How much does listing a less popular major help (or hurt) admissions chances, especially at highly selective schools?
It seems like engineering, business, comp-sci and a couple other majors receive overwhelming numbers of applicants. Some schools even list when they’re no longer accepting applications for those programs because they’ve filled up.
In 2019 we visited UChicago and the dean of admissions asked a room full of students and parents, "How many of you want to major in “classics?” Not a single hand went up. He replied, “That’s too bad. We have a fantastic classics major here and are looking for students.” All of sudden there was A LOT of chatter amongst the parents and students.
It also makes me wonder if there’s an admission’s strategy of applying to a less popular major just to get in with the hope of changing departments or even schools later on?
If they don’t accept by major, as is the case for most T20s, then pretty close to zero if the rest of the application does not align. AOs can sniff out a student looking to get in through the backdoor from a mile away.
Unless you apply to a school that accepts by majors, admissions officers are well aware of the fact that you can apply for one major and change once you are at the college. I’ve heard college admission officers say that they don’t pay much attention to intended major in the admission process since about half of the applicants apply undecided and about 50% of those coming in with a designated major end up switching it while they are at college.
The exception might be if a student has a long standing and clearly demonstrated history of interest/aptitude (perhaps through ECs, research, classes etc.) in some obscure major.
Keep in mind that any ploy you come up with to try to get an edge in admissions, college adcoms have seen thousands of times over.
This. If the obscure or less popular major is evident in other parts of the application and thus evidence of true interest, then I think it CAN help. A friend’s daughter who was a committed musician applied as a music major at a LAC at just the moment they were investing in developing their fine arts program. They told her that her academic interest in this area was absolutely part of her appeal. And she went and majored in music!
To your point and to clarify, I’m not merely talking about listing the less common major as an intended major, but also making the major a central theme of the admission package.
For example, I visited such-and-such a place and it sparked my interest in this subject. I took AP classes in my high school about it, wrote about it for my IB extended essay, talked to college professors, sought out research and EC opportunities on the subject.
So, within this context, if you have two similarly qualified applicants both with clearly demonstrated interests but one is in a major that receives large numbers of applicants whereas the other is not, does the one applying to a less common major stand a better chance of admissions?
That doesn’t sound like a “strategy” per your original post. That sounds like a genuine and developed interest in an academic subject. And so yes in that sense I do think, with all other things being equal, it could have an impact.
OTOH a school may have plans to build out already popular programs and may want more students in those majors. Or conversely a school may decide to consolidate less popular majors (esp during times of financial crisis like 2008 and now). It’s hard to know.
If different majors have different admission selectivity, it is likely because the more selective major is filled to its department’s capacity. So changing into that major later may require another admission process (high college GPA and/or competitive process).
Here is a college that explicitly admits by major:
However, other colleges do not formally have different admission standards by major, so intended major theoretically does not matter. But they could still be affected by admissions readers being bored by the “same old same old” 50,000th aspiring CS major but being more interested when they read something different in the 5th aspiring philosophy major.
Fizsimmons, Harvard’s Dean of Admissions, testified during the Harvard lawsuit that, according to NY Times:
"Harvard also looks at factors like parental occupation, which Mr. Fitzsimmons said offer clues about financial hardship, and intended major, to avoid having too many students with the same educational interests.
For instance, he said this week, there had been huge increases in would-be engineers and computer scientists, but Harvard had to be wary of admitting too many, because ‘a whole bunch’ of them ‘will end up happily ever after at M.I.T. or Caltech.’"
That Fitzsimmons quote seems contradictory – one one hand, he says something about having too many students in the same major, but on the other hand, he says that many of the engineering and CS applicants are unlikely to matriculate to Harvard instead of MIT or Caltech (i.e. they may not get enough of the admitted ones to matriculate).
Or maybe he was referring to economics applicants aiming for Wall Street careers with the first part of the quote. Harvard does seem to have a huge number of students in its introductory CS course, but far fewer end up graduating as CS majors.
It needs to be a genuine and demonstrable interest if you choose a more obscure major or it will likely backfire. The worst review I ever gave of an interviewee involved an applicant who had a stated interest in a relatively obscure major. I had some familiarity with the area, but I boned up on it prior to the interview as I was looking forward to an interesting discussion on the topic. Turns out the applicant had only a rudimentary knowledge of the area that one can get from a Wikipedia search. That whole line of discussion turned out to be a waste of time. As it turned out, the applicant had an interesting story related to her mom’s non-traditional career in the medical field. I suspect that her real interest was in that area, but got bad advice from someone who steered her to a perceived less competitive field of study. If I could pick that up in a 45 minute interview, I am sure the AO would see it with the full app in front of them.
For any competitive school, your best choice is to be true to your interest and your accomplishments. That will result in the most compelling application.
But note that there is also divisional admissions, where the divisions are major-based. For example, College of Arts and Sciences, College of Engineering, College of Business, etc… Divisions may have different admission selectivity (and different base-level high school academic expectations); changing to a different division after enrolling may require another admission process.
The Fitzsimmons quote was in the context of Harvard defending its holistic process and that more was put into the decision making than bare “stats”. It is not controversial or a secret that elites actively shape their class across a variety of factors, including academic interest, demographics (geographic, socio-economic, race/ethnicity), non academic interests and talents (athletic, musical, artistic, literary) and personality types. The question is if choosing an area of interest that is perceived as less competitive is an advantageous strategy. I agree that if an applicant can back that up, what happens is the applicant is compared with like candidates and may look relatively stronger and claim a “spot”. If the applicant doesn’t have the goods, it’s not going to help and may hurt.
Fizsimmons’ testimony is perhaps subject to interpretation. My interpretation is that Harvard would turn away applicants who Harvard suspects would be better fit for MIT or Caltech. A broader interpretation is what NY Times said in that article that Harvard would look at factors like “intended majors, to avoid having too many students with the same educational interests”.
Yes, Harvard would shape its class based on a variety of factors, which may include “intended majors” to better match its own resources. Similar colleges likely do so as well.
This quote should be printed out and posted prominently, or made into a screen saver for all ambitious parents of bright kids to refer to it in these dark moments of self-doubt.
The misery of bending your application to meet the perceived expectations of the AOs can turn your idealistic and honest teenager into something neither you nor she/he will like.
When I first started reading CC posts and ask my own questions, there were many responses telling how unexceptional were D’s 5s on AP Spanish and AP French exams, both in her sophomore year, and how her interest in songwriting and sound engineering, plus many years in a city-wide choir, would be insignificant ECs at tippy-top LACs. But that’s what ultimately worked, beyond our expectations. The joy of being admitted for basically being yourself saves you the impostor syndrome and a lot of self-doubts later on.
I agree with other posters that selecting a less popular major for the sake of college admissions is generally a bad idea. An applicant needs to be able to tell a convincing story about her/his academic interest if s/he happens to select a less popular major.
And this is really closer to the heart of my original question. For those elite schools who seek to shape their classes does applying with a less common major (and having an application package to back it up) result in an edge?
In the back of my mind I was thinking, "If 10k high school seniors applied to Harvard and said they wanted to major in business but only 1 kid applied seeking to study philosophy, assuming all 10,001 kids had similar stats and similar demonstrated interest in their intended major, wouldn’t the one who indicated philosophy, on balance, have an easier route to being accepted?