<p>Will declaring undecided on my commonapp hurt my chance for admissions at rice, or any high caliber school for that matter?
Why or why not?</p>
<p>No.</p>
<p>You're a senior in high school. You don't have to know what you want to do in college, because there's a good chance that will change.</p>
<p>..........NYSkins1 is right and you may not know (exactly) until your a Sophomore, and most colleges know that.</p>
<p>I don't think it matters at all for Rice. I think it might for some schools (like Carnegie Mellon) where you have to apply directly to a certain department. For example, if you apply to the Computer Science department at Carnegie, you should put "computer science" or something related on your major, I would think.</p>
<p>Rice really prides itself on being a great place to experiment with different areas of study and change your mind about what you want to do with yourself. Given that, I don't think they would look unfavorably upon a candidate who admits that he doesn't know what he wants to do. And they usually assume that even if you do say what your major is, there's a pretty high probability of it changing.</p>
<p>I would definitely put down a major. I think it's a pragmatic thing. You are trying to create an image for yourself. No I am not saying putting down "undecided" reflects upon your personality or something like that. I am saying that it is an opportunity that you can take advantage of in order to give them more information about you. Adcoms know the majors are just interests at this point anyway. Might as well reinforce (or indicate) what your interests might be. I see "undecided" as maximally uninformative.</p>
<p>But sreis, don't you already do that when you pick the school of study to which you apply? Again, it's not a commitment, but it reflects on your interests. Some of the adcoms (Keith Todd, director of admissions, and Luis Arandia, assistant director of admissions, among them) have told me even that has little to no bearing on your admissions.</p>
<p>It seems that undecided wouldn't benefit many applicants, but hey put what you want. That is true, though, school matters. There may be instances in which undecided is better, but my opinion is that the default is a major. Little bearing does not make a good decision into a bad one or vice versa.</p>
<p>Hmph. So I think what basically all of us have said is that, given that the adcoms know that there's a high probability of any intended major changing, they don't really give any weight to it, so it doesn't really matter that you put undecided. You could use it as way to further indicate your interests, but if you left it blank, don't sweat it .... it's not going to hurt you.</p>