One of the most common placeholders in achievements is the student's major. Majors help create unique and personalized stories for each person on your list. This page provides some tips and tricks for including them in your Merit achievements.
Majors
When requesting or building your list of student data, make sure majors are included if you wish to use them in your story. Your students' majors should all be spelled out in full. Don't use abbreviated majors or codes. Your average reader will not know what these abbreviations mean.
Here are some examples of different ways you can include students' majors in your Merit achievements.
- [John] [Smith], majoring in [Business], from [Albany], [NY].
- [John] [Smith], a [Business] major from [Albany].
- [John] [Smith], of [Albany], a [Business] major.
- [John] [Smith], of [Albany], majoring in [Business].
Double Majors
Some students may have multiple majors that you'd like to recognize. If so, you will want to keep the student in one row in your spreadsheet and add a column for their second major.
Because most of your students will only have one major, this column will be blank for many of your students. The language in your sentence will need to work for both students with one major and students with multiple majors. There are multiple ways you can achieve this:
Option 1: Include the word "and" in the [Major 2] cell in your spreadsheet.
- [Smith] is majoring in [Business] [and Marketing].
Option 2: Add a column for the word [and] to your spreadsheet. Only the students who have information in your [Major 2] column will have an "and" added. It will be blank for everyone else.
- [Smith] is majoring in [Business] [and] [Marketing].
Option 3: Combine both majors into one column in your spreadsheet.
- [Smith] is majoring in [Business and Marketing].
Adding Articles (a and an)
If you've assembled your sentence in a way that requires an article before the major, there are a couple of things you can do:
Option 1: Insert the student's [Class year] before their major to eliminate the need for articles.
- [John] [Smith], a [Senior] [English] major from [Albany]...
- [John] [Smith], of [Albany], [NY], a [Senior] [English] major...
Option 2: Use "a/an" in your template to allow for some variation.
- [Smith] is a/an [English] major.
Option 3: Insert a column for the leading [Article] into your spreadsheet. To do this, sort your spreadsheet according to the [Major] column and insert either “a” or "an" into the [Article] column.
- [Smith] is [a] [Business] major.
- [Smith] is [an] [English] major.
Undeclared Majors
Some of your students may not have declared a major yet. If so, use either “undecided”, “undeclared” or “undetermined” in your [Major] column. For example:
- [Smith] is majoring in [undeclared].
- [Smith] is majoring in [undecided].
- [Smith] is majoring in [undetermined].
- [Smith] is [an] [undecided] major.
- [Smith] is [an] [undeclared] major.
- [Smith] is [an] [undetermined] major.
Alternatively, visit this page to learn more about how to craft a story that seamlessly accounts for students with and without majors:
- [Smith] [is majoring in] [English].
- [Smith] [has yet to determine a major].