@picklesarenice --absolutely this is a consideration for us in Ds search. She is a likely admit to our best state school (University of Texas, has already been accepted, still waiting on engineering admissions though) BUT–from what we have read there would be very little flexibility within her major. I think there is still a possibility for a change and we want her at a school where she has some breathing room for that.
@picklesarenice - WRT fit vs prestige. First of all, sometimes you can get fit and prestige. If your child is excited about Stanford and was accepted there, that’s terrific. Also, IMO some schools have prestige / renown without real facts to back it up. But somewhere like Stanford I feel is a great opportunity, a great place to learn, and so worthy of its prestige. Though obviously the money has to make sense…
WRT your QOTD - I think that even kids that think they know what they want (like my D) might change their mind. I think it’s a huge advantage to go to a school where there’s flexibility. Any college where the subschool that you’re accepted into limits your choices - or worse the major you’re accepted into makes it hard to switch - is a big turnoff to me. One of the reasons we ruled out Berkeley for example was the difficulty in switching majors (if you like the impacted ones).
That said - picking a school for a specialty major seems reasonable to me. Even if your child changes their mind, it’s likely the same school will have reasonable programs for things that your child is likely to switch into, as they’re likely in the same ballpark.
@picklesarenice and QOTD: My DD is interested in and has a special talent in science and language arts; and, she thinks she wants to be a psychiatrist. So, our school search centered around the major she is currently interested in (neuroscience) along with the pre-med option and a good fit. I encourage her to keep an open mind both in undergraduate and graduate school. My thought was as long as we aren’t going for a LAC against a strong interest in engineering or an Engineering school against a strong interest in liberal arts, she would be ok. I am fairly confident she won’t develop a knack for engineering–she holds her own in math but I don’t expect a miracle 
So, I guess I’m saying that most schools will allow some latitude for exploration but for those of us with a kid leaning a certain direction, that direction can help narrow down the schools. If my DD was clearly undecided, I would steer her right toward a large university with all options represented, most likely our state U so that if it took 5 years to sort it all out, I could afford it.
QOTD: Whew - Where to start??
Taking what @picklesarenice, @greeny8, and @Fishnlines29 have brought up a step further, I believe that the crux of the issue is what we as a society and what we as individuals consider to be the purpose of higher eduction, and what we think a young person should aspire to get out of his/her college education. This, unfortunately, must be seen in the context of the frighteningly high cost of education.
There was a time that college was much more affordable than it is today, and that studying the “liberal arts” was considered to be a noble pursuit in and of itself. A person went to college to become exposed to a variety of fields and figure out where his/her passions may lie. Once having done that, he/she began a more focused course of study either at the undergraduate or graduate level. Becoming educated was thus considered to be an end in itself – not a means to an end (i.e., a stepping stone to a career).
In recent years, however, college has become increasingly unaffordable, and many students select their majors based on what types of jobs they will be able to get after graduation. Universities have become more “pre-professional” in their orientation and there is much more emphasis being placed on professional (i.e., vocational) training than there is on the pursuit of knowledge and the life of the mind.
Couple this phenomenon with the fact that “return on investment” is considered to be an important consideration is assessing the quality of education, which, in turn, feeds into the ever-despised ranking systems to which we often fall prey. Our students, in turn, have become, like @dfbdfb’s Cs, increasingly hyper-focused from a young age.
All of this, of course, ties in well to the discussion about school selection and the conundrum brought up by @Mom22DDs and that @websensation , @carlsbadbruin , @nw2this , I and others are grappling with with respect to having to determine the value of the “dream school”/“financial nightmare” as compared to more affordable options. (And we are not alone in this, nearly everybody on this thread will have to face this very same question when if comes to choosing Big Mac schools over full pay options, four year colleges over community college and transferring, state flagship versus private school, etc., etc. There are no right or wrong answers).
Wish I had more Answers of the Day to the Question of the Day.
QOTD: Majors and focus
This is an interesting question. D’17 has mostly applied to colleges that are highly ranked in her intended field, Occupational Therapy. If she maintains her interest, grad school is required. Two OT schools that she has applied to have accelerated masters programs. OT is changing a bit right now with a D.OT becoming the entry level degree (3 years) vs an M. OT (2 years).
She has two exceptions, a financial / auto-merit aid safety and a flier that she liked a lot while visiting another OT school. For those two, there are many possible pre-OT majors. She was considering a few other schools but I pushed back based upon my view of other choices if she changes from OT.
