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Can choosing a particular major sway decisions?

By Dadster on Wednesday, October 23, 2002 - 01:44 pm: Edit

Absolutely, irk. It can work at a few levels. Sometimes, different majors are in different colleges within a university, and these colleges can have quite different levels of selectivity.

Even within the same college, sometimes indicating a preference for a less popular major can help. I wouldn't expect a huge boost, but certainly it could be tie-breaker. I'd say if you want to benefit from the choice of majors, it's important that the rest of your application support this choice. Just putting "Medieval Studies" in the major box won't be effective if the rest of your app makes you look like a math or business major. OTOH, if you explain your interest in the major and how you think the school's strengths fit your goals, and if you can show academic and extracurricular work that supports your choice, it will have much more credibilitiy.

By monica on Wednesday, October 23, 2002 - 05:21 pm: Edit

Dadster - I've posed this question both on PR and here, and no one seems to know -

at a school like Stanford, which, unlike Cornell for example, does NOT have different schools for engineering, computer science, etc, does specifying 'computer science' as my major place me in an even more competitive bracket, making me compete with other CS students who've started their own businesses, won competitions, etc ?

By g on Wednesday, October 23, 2002 - 09:25 pm: Edit

I've heard that the least amount of people apply for CS major at Stanford. So, it might help you to get in. But then again, that's all hearsay.

By monica on Thursday, October 24, 2002 - 12:27 am: Edit

funny, it's like third or fourth in their list of most popular majors among current undergrads

By monica on Friday, October 25, 2002 - 08:08 pm: Edit

achoo!

By monica on Saturday, October 26, 2002 - 10:12 pm: Edit

a bump.

By monica on Tuesday, October 29, 2002 - 02:00 am: Edit

bump, someone please answer

By Olivia on Wednesday, November 13, 2002 - 01:15 am: Edit

This is something that definitely varies from school to school. At Stanford (where I am a student), we actually do have different schools for different areas (engineering, H&S, etc), BUT undergraduates do not apply by school. Everybody enters Stanford as an undeclared major, and you can switch around as much as you like....nobody gets "denied" a major, but obviously if you change too much or flunk all your classes, you might not graduate on time.

Anyway, what this means for admissions is that stating a preferred major will generally neither hurt or help you. It can help, if you are looking at a "non-traditional" or unusual major (ie, women in engineering, philosophy or classics, certain area studies, etc), but it doesn't really matter, if you state one or not. Just don't say that you want to be "business", because we don't have one!

- Olivia