This question was meant for a student who has various interests and doesn’t feel like picking a major so early on in his academic career.
Then consider #19 – look for schools where the majors of possible interest are not restricted or highly competitive to enter after enrolling at the school.
But also, a student who is interested in several majors needs to plan his/her frosh year schedule to work on the prerequisites for all of them, to avoid accidentally closing off some options because s/he did not start the prerequisite sequences early enough to graduate on time.
Believe it or not, students who write down “undecided” as their future major get into top colleges. It isn’t necessary to pick a major before entering college UNLESS there’s a separate college or restricted admission. .
And MANY of the students who pick a major when they apply actually change that major once they are in college.
Unfortunately, majors or divisions with restricted admission are fairly common. Half of the Ivy League, many popular state flagships and other state universities, and other schools like CMU, USC, and NYU, have at least one major or division that is restricted admission, so that students changing majors into it have to face a secondary admission process. An undecided student should check carefully on the difficulty of getting into any of his/her possible majors of interest at each college.
As noted above some Ivy schools have you applying directly to a program (ex. business, engineering etc.) and others you don’t. Admission officers fully understand that students are free to change majors once they are admitted to the college (at least within the program they have been admitted to if that is applicable). Admission officers are wise to the game of people applying with one major and then switching to another so the intended major generally does not play much of a role in admissions decisions (there could be exceptions if an applicant has a long-standing demonstrated interest in an esoteric field or something like that, but I’d say that is the exception not the rule).
Where intended major does matter in terms of frosh admission decisions (e.g. applying to the CS major at CMU), it is typically the case that changing into that major later requires a secondary admission process (e.g. to change into CS at CMU, students need a 3.6 prerequisite GPA and 3.0 overall GPA, but admission is still competitive and not guaranteed even then: https://www.csd.cs.cmu.edu/content/guidelines-transfer-dual-degree-minor-and-double-major-cs ).
@ucbalumnus, in terms of number of majors, however, only a small percentage of the majors at elite privates are restricted.
What are the 4 Ivies you see restricted majors for?
I know of UPenn/Wharton, maybe Cornell/AEM . . . and?
At Columbia, changing between the College and SEAS is not unrestricted.
Harvard visual and environmental studies requires a 3.0 GPA to declare.
Cornell has various restrictions on changing divisions. Penn also.
It is true that some other schools, including many popular state flagships, have much greater restrictions on changing major or division.
^ My understanding is that switching in to almost all majors/schools at Cornell isn’t that difficult.
@ucbalumnus The Harvard example you list is irrelevant. You don’t declare a visual and environmental studies major when you APPLY to Harvard and listing it on your college application doesn’t boost your chances of being admitted. (Besides, anyone who doesn’t have a 3.0 GPA either isn’t trying or doesn’t belong there, IMO.) Both Harvard and Yale have selective majors which you must apply for…but again, listing them before you enroll doesn’t increase your odds of being accepted.
AFAIK, Brown, Dartmouth, Harvard, and Yale don’t require anyone to declare a major when you apply.
At Columbia, you do have to choose between Columbia SEAS and Columbia College–and Barnard for that matter.
AFAIK, Princeton only requires a special application for engineering students.
UPenn has separate schools for nursing and finance (Wharton). I’m not sure about engineering.
Cornell is the odd one but that’s because it’s partly public and partly private and tuition is VERY different if you’re in state in NY. Most of the programs you have to apply to specifically—Industrial and Labor Relations, the Hotel School, Agriculture, Human Ecology, etc.–offer programs that aren’t offered by other Ivy League colleges.
While that is true, a prospective student should make note of whether any of his/her possible majors is a selective major before deciding on a college.
Visual and Environmental Studies is a tiny major that probably doesn’t appeal to many. How many people (besides me 
) go to Harvard to major in art? I believe there are a handful of other limited majors. History and Lit was one when I was there, and I assume still is.
