@blossom I’m not seeing how Rice fits with what you’re trying to illustrate.
? It’s easy to fall in love with Harvard because “it’s Harvard”. It takes a little more work to fall in love with a place like Rice (especially if you live in a part of the country which doesn’t send a lot of kids to Rice)-- but Rice has many Harvard-like qualities to it…
So all those months pining away for Harvard-- which for some kids is truly not going to happen- could be spent falling in love with an actual reach-- but one which is NOT unrealistic. Rice isn’t a cakewalk for admissions but depending on a kids stats, it’s a much more “reasonable reach” than just randomly targeting Harvard because it’s Harvard even though your HS Naviance data shows that “kids like you” have gotten into Harvard zero times using the past admissions data.
That’s what I’m trying to illustrate.
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@blossom Ah, okay. I was stuck on the description of Rice doing cartwheels for students who have no chance at Ivies, which didn’t strike me as accurate (and it didn’t seem to fit with the other 3 you listed as similar examples). I get your general point though.
The world isn’t black and white, and neither is the admission process. There’s a lot of room between a random process and a deterministic/formulaic process. There’re things an applicant can do to improve his/her chances, but almost no one can fully remove all randomness. It’s an imperfect process, which results, in hindsight, some students who should have been admitted were rejected while some who should have been rejected were admitted. There’s some degree of luck involved in the process.
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@collegemom3717 You’re right to sense the tension. Here’s what Stanford says: “Sometimes a good way to evaluate the major or minor is to ‘try it on’—declare, integrate yourself into the department, and see if it’s the right fit. You can certainly change majors if you later realize a different field is a better fit for you.” (https://majors.stanford.edu/)
So if that’s the party line, how do you square that with me telling you it’s a must to articulate what you want to study?
Here’s what I said: “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.”
The distinction is getting in vs. what happens once you’re in.
Colleges will tell you all day it’s OK to be undecided, they want students open to learning. That’s true. But from an admission officers’ perspective, especially when you’re working with low acceptance rates, it’s hard to win-over an admission officer–who then needs to win over their colleagues–with an undecided, “well-rounded” application that has no clear academic points of excellence.
So I’m just reporting a fact of my experience admitting students to Stanford: Students who pitched specific academic interests were much more compelling than an undecided student who didn’t articulate a thoughtful academic vision for what they wanted to study and do at Stanford.
Malcolm Gladwell suggests that what makes something interesting is specificity. I think he’s right. And I think that has something to do with what I’m saying: An applicant who gets specific is much more compelling than one who is general. A student who applies undecided and writes about a love of reading could be competitive; but a student who applies as Creative Literature and writes passionately about Hemingway’s philosophy of omission is compelling–partly because they’re just getting more specific. That specificity is both interesting and validating: it suggests this student is for real about their claimed interest.
Here’s Yale: "As we carefully and respectfully review every application, two questions guide our admissions team: ‘Who is likely to make the most of Yale’s resources?’ and ‘Who will contribute most significantly to the Yale community?’” (What Yale Looks For | Yale College Undergraduate Admissions).
You better believe a student who has a specific major in mind and articulates a specific academic vision for why they want to study that major has a stronger answer to those two questions. Obviously other contributions matter, but your intellectual contributions to a university’s academic community are primary: “Yale is above all an academic institution. This means academic strength is our first consideration in evaluating any candidate.” Writing about your specific academic interests with command and specificity is the way to nail that primary consideration.
–MCS
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They’re 17 years old, for heaven’s sake. Even Stanford’s former dean made it plain they can’t declare passions and path at that age. They have little life experience. (This, despite how S bandies the word ‘passions,’ today.)
Of course, academic might is a first bar. But then, with tens of thousands of high quality applicants, you’d better believe the rest of it can be/will be crucial.
Gladwell isn’t very popuar on CC. And never had a hand in admissions. Just reading/relying on the Harvard notes can also be quite misleading. And quotes can be illustrative, but they very rarely cover the whole process.
It’s risky to be so specific that adcoms will wonder just how narrow your interests (and energies) are.
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@lookingforward “They’re 17 years old, for heavens sake.” Read my OP first before you critique it. I addressed your specific objection: "‘That’s awful. These kids are 17. How can you expect them to know what they want to do with their life?’ . . . . That’s not a trivial response . . . "
“Gladwell isn’t very popular on CC. And never had a hand in admissions.” I point out that Gladwell makes a good point about specificity and your response is he’s not popular on College Confidential? Good. Sounds like CC needs some new voices.
