With so many opportunities inside and outside the classroom, it’s common for Princeton students to wish they could do more with their time here. Minors and certificate programs enable students to supplement their work in their departmental concentrations with focused study in another, often interdisciplinary, field.
How Do Minors and Certificate Programs Fit Into the Curriculum?
Most minors and certificate programs include required courses and a senior thesis or another substantial piece of independent work. Because of the rigorous requirements, students should identify their interest in a minor or a certificate program early in their academic careers.
For some students, minor or certificate programs provide an opportunity to pursue a special area of interest that closely complements their departmental concentration. For example, a student majoring in history pursues a minor in African American studies or a student majoring in psychology pursues a minor in neuroscience. For other students, minor or certificate programs provide an opportunity to pursue intellectual passions unrelated to the departmental concentration. For example, a student majoring in physics pursues a minor in Russian language and culture or a student majoring in electrical and computer engineering pursues a minor in musical performance.
Minor Programs
Undergraduates may supplement their major field of concentration by participating in any of the following minor programs of study:
- African Studies
- Asian American Studies
- Chinese Language
- Classics
- Climate Sciences
- Computer Science
- Creative Writing
- Dance
- East Asian Studies
- English
- Environmental Studies
- Finance
- Gender and Sexuality Studies
- Global Health and Health Policy
- Hellenic Studies
- History
- History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
- Humanistic Studies
- Japanese Language
- Journalism
- Korean Language
- Latino Studies
- Linguistics
- Materials Science and Engineering
- Medieval Studies
- Music
- Music Performance
- Neuroscience
- Philosophy
- Quantitative Economics
- Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies
- South Asian Studies
- Slavic Languages and Cultures
- Statistics and Machine Learning
- Theater and Music Theater
- Translation and Intercultural Communication
- Values and Public Life
- Visual Arts
Interdisciplinary Certificate Programs
Undergraduates may supplement their major field of concentration by participating in any of the following programs, all of which grant certificates of proficiency:
- African American Studies
- American Studies
- Applied and Computational Mathematics
- Archaeology
- Architecture and Engineering
- Cognitive Science
- Contemporary European Politics and Society
- Engineering Biology
- Engineering Physics
- Entrepreneurship
- European Cultural Studies
- Geological Engineering
- History and the Practice of Diplomacy
- Judaic Studies
- Language and Culture
- Latin American Studies
- Near Eastern Studies
- Optimization and Quantitative Decision Science
- Planets and Life
- Quantitative and Computational Biology
- Robotics and Intelligent Systems
- Sustainable Energy
- Teacher Preparation
- Technology and Society
- Urban Studies