Some schools my son is applying to allow you to be considered for a second choice of major if you’re not admitted for your first choice. Are there any thoughts as to whether it is better to list a second choice of major that is this in the same college as your first choice? Or is it better to list a second choice that is in a different college?
For example, if your first choice is accountingin the business college, is it better to list a second choice of something similar like, finance in the business college? Or should you list something you are interested in that is in a different college like environmental science in the College of arts and science?
Don’t list something your kid isn’t interested in.
The veterans on CC are very familiar with the freshman year posts “I didn’t get into my first choice major of X, but I did get into my second choice, Y, and I hate Y, and I can’t transfer into X unless I have a 3.8 GPA but I hate my classes so much how can I get a 3.8 GPA?”
Does the kid know enough about accounting AND environmental science to make an educated decision?
The majors should be what the student is REALLY interested in learning.
Learning is not easy. Sooner or later the struggle will come. If I like the topic, the fact that I’m gaining knowledge and skills is enough reward to keep me going. I’d rather learn in a less-known school what I’m interested in than to learn something I’m required to learn from a better-known school.
Some schools make it relatively easy to dual major between such subdivisions, or to switch between subdivisions, or just don’t have such subdivisions in the first place. At others it is much harder, or sometimes harder, or sometimes harder in one direction but not the other, or so on.
So . . . you really need to investigate this at each specific school. Fortunately, this is a common question, and usually they will do their best to explain their system and practices.
I would pick something adjacent to the major they are really interested in and hopefully something they could live with if they don’t get the #1.
For reasons blossom stated above, try to vet the college as much as possible to determine ease of transferring majors once admitted. It’s typically not as “easy” as one would think (or as easy as the colleges tell you), even when the majors are under the same college. Many colleges have designated calendar windows where you can change, and hoops will have to have been jumped through, minimum GPA’s reached and pre-requisite classes taken. If the intent is to graduate in 4 years, getting behind can happen quickly when switching majors.
I don’t love that some colleges do this. My kid is a finance major but would not be happy in accounting, marketing or supply chain. I guess the argument for some is that getting admitted under any major is better than the rejection but rarely is it as easy as it seems to switch majors - especially restricted majors.
With the exception of majors such as nursing, engineering, and other impacted majors in a particular college within a university, it doesn’t matter what a student lists as a potential major. However, there should be genuine interest. In the original example, I think it’s perfectly fine to list finance and environmental science.
Students change majors all the time. When the high school senior applies to college saying they want to major in history, no one will care if they end up majoring in mathematics.
To anyone else reading, don’t put undecided as a potential major. Seems wishy washy.
I usually look at that as a red flag. What the school is really saying is this, “We’ve artificially restricted employable majors to benefit ourselves, so we’ll be happy to let you study whatever we choose for you if you’re not one of the chosen…good luck.” Personally, I have a zero tolerance for that. If he wants to study accounting, there are plenty of other schools that are more fair to students wanting to get marketable job skills.
This is very dependent on the college and the major. For the UCs, they mean it when they say that, if your first major is impacted, choose an alternate major that is not. In that case, you should choose an alternate major in a different department (ex. accounting in the business college and econ in L&S). If there is no second major that your student is interested in studying, you can leave it blank or list two choices in the impacted department.
I don’t view this as anything sinister by the university. They know that many students change their major. Most students haven’t had a lot of accounting exposure in HS. They may apply for it as a means to a potential career and find that they prefer math or economics over accounting. They may take a class in something they never knew existed and change to a major they hadn’t heard of before.
Most of the time these restrictions are not artificial. Many engineering programs are harder to be accepted to than the general university is. There are often very real limits to how many students an engineering major can handle in their labs, so they need to make cuts. Even if the school wants to increase the capacity of the major, there is a lag to hire the faculty and a bigger lag to build the new buildings to increase the lab space. The engineering majors are also often more demanding than many other majors, and not every student who is accepted to the university is a good bet to be able to handle the workload for engineering. You don’t do students any favors by letting them start in a major they are not likely to be able to handle.
Which is “better” kinda boils down to whether you want the school or the major.
D24 wants to be in her major from the beginning, no messing around trying to switch from a different major, and no competitive secondary application process in the sophomore/junior year of college.
One example for her is NC State. They admit directly into major, and allow you to select a second choice for major. However, some majors can only be a first choice major. If you choose Applied Mathematics, you cannot select Statistics or Math as a backup. If you don’t get into Industrial Design, you cannot choose any of the other design majors as a second. D24 will try for her first choice, but with the way they restrict second choice majors her “second” choice would probably be more like her 5th and not what she wants at all.
With the schools/major D24 is looking at, she wouldn’t select the school if they put her in the second major (whether same or different college), so it doesn’t really matter for her.
If she wanted to go to a particular college so badly that the major wasn’t as important, I would still suggest that she choose a second major where she could see a clear career path.
If “better” means just getting in and dealing with it from there, choosing a less impacted major as the second choice seems to be the thing to do. However, if the intent is to try to get to the first major sideways through the second, be really aware of what kind of restrictions the school places on taking classes outside of major & the requirements for changing majors, it can be next to impossible in some cases and in many cases will not be possible to finish in 4 years.
Note that this varies by major. For engineering majors at NCSU, students enter as “engineering first year” (EFY) and must compete to enter their majors later based on college course work and grades.
Thank you for the clarification. D24 is not looking at engineering so I hadn’t researched that. We eliminated University of Washington for that type of shenanigans in her original intended major.
Too many suicides among the engineering students at NC State, I wonder if this type of competition is really necessary.
I agree with other posters that OP’s son should choose majors based first and foremost on his interest. But it’s entirely possible (and probable) that he doesn’t yet have a strong interest for his potential second-choice major. A plan B is just a plan B, a backup plan.
If he’s truly indifferent, and he isn’t accepted by his first-choice major, it seems to me that he’d be better off having a different college (with a different set of eyes) to take a look at his application. AOs in the same college are likely to think that he’s just using his second-choice major as a stepping stone to his first-choice major in the same college.