I was wondering if there’s a better chance in getting into top schools like Ivies if you mark on the university admissions application that you are still undecided on what you plan to major? Do universities look down on this?
I’m curious to hear from others, but I would say that putting undecided cannot help you. Your prospective major likely won’t matter all that much since many change their majors in college. However, if you say, for example, that you’re a prospective mathematics major, it’s nice to have substantiation to that claim (i.e. a high SAT math, started a math club, Math olympiad, etc). The best possible case is that you have exceptional talent and interest in an unpopular major.
I’ve heard multiple admissions officers say that applying undecided is not an issue nor is it a negative. About half of the applicants apply undecided and of the ones that apply with a major, half of those end up switching while at college. Therefore your intended major does not have much of an impact on admissions decisions. (Exception is if you apply to a particular school within the university such as engineering, business etc. that may have different admission standards).
At schools which admit by major or division (e.g. Cornell, Columbia, and Penn, to name some popular “top schools”), your intended major may matter for admission selectivity, and changing to another major (particularly across divisional boundaries) may require a secondary admission process (e.g. high college GPA and/or other criteria).
So what will happen if I try to apply to such universities, like Cornell or Columbia that have major divisions, without a decided major?
Stanford is my first choice and I’m undecided, so I wrote that. We’ll see…
Some of their divisions (often including the arts and science division) are likely to admit undecided undeclared students (in some cases, they may admit all students undeclared, which typically means that it does not matter within those divisions). Many students are undecided undeclared when entering college, and many others change their majors after starting college. But just be aware that sometimes popular majors have secondary admission processes to pass through later.
It actually might be better to put down an under-enrolled major, as long as you have some interest in it and coursework/ECs to back it up.
It is only important if you are applying to a school within a university that has difficult transfer procedures or intra-school requirements. For example, you might apply to the school of Agriculture but decided you want to be an engineer in the school of engineering and find no spots are open. This is more common with computer science.
You will have to pick a school to apply to if it is required by that university. Within the school it is fine to be undecided.