When Mark Batsiyan '06 decided to major in philosophy, he made sure he had a fallback.
"With a philosophy major, it's nice to have something like finance to back it up," he said.
Batsiyan is one of 15 humanities majors pursuing finance certificates, according to Wilson School professor Swati Bhatt, the undergraduate certificate representative for finance. Though students traditionally earn certificates in fields close to their major, some, like Batsiyan, choose to pursue them in a department far from their primary one.
Certificates "allow students to supplement their disciplinary concentrations with intensive work in another, usually interdisciplinary, field," Dean of the College Nancy Malkiel said in an email.
However, students with diverse interests often find it difficult to study all of them at once.
Finance certificates
Though most students in the finance program are economics or ORFE majors, a growing number are humanities students. Some are former engineers, like Katrina Popielis '06, who planned to major in ORFE until she changed her mind midway through her sophomore year.
"I did not like ORFE and I wasn't very good at it," she said. "I wanted [my major to be] something practical, but I eventually realized that what I really wanted wasn't practical."
Popielis had already fulfilled almost all the requirements for a finance certificate, so she decided to finish the program and switch to a classics major.
Bhatt said the program is actively looking for more humanities and social science students and fewer economics and ORFE majors.
Starting with the Class of 2008, prospective finance program students will need a B+ average in all prerequisites, no grade lower than a B and a continuing B average in electives. These requirements will be strictly enforced for economics and ORFE majors, but "for all other majors we might make exceptions," Bhatt said.
"We want to encourage students to major in what they really find interesting, what they're passionate about. We're saying 'take the finance certificate, that's a great, marketable skill; then go and major in art and archaeology,' " she said.
Science and Humanities
Switching to the sciences from the humanities can also be a dramatic switch. Allison Bishop '06, a math major completing a certificate in the Program in the Study of Women and Gender, thought she would major in English before she took MAT 214 her freshman year.
"I just loved it, and I never left," she said.
But she also loved WOM 201: Introduction to the Study of Women and Gender.
"As a woman in science, it's very interesting to me; the barriers that are there for women are a lot more obvious than in other fields," she said.
For others, the love of art is present before the idea of majoring in a science evolves. Paulo Quiros '06 had a passion for theater before coming to Princeton, but said he liked the absence of a theater major.
Choosing a major proved difficult, and he tried everything from music to economics to physics.
"I would take the first class and hate it. Computer science was the first one I didn't really hate," said Quiros, who is pursuing a computer science degree with a certificate in theater.
Bridging the gap
Malkiel described certificates as "the functional equivalent of minors" in an email, though she added, "We don't usually describe them or think of them that way."
Most students said they consider their certificates to be more difficult than minors would be.
Batsiyan described "the sheer number of courses you have to take" as unusual for a minor program.
"Now that . . . I see what my friends at other schools are doing for minors, I see that our certificate program isn't really a minor; it's almost like another major," Popielis said.
But not everyone agreed. Quiros described the theater certificate requirements as "reasonable," though he added that most people take more theater classes than required.
"People in the theater program are generally very passionate about it," he said.
Despite Malkiel's statement that "just as many" science and engineering students get certificates in humanities, arts and social sciences as the other way around, most students said the former is more difficult.
"I feel there are many humanities kids who feel the desire to bridge the gap, in terms of wanting to do something practical," said Dan-el Padilla Peralta '06, a classics major getting a certificate in the Wilson School.
But for engineering students, "they [the administration] do make it almost prohibitive to get a certificate," he added.
Integration
Part of the difficulty comes from the requirement that certificate studies be included in junior or senior independent work. For students with divergent majors and certificates, integrating the two is often a challenge.
Popielis plans to integrate her finance and classics interests in a JP about the economic functions of temples in ancient Greece, while Batsiyan's spring JP will combine philosophy and finance in an ethical analysis of insider-trading law.
When subjects are so disparate that students have great difficulty combining them, students can submit separate pieces of independent work.
Peralta will write two theses. Trying to combine classics and the Wilson School in one paper "might be too contrived," he said.
Quiros plans to write a theater thesis, and will make a film that works with digital images for his computer science independent work.
"Nobody [in the COS department] has ever done it," he said of his filmmaking ambitions.
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