<p>on the common app, when you fill out your intended majors...do they hold you to those majors (or concentrations in harvard's case) once you get there?</p>
<p>no, they don't</p>
<p>nope, you can always try to get into harvard through art, and then switch to biology or something...thats what my friend is attempting to do lol :)</p>
<p>I doubt that they use that info for anything other than statistics. It probably won't help or hurt your friend.</p>
<p>It can help if the major is historically underrepresented and the applicant is able to demonstrate a passion through summer courses, EC's, etc.</p>
<p>It can actually hurt you to fib about your intended major. </p>
<p>Say for example you want to be a Government major (govt is one of the most popular concentrations at Harvard), but because you think it is less common, you say on your app that you want to concentrate in Folklore and Mythology (an actual Harvard major.)</p>
<p>Now, this won't necessarily hurt you. BUT: if you spend your summers volunteering at the mayor's office, or interning for a senator, or working on the Ron Paul campaign, you show passion for politics. Where's your passion for Folklore? You're just another kid who wants to get into Harvard. Not bad, but not amazing. If you make it clear that Government is where your heart's really at, it could really be to your advantage.</p>
<p>Um I don't think they're going to reward 17-year-olds for thinking that they have known what they want to do with their lives since they were high school freshmen.</p>
<p>It's not that they reward you for knowing what you've wanted to do forever, but it does make it easier to present a clearer picture of who you are. My son knew he wanted to work with computers from early on in elementary school. Nearly everything on his application supported that - lots of extracurricular activities, summer coursework,jobs and volunteer work related to computer programming. Since Harvard is also expanding their engineering offerings - I believe that helped make him an attractive candidate. But I don't believe the admissions office counts up majors. There's no quota on government or art or computer science majors.</p>
<p>I agree with mathmom. It's not that they are "rewarding" you for knowing what you want to do, but they like to see driven, passionate, interesting people. I mean, you could have a passion for drama and be a biochem major, they don't care. They just want you to show that you are an interesting person.</p>
<p>I think I may have just contradicted what I said earlier. Hope I'm making sense.</p>