Although I’m a new kid on the block as far as posting here, I have been reading on and off for a few years. My son got his acceptance yesterday for his “dream” school, as well as an offer for a generous merit scholarship. All is good, you think? The school accepted him into a very specific Arts and Humanity major, not the Computer Science major he had applied for. The letter acknowledged that the major was not his first choice, but that his application showed his talents and abilities would allow him to be successful in that major.
I’m not sure how he should proceed. I would like to know what the school was thinking, and which talents and abilities they think would make him successful in this particular major as opposed to just randomly making him a History major or a Philosophy major, or what used to be back in my day, a general studies major.
Any suggestions on how to proceed?
(And, yes, I’m being vague about the major intentionally)
I don’t have any experience with this, but it sounds like he was rejected from his first choice school, and offered arts/humanities instead?
I know that at my school, all freshmen were assigned an advisor. If you had declared a major, you got one in that department. If you hadn’t you got one in your school, and in some ways you were like a member of that department, and in some ways you weren’t. The advisors that undeclared freshmen got tended to be people in departments that didn’t get a lot of declared freshmen majors, because they had space.
I would ask which majors would allow him to transfer without meeting requirements, and which require something, and what those requirements are. Then decide how happy he’d be with that choice of majors.
No, there is zero overlap in the course work as far as I can tell. There would be no room in his Freshman schedule tto take any computer or math related course work. I don’t see anything that indicates that the alternate major is a limited enrollment major.
Then it sounds like he was denied to CS, but the college is willing to accept into this other school. Did he give a second choice school on his app? Sounds like he did. And if he did, he was rejected from 1sr choice.
He is very unhappy and upset with this major. There is zero overlap of course work, and no indication that he would be able to take enough courses in computer science to be able to transfer into a computer science major in a year or two (and if he could, he would be 2 years behind his peer cohort and still need 4 years as a CS major to graduate). The course work of the major they randomly assigned him is of zero interest to him in all aspects.
I think if he had been accepted as an undeclared major he would chose to attend, get some courses in and apply to transfer into the Computer Science major. If he is only accepted in this random major he will not attend this school at all.
While it sounds like your son wasn’t accepted into the “hard to get into” CS program, he was accepted to his dream uni. I wonder why they didn’t just make him “undeclared”?? At my kids’ school, if you’re undeclared, you’re put in A&S for advising until you choose.
Does this school have any means for him to transfer into the CS program for spring if he were to do well in calculus and maybe a couple of other courses?
Can he apply to CS at some point in the year, or for the following year?
It is very strange that they seem to have assigned a major (other than CS, which he clearly did not get into).
If he is really sure he wants to do CS, he should clearly not go to this school.
If he has other possible interests, he should check with the school about being undeclared. Perhaps he indicated some interest in this assigned major unintentionally, and the admissions folks thought it would make him happy despite the CS rejection. Perhaps it is an easy matter to switch to undeclared.
But if he really wants to do CS (does he have experience enough with it to know this is his field?) then he should go elsewhere unless other factors about this school are more important to him than major.
He did not give a 2nd choice, and this particular completely random major would have been the last major on earth h would have chosen and definitely the last out of the majors this particular university offers.
That’s what we don’t understand, undeclared would have been understandable and acceptable. The school does allow non-CS majors to take CS classes, but CS majors get first dibs on the courses so I don’t know if it actually works well in the real world. This randomly assigned major would not allow him time in his schedule to take CS classes.
He will be attending some place else (he’s gotten into several highly regarded CS programs). I’m very interested in the process this school used to assign this major. There is nothing in his application or background to indicate that it would be a good fit. I’m just flummoxed as to their decision making process and would like to understand it.
I think that he would have to re-apply in order to change majors, since he would be switching from the College of Humanities to the College of CS. I don’t think that switching majors would be that easy, plus he would behind his age cohort at that point.
