Have U heard of people doing this to increase their chances into a selective college?
On their application, indicating a REALLY underrepresented and obscure major and then once accepted and at the school, they quickly change their major to whatever it was they initially intended.
Do u know of people who have done this? do you think doing this really does increase ones chances of acceptance?
<p>yeah, well if they don't let you change it, then you are screwed</p>
<p>i have heard of this idea and my school tried it for three years, the result: failure. The fact is that some schools require departmental approval or prerequesites for entering majors; so when you are applying for a certain major so quickly after coming in you better have some background for that major. Secondly it is actually more competetive to apply for an obscure major, reason being there are VERY FEW slots open, and people who are actually interested in it and have a background full of extracirriculurs built on that major will get in, they'll look at your record and in comparison you will probably seem like very little</p>
<p>all of the elites, (HYPSM) can care less what you put as your prospective major. They look at your extracurriculars and such as a true indicator of what you are interested in.</p>
<p>friend did this, got in to uchicago. he chose like physics (pure physics or something) but good SATs and grades</p>
<p>My friend did that when applying to MIT. He applied for political science, but really wanted to take computer science and thought it would be easier for him to get into political science than computer science. He didn't get in though.</p>
<p>For Santa Clara I did Ancient studies thinking no one else would. I don't even know what it is. I got in. For Brown I put Mid east studies because I have an arabic background and I took courses in it at UCSB. However, I was not admitted. So I don't know what to say. It can go both ways. I do know some kid on the USC forum who applied as some astrophysics major or something wacky and he got in after only turning in half of the application. So there are always exceptions. Just do what you love. Okay?</p>
<p>For many things it may be very obvious though. For example, if you do several internships wiht doctors, volunteer at the hospital, do research in biomedical engineering, and then apply to JHU as an english major, they will certainly be suspicious.</p>
<p>lucyS - like I said, your friend screwed up. MIT doesn't take account of your major, they only use it for statistics and is not considered for acceptance. HYPSM all do this... some other ones do it as well. This way, they insure there is no "easy" way into their universities.</p>
<p>haha... my friend applied to johns hopkins for humanities, but he really wants to do BME... he got in... but now he isn't sure if he can definitely transfer from... french language.... to biomed engineering.</p>
<p>liberal arts schools won't care in the first place (ivies for example)</p>
<p>If you ask for agriculture, but really want engineering, it's most likely not going to work. Schools are smart enough to close these loopholes.</p>
<p>I know people who applied to berkeley for agriculture and switched afterward- its not easy, but possible.</p>
<p>I have not heard of people doing this. My guess is that something like that would probably not work because the colleges would expect to see demonstrated interest in the major on the student's application. Without such demonstrated interest, the colleges probably would rightly decide that the student is lying, and that would lead to the rejection of a student who otherwise might have gotten in.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, colleges do know that most students switch majors a couple of times once they are in college. Thus, even with demonstrated interest in an unusual major, colleges wouldn't expect that the students would definitely stick with that major.</p>
<p>I put down linguistics for all the colleges that offer it, but thats cause I actually want to study linguistics. </p>
<p>don't know if it helped or not.</p>
<p>JJC03 your example is prime, Johns Hopkins 99.9% of the time will not allow movement into its BME program, simply impossible. If you read my post you would see that it is indeed more competetive to get into an obscure major because others have a stregnth in what you deem obscure</p>
<p>"friend did this, got in to uchicago. he chose like physics (pure physics or something) but good SATs and grades."</p>
<p>Makes no sense. Chicago doesn't even ask you what your prospective major...not only that, but I wouldn't call Physics at UChicago "obscure."</p>