I’ll bet they have to hire scary bikers as security to control the crowds of Harvard students trying to declare majors in VES and History-and-Lit! @mathmom : A friend of my kids’ did a joint major at Harvard between VES and history. He won a big prize for his thesis, then went to work for Bain. (Actually. I think History and Lit is a pretty popular concentration. It’s awfully hard to distinguish from any number of other majors that don’t pretend to be selective, though.)
There’s a huge difference between having some sort of screen for applying to a special major and having a situation where students are regularly told when they are already two years into college that they can’t have that major – as with film at UCLA, or people trying to transfer in to Wharton at Penn.
It has been mentioned several times that Princeton has separate admissions to its engineering major. I don’t think that’s strictly true. Applicants who express an interest in engineering are asked to write a separate “Why Engineering?” essay, and advised to submit SAT IIs in math and either physics or chemistry. The application clearly states that the indication of an interest in BSE vs. BA is “not binding in any way.” I take that to mean that there’s some possibility of a student deciding to take engineering even if his or her application does not state an engineering preference. The Princeton Engineering and Admissions websites are completely opaque on that issue: They don’t say that there’s a separate selection for admission to the engineering program, and they don’t say that it’s possible to “transfer” into engineering if you didn’t apply.
Sometime before the early '00s, changing between SEAS and the College used to be so easy it was an administrative formality. Only requirement was one was in good academic standing after a year and filing some pro-forma paperwork.
This factor was exploited by many alums of STEM public magnets like BxScience, TJSST, and Stuy during my HS years and before as a “backdoor to Columbia College” and its perceived far greater cachet.
Especially considering SEAS used to accept students with HS GPAs so low (Between 3.0 and 3.3 with it leaning much closer to the former.) they’d not only be rejected outright by the college or Barnard, but also schools like SUNY Binghamton and NYU-Stern. Students in such a position would apply to Columbia SEAS, get admitted, take one year of Gen Eds and make sure to be in good academic standing, file pro-forma paperwork for an administrative transfer to the college before the end of their freshman year, end up at the college, and graduate with a Columbia College degree.
To be fair, this only worked if one’s HS grades and SATs were strongly lopsided in favor of STEM*. Columbia’s admins probably put an end to this sometime in the early '00s partially to close this loophole which was an open secret among STEM lopsided students, especially those at the STEM public magnets.
- This was very commonplace at STEM centered public magnet's like BxScience, Stuy, etc.
That wasn’t true for the older friend who attended Princeton as an engineering major in the '80s. He merely had to declare the major in engineering and likely show he had the math/STEM chops for it in his HS academic record/SAT scores.
Not that tiny. Compared to econ and gov, sure. But in any given year there are about ~60 VES concentrators, which is more than German, Linguistics, and Romance Languages.
Having said that, I don’t think that the OP should get caught up in the fact that VES is a “restricted” concentration.
Among my (non-Harvard) offspring’s friends who attended Harvard, it’s Social Studies which is the most common selective major.
@JHS “There’s a huge difference between having some sort of screen for applying to a special major and having a situation where students are regularly told when they are already two years into college that they can’t have that major – as with film at UCLA, or people trying to transfer in to Wharton at Penn.”
Unlike some colleges, Penn students don’t apply to Wharton after being at Penn for a year or two. Students who want to be in Wharton apply to Wharton initially. A few spots will usually open up for transfers from SEAS and CAS, but it is a bad plan to enroll in any school at Penn that isn’t where you want to be, and I think that the vast majority of students are exactly where they want to be. The outside perception by some that SEAS and CAS students are all clamoring to get into Wharton is just not accurate. Salaries for graduates of SEAS (~$82,900) average about $6,700 more than Wharton (~$76,200).
Interesting. The common perception among the Harvard alums I knew who attendance ranged from the '80s till the mid '00s was that the Social Studies major was a popular one among classmates who wanted a relatively light workload and time to participate in Harvard/Boston area social/party scene.
This included a couple who were Social Studies majors themselves.
Actually, @mathmom, that was the only major that was of interest to my son at Harvard. He never did apply, though.