thursday i hope
@castlehes Most likely Thursday
I hope thats the case! good luck everyone!
@TomSrOfBoston , even if admissions odds aren’t skewed by major, is it still possible that merit aid may be influenced by major-specific factors, i.e. the same admitted student might get a better or worse merit offer based on NU’s desire to attract students to a major, influence the demographics of a major, etc?
Aside from wondering on principle, I’m also curious because my D has changed her major since being admitted EA. Her merit offer was a little anemic, and she’s since gotten better scholarship offers from competitive schools, put in a very strong showing senior year, and changed into a STEM major with a stated goal to improve gender balance. So I’m wondering whether all of that might help her case in asking NU to reconsider the merit offer… but in particular I’m wondering whether citing the change of major when asking would be helpful/relevant or not.
If admission rates are consistent across colleges as claimed, NEU likely has a ton of STEM and Business students accepted. If anything, it would be less helpful for scholarship, but I don’t think major is a factor in scholarship.
Thanks, @PengsPhils . It’s actually kind of hard to envision how admissions could really be “major-blind.” It doesn’t make a lot of sense, when you apply by college, and when some colleges/majors must be more in demand than others. Campuses that truly do major-blind admissions, like UC San Diego, end having an additional layer of departmental admissions to impacted majors once students are admitted to the campus. The result is a significant population of students admitted undeclared, because they got into the campus but not into their major of choice. Since this doesn’t happen at NU, it’s hard to imagine how the process could work without considering what school/major students are applying to. I’m not saying they’re lying - just admitting that I don’t get how it can work based on the stated premise.
As you say, CS is competitive so maybe switching into it is a disadvantage merit-wise… but then again NU has made a big point of publicly announcing a gender-parity goal for CCIS, so there’s that. In the end, I suppose it doesn’t pay to try to psych them out - just ask for what you need and let them respond as they see fit! Thanks for your input. 
I have to agree, I don’t see how it isn’t a consideration at any level, but it does help that some schools are larger than others, etc. Engineering, CS, and Business in particular are very big comparatively to others, so they can accept a high percentage for those three.
I think in the end the policy and general major freedom is, in the end, a necessity of being a co-op school. You have to have the flexibility to change course whenever you need to. If you go on co-op and try to change your major, but it takes a year to switch departments like some other schools, it’s too late and you’re already on your second co-op. Same goes for any point, really. What the policy likely does is give them a more accurate count than if they published acceptance rates by college and had a slew of people applying to colleges they had no intention of being in, which likely allows for resources to be placed better and more predictably on an administrative side.
It’s also worth noting that your application is likely framed by the direction you set yourself in, part of which is the college you applied for. If you are looking to be an English major, running the student newspaper is likely viewed more favorably with your application than leading the robotics club, and vice versa for a CS major.
That last part is why in the end I think it’s best to try not and guess which has the marginally better acceptance rate and apply to the college you want to be in at the time. And again, despite NEU being test score focused, as we see every year, many get in with very low test scores because of the rest of their profile, which I would venture to say is often a full picture, not just a high GPA or a nice essay. The big numbers for US News etc are the middle 50% - that means that for that bottom 25%, Northeastern can drop any obligation it has to worry about rankings and no one will really know or care. That’s the double-edged sword of set ranking metrics, which as many here know, Northeastern is very aware of.
Definitely, @PengsPhils - it doesn’t pay to try to “game” the competitiveness gradient, if one even exists. My older D goes to Rice, which is another university with unusual freedom of mobility among majors. In theory you can apply to a less competitive major and do a back-door switch into a higher-demand program. But for the most part, getting in depends on displaying a coherent picture of yourself and how your experiences and qualifications and passions point toward your chosen path. I think Admissions can “smell” when that doesn’t add up. It’s best to apply to the program you genuinely want and hope for the best. Regardless, the freedom to explore and readjust at schools like Rice and NU is an extremely valuable attribute that far too schools are able to offer.
In my D’s case, she was already torn between Arch and CS+X when she applied, but since she had originally been interested in Urban Landscape and had already worked on the portfolio, she decided to stay the course for the EA application and see how she felt about CS after a few more months of AP CompSci. By the end of the fall semester she knew she wanted to switch. So, it wasn’t a “gaming” move but a true shift of focus. It’s only after the fact that I wonder whether the merit aid picture would have been different if she’d applied to CS initially. No way to tell, though. She’s gotten a merit aid offer from RPI that is almost 3x NU’s offer, but she would much rather attend NU, so I’m hoping a bit of negotiation will be possible. Not to take the thread from generalities to specifics, though. As I said, we can speculate about patterns but ultimately all one can do is ask and (as above) hope for the best!
yeah i’m worried as well because i had originally indicated that i wanted to major in criminal justice but have changed it to business since being deferred… really hope that doesn’t make it harder for me to get in!
I changed from Pharmacy to Business!
@aquapt , @PengsPhils I agree with you guys. Yes, accepted students are obviously meeting the requirements of the university as a whole but your major does have an impact. After the applicant reaches that threshold then they look for other things as a deciding factor. They don’t want to be heavy on one gender for instance. They cant have a lot of MechE and not enough ChemE majors. They also like a percentage of international students. The problem is that NU has a ton of students applying who meet the university criteria and have similar stats. They do draw a lot of Business and Engineering applicants. Comp Sci is one major that I consistently see ridiculously high stats rejected. STEM in general is crazily competitive at NU. Scholarships are somewhat impacted by other factors. My sister received a Woman in Engineering scholarship offer a few years ago (she didn’t decide to attend NU). I’m pretty sure that other Male ChemE majors weren’t getting similar scholarships with the same stats.
Northeastern put that letter up in December because they had a rush of deferred ED/EA students changing their majors with the hope of being accepted RD under the new major. They were trying to stem the tide…
Yeah, I guess they are wise to that tactic.
goodluck guys
Hoping for a decision release today! Would be quite the gift!
@sml1234 haha your birthday’s today or something?
@munit123 It was last week but I’m still in that bday spirit with having 2 snow days this week lol
Oh haha cool! Mine’s in late March, basically when loads of colleges are releasing decisions.
Any Ideas how competitive/easy it is to get into the major of Business Economics?
They don’t admit by major.