College counselor at elite private school: “Indicate ‘undecided’ on your college application to show schools you are open to learning.” This is the worst college admission advice I’ve ever heard.
When I read an application, one of the first things I looked for was what you wanted to study, why, and how you wanted to use your education to do something specific and helpful in the world. You’re applying to be a scholar who works with other scholars—that is, college professors. Admission officers are talent scouts for college professors. Ideally, those professors want to teach, collaborate, and learn from students with shared academic interests.
Who do you think looks more compelling: the undecided student who writes a touching personal essay on their big Irish family? Or the student who writes about stoic philosophy, positive psychology, and says they want to become a pediatric psychologist who draws on Aurelius and Seligman to help kids flourish?
Who do you think my philosophy and psychology professors want me to pick?
“That’s awful. These kids are 17. How can you expect them to know what they want to do with their life? Isn’t that the whole point of college? And especially a liberal arts education: To explore what you want to do? Isn’t that type of educational-exploration what makes American higher education so special?”
That’s not a trivial response. I get it. Of course, one point of college is to explore different academic fields and professional interests. At most schools, you don’t declare a major until junior year. You can, and likely will, change your mind about what you want to study or do when you’re in college—or 1, 2, or 10 years after graduation.
But tactically? Advising a student to apply undecided is dead wrong. That type of advice reveals a failure to think through the perspective of an admission officer.
Try to imagine it: 50,000 of the most impressive students in the world apply for 2,000 seats. You have to decide who makes the cut. It’s hard to explain how difficult this is unless you’ve done it. I’ll just report my experience from Stanford admissions: when a student tells you they’ve thought through what they want to study and why, it’s one of the most helpful things they can say. Because when I go to committee to advocate for my students from California, my colleague who reads Texas wants to know why my students deserve admission. You better believe it’s a winning argument when I can point out my student has a specific academic vision—backed up by compelling activities and writing—and that our philosophy and psychology professors will love her.
And substantively, this objection—“they’re only 17, let them explore and figure it out later”—is wrong too: We should encourage students to use the college admission process to do the hard work of thinking through what they might want to study and do with their life. If you believe in the value of a liberal arts education, what could be more important than encouraging students to engage in a Socratic self-examination of what they care about, what they want to do, and who they might want to become?
All of this comes with a caveat: Students should decide what’s most true for them for now—subject to change. To be clear, you need to decide what’s authentically the most true. If you engineer some phony interest to take advantage of an undersubscribed major it will backfire and you’ll get rejected. If you’re working with your kids or mentoring students, you should push them to use their college admission process as a capstone moment to take stock of who they are and think through what they might want to become. Not give them a pass to figure it out later and apply undecided.
Here’s the bottom line: The most compelling pitch you can make to a college? Telling them you know why you’re coming.
–MCS