Planning out your Plan of Study

Written by Alex Bolten

When I first came to Purdue, I had no idea what I wanted to study. Naturally, I wanted to try and branch out as much as possible. I figured that the best way to get an idea of my eventual major was to be as diverse as possible. During my Freshman year, I took Psychology, Biology, Spanish, Communication, English, and Classics courses.

Although these courses all fit somewhere in the Liberal Arts Plan of Study, I thought that I was doing the best that I could to see many different areas of study. (because I didn’t CODO until my Sophomore year). Rather than just playing it safe and taking courses that only fit into one of Purdue’s colleges, I tried to focus on potential majors.

Now that I have established myself as a Communication major, I am glad that I took the courses that I did. Most of them fulfilled some sort of requirement for my core, and I can still graduate on time. I also don’t have to take any extra courses, which is nice, and I can graduate with taking a minimum of 15 credits per semester.

However, I don’t think that this is the best option. Sure, it would be nice to take the easy way out and only take Liberal Arts courses and Communication courses. But where’s the challenge? What’s going to make my transcript stand out from others in the eyes of employers?

The answer lies in the diversity of the courses that you can take at Purdue. Rather than taking just Communication courses, I plan to take mathematics, statistics, marketing, management, Agricultural Economics, Entrepreneurship, and more. I’ve found that the more things on my transcript that are not major/core-specific, the better. Sure, these courses aren’t necessarily completely related to my major, but that’s ok.

By taking Statistics and Agricultural Economics, among others, I feel that I can not only make my transcript stand out a bit more, but I can also be challenged to think in different ways. Entrepreneurship is something completely different from COM 114, and the way in which problems are solved differs greatly. This is nice, though, because it has given me a different perspective on the way I can do things outside of the classroom.

If you’re going to make your transcript as diverse as possible, be sure to check in with your academic advisor. You also want to make sure that you’re fulfilling your core and major requirements first! You don’t want to take Statistics when you need to take COM 114 and get behind! That would just be horrible! As long as you’re conscious about what requirements you need to fill out, you should be good to go! The possibilities are practically endless with the additional courses that are available to you.