There are people on here who are affiliated with university administration- I am not. As a layman, I would look at contacting admissions as a way of asking for clarification on the decision. I would not do that as a first choice.
I would contact the CS department chair and let him/her know how excited your child is to be awarded a generous merit scholarship to attend his/her university, and that your child applied to his/her department. I would attach something that shows how amazing the student is. I would ask for this person to intervene with admissions, since there is obviously some mistake.
Admissions could possibly simply rationalize what they did if you deal with them directly. They are more likely to correct their action if they are lobbied from inside.
It could be that “Comparative Religions” was on the line above “Computer Science” (as an example) and the wrong box was checked in the “mail merge” database in a moment of distraction, or something equally inane. People are human.
We had a weird school/major assignment at a school my S1 applied to (he was offered merit/Honors, so it didn’t really make sense that he hadn’t gotten his major choice)…it turned out to just be an error. A phone call to his AC and it was corrected.
If it’s not an error: As others have said, if this school is his first choice, spend some time looking at other majors with overlap (math, physics, EE/CE maybe), contact his Admissions counselor with specific questions (can I change/enter as Major x), contact the CS department (what is the process for transferring to CS, etc). If all he gets is “Oh, well, you will meet with your advisor once you get here, and you can sort that out” he might want to think carefully about whether he wants to attend. If he can’t get into CS 101 because it’s not his major, and/or its full already, it could be a very disappointing start. On the other hand, if their CS yield ends up low, there could be room, but you won’t know that until ?when?. Contact the CS Dept directly and ask lots of questions.
You should call the admissions office and ask for an explanation. This is such a strange situation that I have to assume either this university has a very uncharacteristic (and problematic) policy about assigning majors or they have simply made a mistake in the file and listed this unwanted major as your son’s stated second choice. Even if he decides to go elsewhere (and with good other choices that allow him to major in CS he probably should) it would be helpful to have an explanation. (And if this randomly assigned major wasn’t an error, then it would be good for the admissions office to know that this is a terrible recruitment strategy).
I agree. If he didn’t put a 2nd choice, and major seems “out of the blue”, I think he should send an email asking about it, and whether this was intentional. At worst, it was, and are no worse off than now. At best they tell you, oh, you can transfer 2nd semester.
Some schools are super-rigid this way. Cornell requires admit by major, for instance. I’m not a big fan of that stance. Kids shouldn’t feel boxed in no matter what (unless it is s technical school).
Sometimes universities play games to game the system.
I’ll give a concrete example of what happened to my S a couple of years ago (and I’ll name names, since it’s water under the bridge at this point).
My S wanted to study Journalism and applied ED to the Newhouse school at Syracuse university.
They accepted him ED into a joint program between the Newhouse School and their Business school (Whitman). Keep in mind, he never applied to the joint program. When we called the school he was told to enroll and then he can simply “drop” the Whitman side of the joint program after enrolling (which is exactly what he did with absolutely no difficulty).
So, why did they do this?
I’m pretty sure I know why.
His SAT scores (2250 total 1550 V+M) are very good for Newhouse, but totally off the chart for Whitman. By doing what they did, they get to count his SAT scores among the enrolled Whitman students and thus give a bump to Whitman’s stats. Do this for a few dozen applicants and it can be impactfull.
Also, how many classes in the first semester of college would your son actually have to take in this new major? I know at a lot of schools, the school can suggest one or maybe two classes in the major for the first semester, but most take gen ed requirements or think about switching their major anyways.
Call and ask. It may have been a cut and paste error or something equivalent. I have never heard of a school “assigning” a random major to an incoming student. A school, yes (ie, A&S, engineering, nursing). But not a major. This sounds like an error to me.
I just want to correct this because many people read this forum. This is not true. Cornell has 7 different colleges with different focus. For most of those colleges you do not not have to declare a major when applying, like A&S and engineering. But one must decide which college to apply to, this is no different than other schools like UPenn or Columbia with their Engineering and nursing schools.