Does it matter what major you apply to?

I know that all Notre Dame students are accepted to the First Year of Studies program and not to a specific college, so does it affect my chances if I apply to a certain college or major?

During an meetingI went to with my local rep they made it pretty clear that there is no preference given by choosing a certain major.

Unless you are applying to Mendoza, it doesn’t matter as far as I know. This is because Mendoza has a 650 student limit, so not only are you competing to get into the school, you are competing to be one of the 650. However, you can be accepted to ND but denied to Mendoza, so they won’t reject you simply because you aren’t good enough for Mendoza.

The “no preference” thing may be true to some extent, but I don’t buy it completely. There are certain majors that are so small that they definitely need to recruit applicants interested in it (Medieval Studies, Japanese, Studio Art, etc.)

Actually, the Mendoza target is between 500 and 550 per class.

@silverdrop I completely agree with you, for certain things they must recruit somewhat, but if all my EC’s pertain to something in engineering and I select Medieval studies, they’ll know something is up… I assume if you’re getting help into a specialty major your EC’s reflect that.

@ejcclc You’re right. I must’ve misread the number the first time, or just mistyped it the first time and kept using the wrong number. Either way, my bad!