Frankly, this concerns me a little, because of the “odds” that the majority of students come in undecided or change majors. Fortunately, most of the OT schools she applied to have many other well-regarded programs. The only professional / career related question she’s ever asked me is “If I become an OT, I won’t have to live below the poverty line, will I? I will be able to support myself?” I answered with “Probably, depending on where you choose to live, but you won’t be rich.” That was enough for her.
S’14 choose a school with good merit aid and a strong undergrad program in his major, neuroscience. It’s a “specialized biology” major, which some people don’t think is appropriate in undergrad. He wants to pursue a career in academia, with all the risk that entails, but his eyes seem open. He’s definitely a STEM kid, although sometimes I think he is more suited for chemistry or physics. I’ve tried to encourage some more stats and programming training for a “backup plan” versus academia. These courses wouldn’t be wasted.
I do computer programming, and I think my children might be doing a little premature optimizing. I tried to advocate for a liberal arts undergrad since they have to do grad studies anyway, but there weren’t having any of it. They might think I’m hypocritical since I did an engineering undergrad.
To their credit or my shame, they don’t really care about making money in their careers. My wife is happy about that and I worry a little about it. But hey, they get to pick their own lives. They know no inheritance is coming…
QOTD: We have both situations in our home. D14 went off to college without a major in mind and in fact very skeptical about the value of a college degree for herself. Basically, it was a default since she really had no other plan. Her dad and I had always planned for our kids to go to college and we still feel it’s important even for an unsure kid for two reasons: 1) to discover a lot of things about yourself, career-related and otherwise; and 2) to have that piece of paper in the end when you’re out looking for a job. (Although a gap year is a good idea for some kids in this situation, it wouldn’t have been good in our case.) All D knew about what she wanted to do was something around nutrition/food but not big agriculture. She’s at a large state public and in the end, maybe she would have been better off elsewhere. She did find a good major for what she wanted to do eventually, and declared that major – a semester before the university dropped it. With an academic scholarship and two years already under her belt, it didn’t make sense for her to transfer and lose the money, so she’s finishing it out, but it has been a struggle. She’ll finish with her declared major and she has a good network of alums and other current students, but the class availability and professor selection leave a lot to be desired. So even if you think you’re building in a safety net at a large university, it doesn’t always work out that way.
ETA: She loves her life in college, and I didn’t mean to imply she’s unhappy there. Just that it’s hard for her to focus her studies exactly on what she wants. I don’t think she’d leave her friends, roommates, jobs, etc. at this point to go elsewhere.
S17 on the other hand has wanted to be an engineer as long as he’s known basically what an engineer does. He open enrolled as a freshman in high school to a different district that offered pre-engineering classes, and that’s only reinforced his interest. I don’t really worry about him switching out of engineering, although he may switch from mechanical to another focus at some point. He’s weighing college options from a strictly tech school to a large university, and I really think either would work for him because as was said above, he isn’t likely to change to a very different major. That said, I’m still pushing for the larger universities just in case, and for larger merit and easier travel.
QOTD: DD had always mentioned she is interested in medicine since childhood. I still have her 3rd grade career poster about becoming an astronaut-doctor (astronaut was the trending career choice at that time). She was happily immersing herself in business and sports and rocking it at computer science during high school, so we assumed she would end up in engineering (DH & I are both have Comp. Sci background). we were mildly shocked when she decided to stick with medicine, and I am busy learning about med schools at the last minute. DD seems well-prepared and has her preferred choices and a plan for backups, as well as a sense for what financial help she needs from us and when. We’re really the audience in her college journey rather than the participants. Interesting learning for us, since we have one more to go.
@Dave_N I laughed at your dd’s OT poverty comment. My Dd as anOTA makes $28/hr and works full time with benefits. She has friends that make in the $30s/hr doing PRN work and avg 28 hrs/wk. I would assume that the OTs are making significantly more than that. Around here, OT services are in very high demand in 3 main areas: rehab, outpatient, and children services. The children’s services seems to have the lowest pay. My Dd changed to a resort-like retirement community’s rehab. They are expanding to offering outpatient services, but I don’t much about it. (If she is willing to head south, lots of retirement communities around! 
)
Stanford was great with financial aid as far as meeting need and keeping pace with increasing costs. D has had no problem paying off her loans either, since Stanford opens doors to well-paying jobs. Obviously, ymmv depending on the major, but all of D’s friends are doing very well post-graduation regardless of their academic focus. Truly, Stanford is an awesome school in many ways and I think it is well worth the money–especially for kids going into CS, economics, and management engineering.
Well that USED to be true. Once upon a time…
These days it’s only a few elites & some small LAC’s where this is still true. One of the schools S17 is applying it is very very difficult to change major. Most kids I know these days have a chosen major before they enter school. This was an important point to me & it’s a large part of why he’s applying to some of the schools he is. I wanted my son to be able to choose, particularly because until 3 weeks into this school year he honestly had not idea except somewhere in STEM.
