<p>D'11 took 3 weeks, but selected an equally difficult major.</p>
<p>Her friend decided, in under a week, that engineering was a no go. Don't know what he picked instead.</p>
<p>I know, lots (even most?) college kids change majors. Just amuzed by the speed at which it happens sometimes.</p>
<p>And some never change at all. Both of my kids stuck with the majors they had planned when they started college – computer science for one, economics for the other.</p>
<p>Neither of mine changed either-both stuck with engineering.</p>
<p>S just started his sophomore year and based on what he’s told me, I anticipate a change this year. Not a big change, just more focused.</p>
<p>Both of mine stuck with their major as well - computer science for both.</p>
<p>I think the biggest switcheroo might be when they get their first grades at the end of the semester/quarter. This is enough to convince many they just might not continue to pursue becoming a doctor, engineer, etc. after all.</p>
<p>S’s friend went through four years of college before deciding that his major wasn’t for him last year. I can’t help but think that he may have felt that it was the wrong major for him a lot earlier but didn’t change. I wonder what his parents think.</p>
<p>Do I win a prize? S1 called home after 5 days of classes his freshman year to announce that he was changing his major.</p>
<p>5 days, 3 weeks, doesn’t take long sometimes. I don’t believe all that high school students really get a taste of what their choosen major is really like until they get to college. There they can talk to their peers and the upperclassmen and find out. </p>
<p>Nothing wrong with this, I think it is normal. What is stupid about the whole system are those colleges that require one to designate a major on their application. Many of the schools that require this also have an insane system in order to change majors, sometimes effectively shutting out many changes.</p>
<p>Colleges should admit students to the college and not to a specific department, going thru frshman year undeclared. Declaring a major should be done at the end of the freshman year / beginning of their sophomre year.</p>
<p>I’ve heard the department funding issue argument as to why they admit by department. IMHO those schools have their funding systems backwards. Instead of limiting the number of students by funding, distribute the funding according to the number of students. My school did it that way and it worked. Better that way than admitting a bunch of poorer students (compared to the other departments) just to fill spaces in a major that is no longer desireable and turning away good students from underfunded departments.</p>
<p>I make the arguement from a logical standpoint and not with an axe to grind. My DS graduated from the same department he was admitted to. My DD is in a school where she did not have to declare and major until her sophomore year (it was optional her freshman year, but didn’t really matter as the classes were pretty much the same for all majors).</p>
<p>I agree with HPuck that it’s better not to admit kids by major, and to give them time before their major choice becomes fixed. That’s the way 100% of the top colleges do it, with the limited exception that some admit separately by school, not major (e.g., Wharton at Penn, Stern or Tisch at NYU), and some of those schools offer only a limited menu of majors. But I also recognize that’s a luxury dependent on pretty secure finances. It’s hard to allocate funding to a department based on the number of students who have selected it as a major in a particular year, because departmental expenses and budgets are not so variable on a few weeks or even months notice. Commitments to faculty and graduate students are usually multi-year. There may be legal outs, but a department that used them would have to spend decades recovering its standing after doing that. And you really don’t want your kids taught primarily by adjuncts hired on the spot market for a semester at a time. So if the institution can’t afford to support excess capacity in some departments during lean years, and doesn’t want to rely too heavily on adjuncts in the fat years, it is going to have to regulate departmental size and workload one way or another.</p>
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<p>In theory, that would be ideal. However, the student in this situation needs to be aware that some majors require starting off the prerequisite courses in the first semester – waiting until the third or fourth semester to start off the prerequisite courses for a major like physics or engineering is likely to result in delayed graduation due to long prerequisite chains.</p>
<p>But many schools are capacity-limited in certain majors, and some of those majors have specific lists of prerequisites that students need to start immediately (and some of those prerequisite courses are capacity-limited). That is likely the reason why some schools or some divisions (e.g. engineering divisions) start freshmen off in a particular major.</p>
