Should intended major choices impact essays?

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@RichInPitt

Depends on the essay. If it’s something like “why did you chose your major”, probably.

If it’s “Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure.” it can be about anything. Unless the best story you can tell is about an Electrical Engineering failure, you shouldn’t try to force it to be about your major.

A vast majority of essays are attempts to learn about you as a person.

@ucbalumnus

Intended major affects the essay more if the essay topic is something like “describe your intended academic pathway and how and why you chose it” versus something like “describe a difficult problem that you solved”.

So if the essay was, for example: “Please tell us more about what has led you to an interest in this field of study, what experiences (if any) you have had in engineering, and what it is about Yale’s engineering program that appeals to you”, I would have to write about Electrical Engineering? Can I just write about the computer science bit and say I would like to explore EE?