My son choose CS this fall. I think this will carry him into at least freshman year. Personally I think it’s a good fit. But I wouldn’t be that surprised if it changed. (If he goes to one of the schools that will let him change.) I certainly don’t expect him to figure out a minor, or a emphasis.
QOTD: I’ve advised the kids to keep doing what they’re good at, and concentrate on getting better at it. For D17 that’s computer science, genetics, and writing. For D18 it’s marketing and robotics. So I don’t know how their majors will pan out, but at least they’ll be doing what they’re good at in college.
D18 passed her driver’s exam! 
In the rain and in holiday traffic! Woot!
@curiositycat333 - from your research, any good schools (or bad schools) for kids that are interested in STEM, but are undecided / would benefit from having time to wait and explore? Besides the elites.
I had somewhat of that goal for DD (and might be more interested in it for upcoming DS19).
As I mentioned, I think the UC schools aren’t good for this.
STEM schools that I found have flexibility: Rose Hulman, IIRC RPI, definitely WashU (though near-ivy), I think WPI (Worcester Poly).
My impression of big state schools in general is that you’re always in a sub-school, and you have to “transfer” if you want to change your major by too much. Not sure how hard transferring is at various state schools…
@thshadow Look into Case Western.
QOTD: Great question and a timely one. D and I have had this discussion very recently as one of the scholarships she was awarded will limit her to graduating with a degree in the business school. She feels very confident in her choice to study business/accounting and is excited about it. She says that she could only see herself changing to finance. I believe her, as its been a 4 year journey getting to where she is. She’s spent every summer during high school exploring various career possibilities and has taken a number of the various strengths/career assessments. I actually think accounting or finance are perfect for her. We’ll see, of course. Anything can happen. If she does take the scholarship with the business school limitation, I’m also confident that she will stick it out no matter what. She will have no choice.
@curiositycat333 Wow! We’ve toured very different schools because every one we went to said the same thing: they understand that it seems like everyone knows what they want to do but the reality is 1/2 of the students go in undeclared. Another difference that highlights the value of going to college fairs and campuses and of asking the right questions.
@mamaedefamilia Congrats on Wooster! We are still waiting to hear from them…how did they notify?
@thshadow Yup, Case Western Reserve admits students into the University not into majors or colleges.
Carnegie Mellon seemed, on the other hand, not flexible at all.
DS17 too is somewhere STEM and undecided. So I was like, hey you have to choose 1st and 2nd majors, and you have to pick College of Arts and Science or C of Engineering. So in the end he picked Physics thus C of A&S not CoE. I think he will do well in Engineering so I was pushing engineering. I was also pushing small liberal arts colleges, but my boys are not buying it. Well, physics is a good (liberal arts) undergrad major. He is also the product of two Physics PhDs who took somewhat non traditional paths.
@theshadow We are done with our college searching. The best fit for flexability this was Oregon State for my son, and UCSC looks flexible as well. Unforrtunatly schools like Rose Hulman, WashU, Rice are all way out of reach for my S17. (And didn’t fit the west coast criteria.) If he wanted to do Engineering he had to stick to large state schools. Yes it’s largely state schools that are more inflexible but my experience from college searching with my two kids (5 years apart in school) was few students entered school undeclared. We were looking at small LAC’s with my D12 and large state schools mostly with D17.
The worst school for unflexibility is Cal Poly and until S17 settled on CS this fall I wasn’t sure he should even apply. (And it’s a reach for him.) And yes not changing majors is more based on Engineering. But even in other majors it can be difficult in many Cal States and for many UC’s.
It’s not just engineering, Art programs can be just as inflexible, nursing programs anything that you need to take dedicated freshman classes to get through the program.
I see a few of you mention trying to encourage LAC. My daughter is unsure if a LAC will provide her the opportunities to prepare for a medical career - specifically, do LACs have sufficient research options, and can one really study science in as much depth in LACs as they could in national universities?
@Mom22DD This very much depends on the LAC. Look for LAC’s with strong science programs. There are many and I’m not the right person to suggest it. I know for example that Lewis & Clark has a good science program.
Also… a small LAC can provide better research possibilities. Not have as many kids competing for those spots. Many small LAC’s you know your professors better and have fewer schools. For med school working in a hospital might be more important, so one near a hospital might be helpful. What I know (because a good friends D is trying for med school) is that getting good grades at university is more important that the school you attend. Don’t over-reach if you are trying for med school and attend somewhere you can be assured of getting good grades in the pre-med classes.