<p>In some cases, students are admitted undeclared, but must later apply to declare a capacity-limited major, which is less than ideal as well.</p>
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<p>That may work if the school can afford to have each department have excess capacity (faculty, lab space, etc.) in case the major gets more popular than expected. Otherwise, as noted by a previous poster, the relative slowness of changing the department’s capacity (hiring faculty, building lab space, etc.) compared to the potential change in major popularity can cause the department to not be able to handle an increased number of students declaring the major, unless it requires them to apply to declare the major. And shrinking a department in response to shrinking popularity is also much slower, if most of the faculty are tenured.</p>
<p>LOL, my son changed his prospective major TWICE in the FIRST WEEK of classes!</p>
<p>The first was biotechnology, which he listed on his application. Once he actually read the course catalog he decided it wasn’t what he wanted and changed to biochemistry on registration day. But not-so-secretly he also fantasized about architecture, and switched to that after he was absolutely bewitched at orientation in the college of art and architecture. We’ll see how long his love for architecture lasts: program is competitive and the first two semesters are a kind of trial period, you have to be formally ‘invited’ to continue toward the end of the first year. But that’s life, right? Giving it a shot and hoping it works out.</p>
<p>Know what you mean ucbalumnus. D’11’s change will mean scrambling to find a prerequisite this summer or adding a 5th year to the program as she’s out of sequence.</p>
<p>I changed my own major 5 times before junior year.</p>
<p>I do think it would be ideal if kids didn’t have to choose a major so early on.</p>
<p>Did you have a sense in advance that your kid would be likely to stick to a major or change majors before they started university? </p>
<p>I fully expect our senior highschooler to change majors (but within STEM) because of her general tendency to change her mind about what she loves most (and also because she really isn’t in a position to accurately judge what she now claims she wants to pursue). It’s a big reason for her to stay in Canada for undergrad, where we can easily afford for her to take more time as a result of such changes. But of course I might be entirely wrong in this prediction.</p>
<p>I’d have been astounded if my oldest had changed majors. He’d been into computers since he was seven. Younger son hasn’t officially declared yet (he’s a sophomore), but he went in thinking International Relations and is still thinking it. He says if he changed it would just be to have less of a language requirement by doing something like Political Science with an IR focus.</p>
<p>I changed from what I thought I’d do going in, but had to declare at the end of freshman year and stuck with what I chose then. ( Chose Visual and Environmental Studies vs. History and Lit.)</p>
<p>^ Thanks. It make sense for your oldest that it was very predictable he knew what he wanted, especially as he had been doing it for so long. It is so cool he had all that experience so young!</p>
<p>D indicated a different major for each of the many of the 11 colleges to which she applied. After getting her class schedule for her first semester, and attending, she plans to be science based, rather than humanities/social science (which was the interest she listed at the college she is attending.) So I guess she changed before she even attended.</p>
<p>starbright, he was an unusually precocious kid, but he was also lucky to have a Dad who happened to be doing work with Visual Basic for his lab while on vacation and show my kid how it worked.</p>
<p>At the age of 17 my son’s life path was:
Army ROTC
Psych major
complete service obligation
Get in the FBI</p>
<p>In January of Freshman year was:
Give up the (full ride) AROTC scholarship
Be a Theatre major
Become the next Matt Damon </p>
<p>His dad and I had to tell him we won’t fund a Theatre major at his current school. He could stay there as a Theatre minor or transfer to some place 50% cheaper for the major. </p>
<p>So now he’s an Undecided major with Theatre and Humanities minors at the expensive school. Students there aren’t allowed to declare until they have completed 55 credits. I think we have some more changes in store.</p>
<p>DS did not change majors even through grad school…music performance and we were happy with his choice.</p>
<p>Does DECLARING a major count? DD went in undeclared and declared her first major (engineering) as a sophomore (she had been taking the engineering sequence since day 1 of freshman year so I guesss that doesn’t count as a change)…and then ADDED a major in the middle of her junior year (biology).</p>
<p>@DougBetsy: Oh my goodness. That is quite a change indeed. Good for him for having the courage to explore so widely.</p>