It does look like about 1,300 students per year enroll in Washington’s CSE 142, the first course for CS majors, with about 1,200 following it with CSE 143. If there are 250 students per year in the CS major, and 20% of them are direct admit, the non-direct admit CS majors number 200 per year. Based on the published admission rate of 40%, it looks like:
1,300 enroll in CSE 142
(100 do not continue)
1,200 enroll in CSE 143
(650 do not apply to the CS major, 50 are already in the CS major by direct admit)
500 apply to the CS major
(300 rejected)
200 are admitted to the CS major
However, the 650 who do not go from CSE 143 to applying to the CS major may include substantial numbers of students who were never intending to apply to the CS major. A question would be, how many are these students, versus those who were “weeded out” (grades/GPA too low for them to think it is worth the bother to apply to the CS major)?
I’ve seen this many places “The VAST majority of students switch majors multiple times while in college.” and I’d love to see the data. I know some students who start out premed (which isn’t a major but may dictate a STEM major) who don’t do well often move out of science. But in my experience most students stay in their major. Many don’t but by no means the majority. I’d say a minority-like not even a quarter.
This will generate a report showing, for a given cohort, what percentage graduated in the same major and what percentage graduated in any major. It looks like the typical case is that only a minority of graduates graduated in the same major as they entered as (note: this school generally admits frosh directly to majors).
Of course, the rate of changing majors can differ at different schools. Perhaps a well known example is that engineering majors have a high rate of changing out of the major in general, but the rate of changing out is much lower at more selective schools (or more selective engineering divisions). Also, accounting changes of major may not be complete at schools or divisions where students generally enter undeclared, since undeclared students may change their intended majors without the school knowing about it.
^ True, but using blanket, stereotypical facts to decide this issue is ludicrous. “Never mind about what major you’re admitted to, you’ll likely change it anyway - you were considering culinary arts with a concentration in tofu & eggplant salads if CS didn’t work out, right?”
That’s like saying that the majority of teens have sex, thus every teen in your acquaintance will, no doubt about it.
One childhood pediatrician was a history major pre-med at a LAC currently ranked in the top 130.
In fact, several doctor friends and acquaintances I know…including a med school Prof who worked admissions have said a non-STEM major pre-med would actually have a slight advantage in the admission process as the vast majority of med school applicants tend to be natural science majors…especially biology or one of its sub-fields.