to take any classes, you study what you want! Take advantage of this to the fullest extent; don’t major in something just because it will look good. Do it because you like it. My second piece of advice is to use your advisors! Whether it be your peer advisors, your major advisors, or your L&S advisor, they’re a great resources in helping you plan out your schedule! They know the courses with the most workload and the relative success of previous people who might have been in your shoes before, so they know exactly how you feel and how to help you get to where you wanna be! My

Thanks for reading! Feel free to comment or email me if you want to learn more, or come to my peer advising office hours! For general questions, other peer advisors also hold weekly office hours found here: https://math.berkeley.edu/programs/undergraduate/advising.