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Comment by chromatin | Hacker News Reader

I think this is probably a proxy for some linear combination of IQ and industriousness.

Or planning for grad-school; I know a few Double Major attorneys that did their undergrad in whatever-they-felt-like since law school was their real destination.

Reminds me of a guy I know who was not particularly the brightest. He wanted to be a lawyer and received a degree in Mass Communications, because he was told it was an easy major, then followed that up with a very low LSAT score. He's spent the better part of the last 3 decades verifying the contents of container vessels in a railyard.

Agreed, and on top of industriousness is mental flexibility. Being more open to strike out and learn something new to improve their job opportunities (as a double major is just that, learning more than just one subject).

Or family wealth and ambition.

> Xuechao Qian, a postdoctoral scholar at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and one of the paper’s co-authors, cautions that the paper is not a straight cost-benefit analysis that accounts for the additional time and cost of pursuing a double major.

Right, but how much does IQ confound with family wealth? These things can be difficult to study because of confounders.

You cannot exclude wealth, both family and neighborhood, as a proxy.

I did not come from a rich family but we were in the district for the public school which included a lot of professional class parents.

The school offered a lot of AP courses. If you do well on the AP test then some colleges would accept that as college credit. This would make it easier to get a double major.

However, not everyone could afford the AP tests, and schools from poorer neighborhoods, or from smaller districts, didn't offer as many AP courses.

How so? All you need is money, and maybe a bit more time.

At least in the American college setting, most people who double major pursue a much higher number of simultaneous courses (also described as 'how many credits you are taking this semester').

This means less time for fun and socializing and more time in class and studying.

Industriousness is displayed by the willingness to work harder than is expected of someone with a single major which is the dominant way to do undergrad. IQ would be involved in the ability to study for and take more exams in finals week(s).

Yep!

The paper also mentions a wider funnel of opportunities. I can see that in myself and my adult child. There is a kind of “generalist penalty” in terms of landing certain kinds of specialist positions, but there is a class of troubleshooter jobs and system integration jobs that a generalist is simply much more effective at doing because of the broader perspective.

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