I’m kind of in a difficult situation right now, and I’m not sure what to do. I don’t want to get too into specifics, but last year, I made the decision to take a gap year from the College. I have not yet declared my concentration.
When I applied to Harvard, I had no idea what I wanted to study. For years, I really wanted to study nutrition, with the end goal of becoming a registered dietitian or an academic in the field. Then, during my senior year of high school, I totally lost interest in nutrition. It just wasn’t something I wanted anymore. I developed more of an interest in English and the humanities. I figured I would eventually pursue something with that. So back when I applied to colleges, I didn’t really consider schools with nutrition/dietetics as a major.
During my leave, I rediscovered my old passions for cooking and nutrition. Quite frankly, I can’t envision myself as anything except for a registered dietitian. But that’s not a concentration at Harvard.
My parents told me they wouldn’t be disappointed if I decided not to return to the College.
What should I do? Transfer? See where I can go with my Harvard degree?
If your plan is to become an RDN, one option would be to finish an English or humanities degree at Harvard, but unofficially minor in pre-dietician studies. Find out what the ACEND requirements for undergraduate courses are, and take as many as possible while at Harvard (possibly cross-registering at other Boston colleges for specific courses when necessary). Afterward, you will likely need to get a transcript evaluation and take a few supplemental post-bacc courses before gaining admission to the supervised practice internship. But you still end up with a Harvard degree.
The combination of specialized expertise and a broad humanities or social sciences background can be very powerful. In the field of nutrition and diet, look at the influence that Michael Pollan or Mark Bittman has had . . . not to mention Michelle Obama.
Harvard also has a School of Public Health with a number of faculty whose primary interest is nutrition. Harvard isn’t the most flexible institution in the world, but before you ditch it completely it may be worth exploring whether you could take courses there as an undergraduate and effectively build yourself a nutrition concentration, or a joint AB/MPH. That wouldn’t be exactly the same as getting certified as a registered dietician, but it would probably make it very easy to take that step post-college, and it the long run it would be a very powerful set of qualifications to have in the nutrition field.