What is the difference between one who graudates with a double degree vs. one who graduates with a double major? Isn’t your major = your degree, in the end?
Unless there’s some technical distinction of which I’m not aware, the difference is that a “major” indicates your discipline while in school, “degree” indicates completion of graduation requirements.
While I was in school, I majored in philosophy and computer science; at graduation, I received both a B.A. and a B.S., so I have two degrees.
I know people (in the US) who graduated with a double major and those who have graduated with a double degree. But, the difference has never been explained to my satisfaction. Maybe, if both are BS degrees (and, aren’t they all? 
) maybe you can only double major? My only other WAG is that a double major = 1 degree + one special interest with more credit hours than a minor, but less credit hours than a second, full degree?
I think that must be right. I have a B.S. in physics with a second major in philosophy. I completed that in four years, and was told that to get a B.S. and a B.A. would have required more credit hours than I could have squeezed in … So now, I’m one of the only people I know of who has a B.S. in philosophy! [Insert joke of your choice here.]
I graduated with a double major in political science and history (they called it “social sciences,” which confuses people who think it’s a degree in “social science,” something completely different). In our case, you took courses in both disciplines that applied to a major. So, for instance, if you were required to take 12 PS course for a PS degree, and 12 history courses for a history degree,* you could get the social sciences degree with something like 14 courses in spread in both majors, including required courses. You’d get a single degree out of it.
The college also had a couple of 5-year, two-major programs, where you’d end up with a double degree.
*My college was on a trimester system: three 10-week terms of three courses each. I never really got used to credit hours – you were credited by the number of courses you took.
I have two bachelors degrees because I was not allowed to have a double major. The difference is in the core requirements for a degree. I had to complete the entire… uh… complement of classes in both the Liberal Arts college and the College of Communication. So, for example, the Liberal Arts college required 9 credits of science and the College of Communication only required 6. I believe the Liberal Arts college required more electives, as well.
As opposed to a double major, where I presume I’d only have to complete the core requirements for one college and more credits in the major area of study.
As a side note, at my U. I was not allowed by the College of Communication to have a minor, either.
I have a double degree–a B.A. and a B.S. Not surprisingly, one of my degrees is in literature and the other is in science; this is why they couldn’t possibly be “just” a double major–had I had two majors in science (which all result in B.S., here), or two majors in the school of liberal arts here (which includes such science-like things as psychology and linguistics), then I would have gotten only one degree with a double major.
To get the double degree, I had to satisfy the “core” for each of the two schools. The core is general education requirements–the School of Science requires some composition and foreign language, some math, and some science courses, both lecture and laboratory. The School of Liberal Arts requires composition, speech, foreign language, a miniscule amount of math and science, plus a smattering of courses from different areas in the school to make sure that one is what they call well-rounded.
Now. Suppose you want a degree in chemistry. You have to take the SoS’s core for the B.S. degree, as described above. Then on top of it, you have to take all of the courses required for the chemistry major. This set of courses is what is called “the major” itself. Once you have the core finished, you can take the courses to satisfy as many majors as you want, and end up with that many majors on your B.S. degree.
The B.A. works the same way. You satisfy the SoLA’s core, then you take all of the courses for the major you want.
There is one more complication: in order to actually take a Bachelor’s degree, you need to have a certain number of credit hours. Just taking one core plus one major never adds up to this amount–you have to find more classes to take. As a result, an awful lot of people end up taking more majors. In the SoS, the practical maximum is two majors; in the SoLA, it is easy to have three, if you plan well. Or, you can take a minor, which requires fewer credit hours.
You are allowed to double-dip courses. For example, the SoS has a minimum requirement for science courses and for lab science courses, right? And your major requires some science and some lab science courses, right? One course can count for both requirements.
Now. If you are in two schools, as I was, even more double-dipping is possible. Both cores require math, science, composition, and foreign language–which I only had to do once. After that there was not much overlap (the SoS’s requirements for SoLA courses being so small, and the SoLA’s requirements for SoS courses being so small).
So basically, the pieces of my two degrees look like this:
SoS Core
SoLA Core
Science Major
Literature Major
Psychology Minor
The credit hours that make the degree double-dip also. As a result, even with two cores, two majors, and a minor, I was only about forty credits over the minimum graduation requirement (of about 124), and did the whole shebang in five years.
One other quirk of my own school is that the Majors often have sub-specializations. For example, there are eight varieties of the Biology major, all with different and rather strict requirements about which courses specifically one needs to take.
Ooh ooh. Vanity addendum. I’m calling my majors “Science” and “Literature” without further specification for the sake of anonymity. It is possible to major in just “Science,” but I didn’t. I did something specialized (wiggles eyebrows mysteriously).
I’ve heard the “double degree” thing more commonly called “Dual Degree” but admittedly that tends to imply a formal program. It seems that some of the examples here are, instead, someone fulfilling the requirements for two separate degrees by their own design/effort.
Or sometimes, you go to a university where there’s a degree called “General Studies,” and you have so much AP/CLEP credit that you will end up with one of them in addition to your chemistry degree, if you ask the nice people in the registrar’s office to add it.
