I want to get into a good school (ivies, etc). One of my friends recently applied to Harvard for History (wrote his essays, etc. about his passion for history) even though he wants to study Biology. He just got in and says he can switch his major immediately. I was wondering if there is any downside to this at all or is this strategy something that I should use.
I depends on the school. This is called back dooring into a major and many schools have mechanisms to prevent it. .
You also need to dig deeper into what a âgood schoolâ means. Some of the highest ranked, most selective schools actually have giant classes, heavy reliance on TAs and in general arenât well known for their undergraduate teaching.
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Some colleges (ex the University of CA system) accept by majors and it is hard to change into a more competitive major. Other colleges accept by school (ex. business school, school of liberal arts, engineering school) and it can be hard to change into a more competitive school at the university. A number of schools do not accept by major and they fully understand that students are free to switch majors the minute they set foot on campus.
IMO your friend was probably not accepted to Harvard because he/she expressed interest in studying history (which is not an unusual major) --he/she probably could just have easily written about a passion for biology. Iâm guessing there were other attributes that caught the eye of the admissions department.
Iâve heard college admission officers at colleges that donât accept by major say that they donât pay much attention to intended major in the admission process since about half of the applicants apply undecided and about 50% of those coming in with a designated major end up switching it while they are at college. There could be an exception if a student has a long standing and demonstrated history of interest/aptitude (perhaps through ECs, research, classes etc.) in some obscure major.
Keep in mind that any ploy you come up with to try to get an edge in admissions, college adcoms have seen thousands of times over. IMO your time would be better spent searching out a group of reach, match, and safety schools based on your academic stats that appear affordable and that you would be happy to attend.
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LOL your friend canât âchangeâ his major (called a concentration at Harvard) yet b/c he doesnât have one. He wasnât admitted as a history major- he was admitted as a general student, same as every other Harvard applicant. Concentrations are normally officially declared at the start of 2nd year, though it can happen earlier. Your friend will be assigned a history advisor as their first advisor, and will presumably connect with the bio department when he goes to declare (the department has to accept you as a student- itâs essentially a formality, but it goes better if the student has actually talked to somebody in the department.
Thatâs because, as @happy1 said: Harvard does not admit by major- you can apply âundecidedâ and get in. Your friend might think that he was very clever to lie, but irl there was no benefit to him, and a possible disadvantage (if course availability is limited it goes first to the declared majors, then to the prospective majors and then to the general student population, usually starting with seniors).
Of course, thatâs if indeed he was lying! It is possible to love two things. Your friend may just think that Bio is a more sensible choice, especially if he is thinking pre-med (heâs actually wrong- there are too many bio majors out there- but thatâs another story), but part of his heart really does belong to history.
At most LACs and the school of Arts & Science at most universities* you donât have to declare your major until the end of second year. If you want CS at UC-B, getting into history and then transferring is hard- arguably harder than getting into CS in the first place, but at other universities / for other subjects it is do-able.
*there are exceptions
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Many schools, like Harvard, do not admit by major. Others do. If you are admitted to say Carnegie Mellon as a Humanities major you cannot switch to Computer Science. You would have to apply as an internal transfer at the end of freshman year and it is competitive and would likely not be approved.
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Yes, if the applicantâs essays and academic / extracurricular history clearly demonstrate sincere interest in philosophy, the applicant may be more memorable than the 10,000th CS major writing about coding accomplishments and the 10,000th pre-med biology major writing about their inspiration to help people in a medical context.
If the college does not admit by major (or by major-based divisions), then it theoretically does not matter, beyond perhaps being more memorable than the 10,000th CS major or 10,000th pre-med biology major, if the essays and academic / extracurricular history are consistent with the less common major.
However, if the college does admit by major (or by major-based divisions), the reason it does so is to manage capacity. Meaning that the popular majors are âfullâ, so changing into them after enrolling is not automatic. In some cases, a very high GPA and competitive admission process may be required.
Some people often relate smaller to less competitive. If the college is looking for 5 Underwater Basket Weaving majors, and they already have 6 world class weavers, trying to pretend to be one and being the 7th application will unlikely be successful. An acceptance rate is not just a measure of selectivity, it is also a measure of popularity.
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Thereâs no better example of this than Cal Poly. Students apply for a specific major and only compete against other students interested in the same. For the first time in many years, another major (Psychology) had a lower acceptance rate than CS. It was spun as Psychology is now the hardest major to get into, but it really isnât. The average algorithm score of a CS admit is sure to be quite a bit higher than that for Psych. Itâs just Psych drew more applicants.
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It would help if CPSLO published the MCA formula used each year and each yearâs MCA thresholds by major.
I.e. something like what SJSU does: Freshmen Impaction Results | Admissions
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After all, Harvard wants 1,600 or so students to matriculate. They will accept 2,000 or so, whether 57,000 apply or 5,700 apply. Because so many apply, they can use criteria that only cover 1/100 of the population.
That makes them âextremely selectiveâ, but does not inherently imply that the criteria which they use result in their selecting the âbestâ students, by any objective measure.
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Thatâs a little backwards. You really need to be choosing the school based on potential major. Some schools are less flexible than others with a change of major. It would really suck if you got into UC-Berkeley, for instance, as a sociology major, and get rejected later for Computer Science.
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