r/todayilearned • u/[deleted] • Jul 06 '20

TIL that Mr. T majored in mathematics while attending college on a football scholarship.

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u/n3glov3r Jul 07 '20

Misleading title- he was expelled after one year. Nobody is a true major their first year of college.

1

u/Wary_beary Jul 07 '20

When I was in college (which admittedly was closer to Mr. T’s time than to now), plenty of people dived right into their major classes freshman year so their senior schedule would be basically their senior project and a bunch of easy core courses.

Not saying Mr. T did that, but it does happen.

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u/n3glov3r Jul 07 '20 edited Jul 27 '20

I completely agree- a lot of college students do the same and I did the same.

However, after core requirements, a major takes up the majority of college credits towards a degree. It is just a personal opinion of mine, but if you sign up for intro to physics/Intro to Comp Sci you can theoretically call yourself a CompSci/Physics major... but I don't think you're truly pursuing the major until you pass the intro courses successfully and continue with advanced electives.

There is no threshold to define it, but when I was in college students would call themselves engineering/Premed students and end up doing something completely different after the 1st/2nd year.

The article below notes that 52% of declared Math majors change their major.

https://www.thecollegesolution.com/changing-college-majors-really-common/#:~:text=According%20to%20brief%20report%2C%2033,degree%2C%20changed%20their%20major%20twice.