<p>Do you have to apply outright to one of the schools of studies? Like, you have to apply to Fu outright when you apply to Columbia. Is it this way with Stanford? I'd imagine many students are still undecided, so what would students like that (me) do?</p>
<p>You do not apply to a specific school at Stanford.</p>
<p>Stanford doesn't allow you to declare a major until your soph year because they want you to explore. You do not apply to a specific school.</p>
<p>Yes! That makes things so much easier!</p>
<p>I have a friend who declared her major as a freshman. There's really no pressure to do so, however. I thought I'd do it right away and quickly realized there was no reason to.</p>
<p>And you don't have to apply to specific schools. I've been there a year, and I hardly noticed that there were multiple schools.</p>
<p>LOL, Sly. I declared psychology as a freshman... partially because I wanted to, and partially because after that quarter they were going to raise the unit requirement from 55 to 70 units. And there's no penalty for changing your major (once, at least.. I don't know about more times). My sophomore year, I decided biology was right for me and changed to a psychology minor.</p>
<p>Stanford's flexibility here is awesome. I agree that they truly want you to find something you like.</p>
<p>If Stanford doesn't require you specify a major in the app, how can they make sure the quota for the various schools are met? What if one year everyone decides to do engineering? What would happen to the school of humanities?</p>
<p>^that just won't happen. it just works out that they have it pretty spread out among schools. i don't know exactly.</p>
<p>All Stanford's schools are great and famous and so I think that on average lots of people go to all of em</p>
<p>Do you think it would help if you specify a major in the app though? (applying to a rare major such as classics?)</p>
<p>Hmm.... I would say possibly, if you also write about classics in one of your essays and talk about why you enjoy it. Honestly, I'm not sure how Stanford views this. There are people who switch from engineering to English, so things are quite unexpected. I am not aware of any quotas in departments.</p>
<p>If you actually truly love that subject, then having an unusual passion will help you, but I think they can read insincerity from a mile away.</p>
<p>I was using classics as an example. I'm probably going to put music on the app though</p>
<p>I didn't mean to imply that you lacked intregrity or anything, but I also didn't want to imply that applying to an uncommon major would help you either. Sorry if it came off in any way offensively.</p>