My daughter is confused about what major she would like to put in her application for Northeastern. She was thinking of putting undecided, but her guidance counselor told her that in previous years declaring undecided for Northeastern negatively impacted our students acceptance. Hoping someone can confirm or disagree. Thanks
I don’t think that’s the case - the undeclared program is incredibly helpful here and generally Northeastern does not admit by major or even college. I would mark down the guidance counselor’s advice to extrapolation from a few data anecdotal data points.
This is speculation, but another possibility is that the previous undecided students did not have a clear story in their application. It doesn’t have to be major or subject-specific but every college wants to know what makes a student them - what do they care about or do? What are they interested in? Undecided shouldn’t be code for “I don’t have any interests at all” but rather “I can’t decide which interests I want to study but I do/enjoy/like X, Y, Z”.
Are HS seniors supposed to decide on a major when applying now? I know more than half the people I went to college with didn’t graduate under the major they started with.
That’s still the case for a majority of students today, but most enter with a declared major they later change. Some, of course, stick with their original choice. Between the people I know, I’d say a third stick with their original major, which lines up with your experience.
In the case of Northeastern, you can even change your major between being admitted and your fall semester.
Thank you PengsPhils. I did hear that if you do get into Northeastern undecided they are incredible helpful in assisting the student to discovery what direction they should go in - Thanks again
Do your chances go up if you are Undecided vs trying to get into a selective program, like Architecture?
Northeastern doesn’t claim any programs are selective - they say they admit with uniform criteria across all of their colleges and majors. Once you are admitted you can change your major before you even go to orientation. Back in 2012 my daughter was in the undecided program and it was very good, it has been improved since then and I think it is probably a great program for those who truly don’t know what they want to do.