Wherever you go to school, you'll have plenty of options to choose from when it comes to majors and minors. There are old standbys like English literature, math, and astronomy as well as more obscure and unique options like comics and cartoon studies, video game design, or Egyptian Hieroglyphics. But for some, these options just don't quite cut it. If you're the kind of student who marches to the beat of their own drum and wants to design their own entirely unique course of study, read on. Today, we're talking about colleges that let you design your own major.
How It Works
Let's get one thing straight: designing your own major is hard work. You'll be doing everything from generating your idea, designing a curriculum, and producing original research or scholarship at the program's end. If you thought courses of study and curricula just came out of thin air, this is where you'll learn otherwise. All of that said, the unique challenge and opportunity afforded by the chance to design your own major can be spectacularly rewarding. For the independent-minded student with an adventurous palate, the chance to design their own course of study-no matter the prospective challenge-is simply too tantalizing to ignore.
The process is usually quite similar across the various universities that offer this opportunity, with variations owing to the culture and history of different schools, but this is the gist:
- Start with some kind of introductory course outlining the ways that different courses can interact with one another.
- Draft a proposal for the major and submit it to the relevant faculty for approval, which isn't necessarily guaranteed.
- Design a curriculum of coursework for yourself.
- Follow your self-designed studies to the end.
- Finally, produce some sort of senior thesis or capstone as a final proof of the work undergone.
Sounds simple enough, but the process can be pretty taxing. Just make sure you're ready for that added challenge when you get started.
What Kind of Major Can I Design?
Importantly, these majors are structured around interdisciplinary studies, meaning that you're not creating a major or a field of study out of whole cloth. Instead, you'll be combining various disciplines already offered at the college to create something unique to you while still grounded in the existing fields of study.
But how does this work in practice? Well, let's say you heard about University of Oregon-Eugene's Comics and Cartoon Studies minor, but you go to Columbia where no such program exists. "What are the component parts of such a major?" you would ask yourself. Well…
Film and media studies seems a natural place to start, but it stands to reason that Art History could come in handy, especially 20th century art history. You'll also need to decide the direction you want the program to take you. Do you want to be able to write about comics and cartoons as a journalist? Then add some literature classes and journalism classes. Do you want to produce comics and cartoons as an artist? Bring in the art and design courses. Do you want to work for a company like Disney or Warner Brothers at the corporate level? Shift the focus toward business courses and marketing. The sky is, effectively, the limit.
Now that you know how it works, you can start thinking about what you wanna do. Rock and Roll Studies? Musicology, ethnomusicology, history of 20th century American music, music theory, and music business practices.
Information-technology economics? Data analytics, computer science, microeconomics, tech-related business, and high-level math.
Indigenous American art? Native American studies, Latin American studies, post-colonial theory, art history, archeology, a native American language, art and sculpture courses, etc.
And these are all just basic ideas that can get your ideas flowing. Once you know what you want to study, it's up to you to figure out how to make it happen.
So now that you understand how it works, it's time to answer the big question: where can I design my own major?
The List
The good news is that interdisciplinary and self-guided majors are increasingly common in American universities, so we're just going to give you a few to whet your appetite from four different regions in the United States: the west coast, the midwest, the east coast, and the south. But keep in mind, this list is in no way exhaustive, and if you're interested in designing your own major, you should check if such a program exists wherever you apply. But without further ado:
Reed College, Portland, OR
The beautiful and collegiate-looking Reed College is located in Portland, Oregon and consistently shows its commitment to academic excellence as well as an adventurous spirit. The college offers its students the opportunity to design their own major by combining two or more of their existing disciplines, giving students the chance to travel down almost any scholarly path they desire. Plus, if the usual courses of study aren't your speed but designing your own major feels too daunting, they offer established interdisciplinary programs such as Dance-Theater, Religion-Ancient Mediterranean Studies, and History-Literature. Reed is great both for the daring self-starter and for the cautious adventurer alike.
Indiana University-Bloomington, Bloomington, IN
While a fancy-schmancy idea like designing your own major may seem like a private-school pipe dream to some, Indiana University-Bloomington disagrees. With their Individualized Major Program, the affordable public university caters to those same adventurous and intellectually rigorous students as the Ivies. Like these other schools, IU allows students to create their major by blending existing departments and creating demanding course schedules for themselves, concluding with some kind of final project, which can take the form of a thesis, performance, or internship depending on the major.
Columbia University, New York City, NY
As a prestigious Ivy league school located in New York City, Columbia wants to give their academically intense students the freedom to follow their own initiative with their individualized studies program. By this point you know the drill: combine multiple disciplines, propose the idea, work with faculty to produce a curriculum, and follow it through to completion. Columbia makes the point, too, that the kind of initiative and drive required to produce your own course of study will certainly impress employers both in and outside of the field you chose to study.
Warren Wilson College, Swannanoa, NC
The tiny work-college of Warren Wilson stands out from most colleges in America for its size and unique work ethos. As a result of this singularity, the students who fall in love with Warren Wilson really fall in love with Warren Wilson, and those students, no surprise, tend toward the adventurous. For that reason, it seems surprising that Warren Wilson took so long to introduce their integrative studies program, finally allowing their students the freedom to create their own programs of study and follow that free-wheeling spirit that brought them to Warren Wilson in the first place. For the student for whom Warren Wilson seems like a dream, this program should only confirm that the microscopic farm college is the place for them.
Where College Rover Comes In
Now that you know how it all works and have some schools from the west coast, the south, the midwest, and the northeast, you're probably getting pretty excited to start looking more seriously for the college of your choice, and that's where we can help. If you're planning on designing your own major, all that's left for you is the meat and potatoes of each college: where is it? How big is it? Is it hard to get in? How much will it cost? These questions can be stressful, but College Rover can help you boil it all down just to what matters to you.
