I’m a first gen and my parents aren’t helpful with college questions. When a college app asks you for a first major and two backup majors, how does it correlate to your acceptance? Like do they just pick which one fits you best?
If your first choice major is super popular at a school and you aren’t chosen for that major, it may be that your second or third choices are less competitive that year and you are a good fit for those. In that case, you would be offered admission to one of those majors instead of your first choice.
Some students are perfectly happy with any of their majors and going to a particular school is more important than the major. While other students will pass on even a very prestigious university if they can’t get their major there.
At some colleges (e.g., George Washington) students may be admitted by major with a scholarship tied to a specific major. Some large universities (e.g., Cornell) admit students to specific schools within them, and changing majors may involve a transfer process which may be easy or hard depending on the university.
At other colleges (e.g., Williams, Amherst, Wesleyan, overall, and Princeton/Johns Hopkins/etc. with the exception of some engineering majors), you do not need to know for sure what you will major in when you apply. You are just admitted to the college as a whole, and you declare your major usually in the second half of sophomore year. If the college asks in which major you are interested, either you can say ‘undecided’ or you can list some areas of possible interest, and admissions officers will use that to get an idea of your interests and maybe to balance the class… but you are not required to major in whatever you named on your application. In fact, many liberal arts colleges expect you to explore a broad mix of subjects in your first couple of years and to discover your interests along the way!
If listing multiple choices of major at a college that requires a commitment of major, be careful to list only ones in which you are really willing to major. I know a kid who applied to GW, his top choice university, but he listed a couple of choices of major, and he was admitted to his second choice major, and his scholarship was tied to that. (How did they pick that for him? I don’t know. Maybe institutional needs- they had fewer applicants in that major than in the first?) He ended up going to another college because he got a merit scholarship for his first choice major. He decided he wanted to study his favorite subject more than go to what was originally his favorite college.