I don't care about majors, minors, or honors programs. Do you?

The following conversation is fictional.

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ALICE: (Looking over a student's record.) Hmm, let's see. She wants to work in quantum computing. She's had the year-long quantum sequence in the physics department and has taken a course in quantum computing in the computer science department. She has done a project in quantum computing in an REU program.  Grades good, letters good. I think we should admit her.

BOB: Wait! Did she get a minor in Physics? This is very important!

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When looking over a student's record the questions

Does she have a minor in X? or

Did she double major?  or

Did she graduate with honors? 

never dawn on me.

1) When I am on an admissions committee I look at:

a) Transcript: What did they take? The grades are generally good so that's a minor factor.

b) Letters that tell me what they did within STEM. I don't care about ballroom dancing or moral character. 

c) Papers they've written whether or not they have been published.

d) Their personal statement. They need to tell me:

i) Why they want to get a PhD.  When Ted Kennedy challenged Jimmy Carter for the presidential nomination in 1980, Ted Kennedy was asked Why do you want to be president? See here for his rambling and incoherent answer.

Despite his background in proving lower bounds on approximation contingent on the Unique Games Conjecture, Ted Kennedy would not have gotten into our graduate program.

ii) What they are interested in (this may have been covered in part (i)).

iii) Why they are qualified.

2) Do I care what the major is? No. I care that they know computer science which I can get off of their transcript.

3) Do I care if they double major in (say) Math. No. I can look at the transcript and see what math courses they took.  I don't care what (possibly arbitrary) rules their school has for double majoring.

4) Do I care if they minored in (say) physics? Not even a little. If they want to do quantum computing I care if they have taken courses in that area.  I don't care what (likely arbitrary) rules their school has for minors.  I took five courses in Philosophy as an undergraduate. Did I get a minor? I don't recall.  Two of them were in logic so I don't think I deserve a minor.

5) Are they in their school's CS honors program? Some other honor program? Are they on track to graduate with CS honors? Some other honors?  I don't care what (definitely arbitrary) rules their school has for honors programs.  If they are writing a paper, honors thesis or not, I will want to hear about it from their letter writer and from their personal statement. 

6) Do I care if they are in phi-beta-kappa? Sigma-Xi? Tau-Beta-Pi?  The last two I only know about since I googled  is there an analog of phi-beta-kappa geared toward STEM  for this post. You can probably guess that I don't care about any of those things. 

7) The point is that these formal criteria: major, minor, honors are not important when I am doing admissions.

a) Are they important to students?

I've heard that high school students who are honors students get a bumper sticker for their parents car that says:

                 My kid is an honors student at blah high school.

I would be more impressed if the bumper sticker said

                 My kid can prove the polynomial van der Waerden theorem.

b) Are they important to other people on the admissions committee?

8) Has the scenario I paint at the beginning of this post ever happened?