At my school the double major/dual degree was determined by course overlap and college. So Soc/crim was always double major because the courses overlapped and they were in the same college. English and Journalism were in different colleges, but had a lot of overlap, but colleges trump overlap, so two degrees were awarded.
Personal Anecdote: I graduated with two degrees. And I was extremely proud to have achieved after nearly flunking out of college. My school actually awards you your degree at the ceremony, so if you have two degrees you get your two degrees with name, major, etc on it. Sitting in the gym, waiting for my moment, I had a lot of time to think. And it being a state school I had an extraordinary amount of time to think. I decided that I for the picture that they take as you walk off the podium I would pull my two degrees apart and hold them up. I wanted my triumph and joy to show. This baby was going on my mantle right by the degrees. I was going to showboat. After all, I’d earned it, right?
So I finally get to the waiting in line to go to the stage portion. After an eternity some guy in a suit hands me my BS and BA and shakes my hand. My hands were shaking so much he congratualted me on persevering through my affliction. This was it. I was waiting for this picture. My mom was waiting for this picture. I’d be the first of my family to finish college, and I would do it with style. It was going to be awesome. I line up for the ceremonial stage walk off and picture. And then it happened. The perky blonde bitch in front of me dropped a rubber band and fanned out three (3!) degrees for her picture.
Which is why my picture has me looking shellshocked, jaw dropped and confounded. The degrees still bound by a rubber band, resting on my hip. The bare mantle mocks me every time I visit my mother.
At my graduation, they took the pictures before the actual ceremony, and handed you an empty degree cover to hold–so no two degrees in the picture. I did manage to get a tassel from each of the schools I was graduating from. The picture was taken so fast that the tassels were swinging. So in short, it’s a really stupid picture.
Depends on the college. At the University of Maryland, where I went, to get a double degree, you had to complete the requirements for both majors plus have a total of at least 150 credit hours (120 was required to graduate with a single degree). To get three degrees (which I did), you needed 180 credit hours. I imagine other universities do things differently.
I had a triple major at the University of Texas, but only one degree. It’s because I was in the College of Liberal Arts.
The reason is thus:
At UT, (and I think even at the school I’m working at now), the degrees said:
Bachelor of Science in Physics
Bachelor of Science in Chemistry
Bachelor of Business Administration in Accounting
Bachelor of Engineering in Electrical Engineering
… etc …
but:
Bachelor of Arts
Since there was no “in [something]” for the BA degree, you would only earn one, no matter how many majors you completed requirements for. You could earn multiple BS, BBA, BE, and perhaps BFA and whatever other degrees were offered. The difference was because of the way the degrees were named and the catalog was written.
I should clarify- University of Maryland did allow you to get more than one degree of the same type. I have three BS degrees.
At the University of Maryland, College Park it works like this.
Getting a bachelor’s degree requires 120 credits satisfying both the major requirements of some program and the general education requirements.
If you amass 120 credits satisfying general requirements and major requirements for two different programs, you’re a double-major and get one degree with both majors on it. In practice, this is only possible in related fields like math and physics. In theory, if you could cram the requirements for English and computer science into 120 credits you can get a double-major in those.
If you amass 150 credits (usually 5 years worth) satisfying the major requirements for two different programs and the generals, you get a separate bachelor’s degree for each.
On paper you can extend this process. 180 credits to finish three programs gets you three degrees. Or you could posisbly do 150 credits and get two degrees, doubling up on one.
So what it comes down to is this: are you getting one diploma or two at the end of your time? A math/physics double major, for instance, looks nice enough but possibly lends the impression that you were a dilettante and didn’t really do much of either. A math/physics double degree means you’re every bit as good as the next math major and the next physics major.
Or you could opt out of playing such trivial posturing games and just get a Ph.D., which trumps everything 
Another Terp Doper! 
You can extend it to get four degrees as well. Mr. Neville did that. It is yet more proof that he is smarter than me.
I got three pieces of paper. My mom has them now, because I don’t have room to put them up on the wall (and would feel a little silly doing so). I might get at least one of them from her and put it up on my wall, though, someday, just so that when I wake up from those nightmares where I’m back in college/high school/middle school and am not sure if the dream or the reality I have known until now is real, I’d have the degree to reassure me that I have in fact graduated from college and won’t have to go through any of that again.
Well, former. I suppose I’m an Eli Doper now…
I figured that the pattern would be evident.
Wait… four degrees? His name wouldn’t happen to be “Amir”, would it? Math/Sci/Phys/Astro?
I have no pieces of paper from College Park. See the closer of my first post
It is. The fact that someone has done it, though, isn’t.
Nope, Amir was later than Mr. Neville. I knew Amir, though, and he took his inspiration from me (I had four majors for a while, but only graduated with degrees in three of them, because I am a lazy bum). Small world, isn’t it?
It also works with minors. My major was Anthropology, but because I packed in two minors (Sociology and European History) I was able to graduate with a BA in Social Science. If I had wanted to stay another semester I could have also gotten a BA in Business or Criminal Justice.