How do college majors and minors really work?

Okay I'm a Junior in high school and I'm having so much conflict about which colleges to apply to and which one would satisfy my interests. I'm super interested in languages. I'm like a major fan. I would love to travel around the world and learn them. I don't even mind sitting in a classroom and hearing a teacher talk. As long as it's a language it's interesting to me. I really would like to learn Hindi in college. It's been a passion and my grandfather knew how to speak it, but he was deceased before he could teach me anything. I also want to learn to speak French and Spanish which I know aren't the hardest languages to learn so there is no problem there. I want to learn these languages, but I don't see a real job in them, so I really don't want to only pursue that. I thought about Forensic since I'm really interested in that too. Is there a way to like major in Forensic Science or something and also learn these 3 languages?



Okay. I heard colleges like Middlebury in Vermont, Rutgers and Princeton in NJ have really good Hindi programs. I myself speak Hindi and I know that it is very hard to find Hindi Lit in America. My suggestion would be to learn French and Spanish as minors or maybe double major with Foresnic Science and either French or spanish while minoring in the other. Hindi is quite a hard language to learn and I would suggest double majoring in that and Forensic Science since it is very uncommon for a college to offer it as a minor since it's not very common in the USA. Maybe you could double major in Forensic Science and Hindi and leave French and Spanish for a later time since you can learn those easily. I'm also guessing you would want to do this because it is very special to you, since your grandfather is deceased/past away. You really need to look for a college that will let you do what you want to do otherwise it's not the right college for you. I think double majoring in Hindi and Forensic Science is a good idea while minoring in French and/or Spanish is you can manage it. I mean the average person would do 1 major and 1 minor, and this is 2 majors and 2 minors which is double. It's quite alot of work and you would really have to be focused to manage all of these classes. You might just want to consider 1 minor and double major. That's what I would do, because there is always the conflict of your classes bumping in to each other timewise and this to create a problem since you want all of them .





My recommendation is double major in Forensic Science and Hindi and minor in French or Spanish.





Good Luck.




Most schools will let you major and minor in whatever you want as long as the requirements are met and they are not too closely related. I believe it is possible to have a major and a double minor, but not a triple minor. Keep in mind that learning two completely foreign languages at the same time could become confusing over time if they do not complement one another.





If you were to become fluent, there are plenty of opportunities out there for you especially Middle Eastern, Southeast Asian, and Asian languages, not so much Spanish and French.




Speaking multiple languages will be good for you in a lot of careers, and it's just a good skill to have.





You don't necessarily have to minor in all of those languages to learn them. You might minor in one and just take a couple years of the others. You won't come out fluent after two years, but you'll be able to communicate, and from there you could increase your language skills through an internship in a country that speaks that language or auditing more classes from a local college or language institute after graduation.





Very few colleges are going to offer a minor in Hindi or other less commonly taught languages. They will likely offer beginning and intermediate language classes (2 years' worth, usually), but (assuming you're in the U.S.) you're unlikely to find the large selection of advanced language, literature and culture classes that you will find in French and Spanish. That said, if it's important to you, there are probably a few colleges out there who do have more offerings and maybe a minor, so look around. Just make sure that they also offer forensic science if that's what you want to do.





Also: if you take 3-4 years of a language in high school, you will likely test out of at least one year, maybe two, of that language in college, which will save you some time on your way to a minor. That said, language minors sometimes require more advanced classes than some other minors for that very reason.





So if I were you, I'd pick Forensic Science with a minor or second major in French or Spanish--whichever you most want to be fluent in--and take a few classes in the other two. And don't worry about the risk of "mixing up" languages while taking them at the same time. You'll get a little of that, but on the whole, the more languages you know, the easier new ones are to learn, especially if they are similar like Spanish and French, so the benefit of crossover is far greater than the downside.