My child is truly undecided and will be applying that way. How difficult is it to transfer into desirable programs as a student? I assume it’s especially difficult if you want to move to business or CS programs?
It depends on the school.
At schools that admit by major and/or cap majors, it can be very difficult or impossible to move to business or CS.
Consider liberal arts schools where students don’t have to declare majors until second semester soph year. At these schools it is generally easier to change majors too. Although depending on the timing of the change, extra semesters can be necessary to complete requirements.
If you want to share more about what your kid is looking for, posters can make some more sprecific suggestions.
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I think it really depends on the school and it’s something you’ll want to research before applying/making a decision.
At my daughter’s school (Rice) there are no limits to changing majors. It’s as simple as filling out a form. And you don’t have to offically declare a major until second semester sophomore year. For instance one of my daugher’s close friends changed from being an english major to an engineering major sophomore year. He had to take some classes sophomore year that are normally taken by freshmen to get in his engineering requirements, but the classes he took freshmen year fulfilled other requirements so he still graduated on time. But this will not be the case everywhere. At some schools you are admitted by major and switching (especially into some business, engineering and CS programs as you mentioned) can be difficult.
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Very easy to transfer into different schools–other than the audition required school of music–at Northwestern University. (Also very easy to double or triple major among the six different schools within the university.) Of course, one applying as an undecided major area of study would apply to the college of arts & sciences.
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Depends on whether the program at the college is full relative to its capacity. This needs to be checked for each program of interest at each school.
Some of them have needed to ration entry to majors (e.g. CS at Pomona) or classes (e.g. CS at Swarthmore).
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I’m piling on, but this needs to be deeply researched for each and every school.
At some you can change freely. At some you can change, but your ability to have gotten that major n the first place may be taken into account. This prevents what’s referred to as back dooring. At some majors like CS are completely blocked.
For a truly undecided student who may want something like CS, engineering or business, school choice will be paramount.
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The only school that I have heard of that looks back to whether one would have been admitted to the new major during frosh admission is Cal Poly SLO.
In other schools, changing into or declaring a major that is capacity limited is based on college courses and grades, and sometimes other things done as a college student (essays, extracurriculars).
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It depends both on the school and the major.
For someone who is truly undecided, a LAC can be a great choice. Many “mandate” exploration through distribution requirements and many also support multidisciplinary majors, often of a student’s creation. There are non-LACs that work this way too, like Tufts. Most expect that you will declare a major by spring of sophomores year and many departments put great profs into the entry level classes to make sure students have a great experience in their first exposure to geology or philosophy or art history.
One thing you may want to do is look at course requirements in a couple of areas of interest and think about how, at your various targets, you would go about maximizing your flexibility for a 2-4 semesters while your interests emerge. For example, if engineering may be of interest, there are a lot of foundational classes you would need to have completed to move on to more specialized classes. Someone considering international relations will almost certainly need to be taking FL to reach the level of proficiency for that degree. In some cases, this might require applying to a specific school or major simply to register. At others, it’s just planning appropriately.
I would advise at any school that requires admission to a particular school or major that you find out which are the hardest to get/transfer into. If it’s CS, for example, and there’s little interest in that now, it’s a hypothetical problem that deserves little worry.
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It depends upon the school, it depends upon the student, and it depends upon what major the student wants to switch into.
Some top universities (MIT and Harvard come to mind) do not admit by major. You get to pick your major at the end of freshman year. If you want to switch to CS, then you switch to CS.
In most cases if it is more difficult to get accepted to a university for some specific major, there will also be some restrictions on switching into that major. University admissions have been doing this for a while, and “apply for a major that makes it easy to get accepted, then switch to the popular major” has occurred to them as a strategy that they do not want to encourage.
If a student really wants to major in CS or business, then they should attend a university where they can get accepted as a CS or business major.
Both daughters changed majors after they were in university for a year. One daughter for example started as a languages major, but was considering a biology major. She had to first get permission to take “biology for biology majors” as a freshman. Then at the end of her freshman year she needed to get permission to change her major to biology (at which point having already taken freshman year biology for biology majors helped her quite a bit). In both cases I think that having good grades helped, and might very well have been necessary.
All of which might just be a slow way to say “it depends”.
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My S25 is also undecided at this time. We do know he’s not interested in humanities. He’s also my 4th child, and none of his siblings were undecided, so this is new territory for us. Since he has some time, we are trying to expose him to possibilities. He is open to this approach. He went to a pharmacy summer program and liked it, which gave him the idea to take AP Bio as well as APES this year. (The pharmacy admissions rep recommended 2 years of Bio at the program). Currently, he is taking part in a STEM lecture series. He just heard someone speak anout nuclear energy. There are still some things he can do at school that involve academic extra-curriculars.
When he registers for his senior year classes, he’ll need to be very cautious about taking classes that might be required for postential majors. AP Physics, for example, if there is any remote possibility for engineering. Or O Chem as an elective that could greatly help him in the future if exposed to it in high school.
We will be zoning in on the details for each school and how they approach Undecided students. More work and due diligence, but definitely necessary.
We toured Penn State recently. They have a whole college for Undecided students. They seem to have advisors in this college that know how to guide a student through this process. We were told there were very few majors that could not be transferred into. Architecture comes to mind.
HI Winky, S24 also loves PSU. (He just might be our outlier to Pitt )
He’s interested in the Earth and Mineral Science School which houses Meteorology and Geography. All students enter the school as undecided. But PSU’s actual “undecided school” is an amazing progam. We know several students who benefited from it. They even have an undecided dorm 
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Great to know, thanks Caz!
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