<p>Since you’re hoping for journ in college, the newspaper makes sense. </p>
<p>hey @mikemac I wanted to acknowledge the good letter of advice you posted above for the OP on June 5…hopefully, he/she has taken it to heart. </p>
<p>@AnnieBeats - Perhaps a fair number do go in knowing their exact major, although it is hard to tell. Harvard, for example, says that only about 7-10% go in saying they are completely undecided, but within that, many only know that they want to be in the Physical Sciences or the Social Sciences, for example (ugh, it pains me to put sciences after the word social), and so presumably there would be some number of undecideds within that 78% or so that are not in engineering or math or CS, at least as far as more exact major. Harvard goes on to say that about 1/3 change their concentration at least once. So I just am not convinced that this is so very useful for admissions. Could be wrong, but that’s the data, at least for Harvard. I would guess that after the few most elite schools, those numbers get even fuzzier. Not that we are getting out of the elite category, but at Stanford apparently about 40% change majors.</p>
<p>Besides, I didn’t see where the OP said they were going for the super elite schools, just “top colleges”. Ambiguous, but certainly leaves the door open that it could certainly be colleges where far more go in undeclared and changing once in school is more like 50-70%. Just another example of how much these things vary from school to school, to borrow from another discussion.</p>
<p>@fallenchemist OP wants to go to Northwestern, UNC, or Syracuse’s journalism school</p>
<p>OK. I suppose when you are applying to a very specific school within a university then clearly those students have decided their career path. Does UNC have a separate journalism school?</p>
<p>OP, have you emailed your local newspaper? There are some opportunities for HS students</p>