Hi,
I am a junior and I will be applying to colleges next school year. I was just wondering, how should I go about picking my major? I want to major in finance but for my top schools (Notre Dame and UPenn), finance is a very popular major. Would it be most advantageous to put down one major on my apps (so I stand out) and then change it if I get accepted? The only problem, at least for ND, is that I wouldn’t be pre-approved for Mendoza and only a few people who aren’t pre-approved end up getting in. Thank you!
No, apply for what you’d like. At Purdue, if it’s a competitive major but you’d still be accepted to some other major, they send you a letter asking if you’d like to change your major for guranteed admission. So go ahead and apply as finance.
You can’t always just “change” your major. At a lot of schools you have to apply to the business school and be accepted in order to change your major. When you do this, you also compete with transfer students for those limited spots in the b-school and it’s not a good risk IMO. I think you should craft a good lift of reaches and matches and safeties, and then once you’ve got your acceptances you can decide whether you want to go to a school where you weren’t a “direct admit” for the b-school.