–MCS
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I hope this post doesn’t rub some posters the wrong way. There’re some “conventional wisdoms” that are indeed “conventional” but not “wisdoms”. Every person has his/her own strengths and should be encouraged to develop those strengths. Our elite colleges produce too many intelligent jacks of all trades but masters of none. Many of them end up on Wall Street (and some become politicians). Is this good for the country? I think not. The system does produce a few superstars. But they were going to be superstars anyway, regardless where they went to college (or no college at all).
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I agree with the OP here. I think it’s much easier for a student to sell themselves in their application, and interviews, if they have a clear sense of direction/major. IMO, it makes the “why us” type questions easier to answer.
Some of my worst Cornell meetings were with kids who had no plans for their major. Rightly or wrongly, they came across to me as not being serious or committed students.
And students who are trying to game admission by applying to an unsubscribed major are generally easy to spot.
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That makes sense.
Also, it seems pretty obvious that by looking at the activities and coursework a student took in high school they do have areas of interest/strengths that show where they would have direction in. It doesn’t mean they’ll stay there, but to just apply as as UGS major off the bat, seems awkward.
My son’s applications and coursework screams CS - he has taken AP CS, Data Data Structures, Senior Teaches Data Structures, Machine Learning, and various coding activities and clubs along with math and science stuff. While he did well in the Social Sciences, if he applied for SHA at Cornell, their eyebrows would go up. Or, if he just applied to generic Undergraduate Studies somewhere, that would also look odd. Not saying he can’t, but what do you talk about or write an essay about? Kids must have a passion in something even though we all know that changes as so many do change their majors and look at how many of us have changed our professions over time.
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For their own purposes, having some academic superstars is good for the elite colleges’ continuing prestige. But they also find that having some future powerful politicians, Wall Street moguls, etc. is also good for their continuing prestige (and wealth). So having students who are likely to end up there (even if helped a lot by inheritance, rather than purely through own merit and achievement), even though they are merely good (not superstar) academically, furthers their goals.
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I don’t think it’s risky at all to be narrow, as we know athletes are usually the most narrow of applicants (even in off season they work on their sport), and they have the largest advantage of any applicant, outside of say a Malia Obama.
The kids that get into MIT and Cal Tech, and I know a few, have pretty narrow interests as well, they do other things like say play a sport, but their focus is on showing they’re one of the top 20 or 25 high schoolers in their subject. And that means olympiads, science fairs at the national or international level.
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Some kids are late deciders…
Also, many parent-age people have been forced to change their professions involuntarily as their old professions lost market demand. Not all are successful in finding new professions that provide similar or better levels of satisfaction (however defined) as the old ones.
The closest analog to this for college would be new college graduates who find that their academic passions has few job and career opportunities, so they are forced to seek “generic BA/BS” jobs that may not have much specifically to do with their academic passions. Another analog would be those who failed to attain their reach goals (e.g. pre-meds who do not get into medical school) and must find something else to do.
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While I agree that having some idea of what you want to do is important and helpful in the process, I would imagine that at the vast majority of colleges, being undecided would not necessarily hurt your chances of admission. Schools that are more stats based or schools with high acceptance rates are probably not rejecting an applicant for being undecided. Stanford, the Ivies, and other schools with insanely low acceptance rates are a whole different ballgame, but I would hope that most colleges don’t reject someone just for being undecided. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
However, some stats-based-admission colleges admit by major.
For example: https://www.sjsu.edu/admissions/impaction/freshmen-impaction-results/2020-fall.php
True. Someone truly undecided would maybe want to avoid schools that admit by major. Or they could pick something that they are potentially interested in, and look into how easy it is to change majors.
This topic isn’t exactly for the student that wants to study Criminal Justice at a local state school with an admission rate of 70%+.
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@theloniusmonk Well, you know MIT’s blog thoughts. And, after those top 25 kids?
Since adcoms, not applicants, control the decisions (not counting athletic recruits,) better to cover your bases. Some colleges ask, “Why this major?” Go to town on that one, if you wish.
But using the Personal Statement for this? In the end, each applicant has to make his or her own best decisions. Consider all facets.
I was responding to this quote about applying to every college. While ideally you have an idea of what you want to do, I think it is okay to be truly undecided as well. You just need to pick your college list wisely (which goes for everyone!)
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I totally agree with this. The advice in the OP and several of the posts following it are clearly meant for those applying to top colleges, not the majority of kids. Yet its written like its gospel that everyone should follow. One of my biggest problems with this site is that it is so focused on the schools at the very top.
That said, both of my kids put down a major on their applications though neither was decided. They picked the one that made the most sense based on their high school activities and grades. My D abandoned her intended major before she even started freshman year. My S is actually majoring in what he put on his application. At many schools its not that hard to switch unless you are trying to get into CS or engineering.
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