A question for all Mac alumni/alumnae and upper-year students:

As the thread title says, which do you believe is better? Currently, I'm doing a Combined Honours degree at Mac, and it appears it will take 5 years to complete, as I switched programs after first-year. Since I'll be here for an extra year, I've recently started thinking about the possibility of just staying a little longer and completing two separate degrees. Based on what the Department of Linguistics and Languages and the Department of Anthropology state their Honours Bachelor of Arts course requirements to be, it would take me 5 years to complete both if I took 36 units every year and almost 6 years if I took 30 units every year. I'm planning on entering graduate school in either anthropology or linguistics (or both), and I would like to be as prepared and academically qualified as possible, but is this extra time really worth it? Would a Combined Honours degree completed in 5 years make more sense than two Honours degrees completed in 6 years? Or would they essentially be viewed as one in the same?

(Note: When I say "5/6 years to complete", I am including my first year; so, for a 5 year degree, I really mean 4 years after level one)


My thanks in advance!

I'd just do a combined honours degree.

I've got a combined Honours Degree (CSCT and Anthro) and an English degree with a Minor in Indigenous Studies. I'm starting my first year in grad school in the fall in Canadian Studies: a program that exists in something like 25 other universities at the undergraduate level but doesn't exist at Mac.

All kinds of other students with that degree (especially those with an undergrad from Carleron) would have a better advantage than me, technically, since I don't actually don't know a heck of a lot about Canada. My minor probably gave me the biggest advantage out of all of those programs, followed by CSCT. And that is because of my proposed area of interest: Urban Aboriginals/Indigenous Studies.

But, your degrees themselves don't necessarily help you get in, it's your research statement and your application as a whole that helps you.

As an example, there is a sessional professor at Mac in English/CSCT (Marc Ouellette) whose undergrad degree was in Engineering, and his MA and PhD were in English.