"Easier" Majors

Colleges and Universities A-Z Stanford University
1

What majors have like a better chance at getting in? I’ve heard some majors don’t have as many people who apply for it so therefore they accept students to fill in that major.

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2

Stanford does not admit by major- you indicate an intended major but you are not bound to it.
You should not choose a major based on whether you think it will help you get in- you should choose the area you are actually interested in.

3

Your whole application has to hang together. So your ECs have to directly tie into your interests and therefore your intended major. It doesn’t work to game the system.

4

You don’t have to declare a major until the end of sophomore year. I don’t think a 17 year old kid deciding on his major holds much weight with admissions officers unless your ECs back it up. You could choose a different major your first day of school. They know that.

5

@yonceonhismouth @preppedparent @googledrone just so you all know I’m not trying to “game the system” i was simply curious. My application is already turned in with the majors that match what I truly want to do

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6

Alumni interviewer here. We were actually told that they favor those with humanities interests. This is probably because there is such a glut of engineering/computer science applicants that they could easily fill their class 300% with those. No way to game this, got to show the superlative chops.

7

Here’s a Stanford magazine article from a few years back that’s consistent with what DHMchicago said. My sense is that the administration does not want the focus of the undergraduate population, and the school’s external reputation, to be too heavily loaded toward CS.

https://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/magazine/article/?article_id=57728

8

Stanford is top ranks in virtually every field, including humanities. Wha while CS is probably the flagship program, there are more than enough really top notch students interested in humanities applying to Stanford each year.

Also, just by reading the article above, Stanford is definitely not the MIT of the west. It is more like the Harvard + MIT of the west.