<p>I'm a rising senior and the one major problem I'm having is with my intended major. I have quite a few questions about this:</p>
<p>1) Does the major I choose affect my chances?
2) If I have a profile of an International Relations major and I apply as an economics major, would that be bad?
3) Is it easy to transfer out of a major once I'm accepted?</p>
<p>I was set to apply to all my schools as an IR major because my profile fits that and I'm passionate about it. My common app essay is on Model UN and how I got into world events. But, my parents want me to apply as a more 'secure' major so I can find jobs. We settled on me applying to 3 schools as IR, 3 schools as economics, and 4 schools as business. </p>
<p>I'm willing to study any of these three majors, but I'm concerned that it'll affect my chances in admissions. First of all, my extracurriculars and my essay point toward IR. Second, it's a lot harder to get into business school. So, I'm in this dilemma.
The schools I'll be applying to are: the UCs, Georgetown, UPenn, Columbia, NYU, Claremont McKenna, Boston College, U Mich, and others.</p>
<p>I know this is a lengthy post, but it would be wonderful if you could answer even one of the questions :)</p>
<p>I’m a rising senior myself but I will just throw in my one comment haha, I know that if you’re applying for a certain major, for example Business, you would usually apply to the school of business for whichever college, for example, NYU Stern. In that sense you would be up against all the other applicants applying for that same school… I hope that makes sense? Basically what I’m trying to say is that your major should only really effect your chances if it’s for a school of _____, insert whatever major there. This is just what I have heard. :)</p>
<p>I agree. If u apply to NYU, u would be applying to their stern school of buisness which is super competitive. Another example, carnegie mellon has an acceptance rate of 30%. Easy enough? Well the school of computer science has an acceptance rate of 8%.
It depends on which college within the university u apply to. If IR and buisness are in the same college, then i think it will have little effect</p>
<p>It does depend on the circumstances, but the answer to the original question is “no” more often than it is “yes.”</p>
<p>At George Washington University, for example, the Elliott School of International Affairs does seem to be a little more selective than the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences. In that sense, it would matter.</p>
<p>But will admissions people look at a high-school student’s application and say, “Economics? What the heck? This person was the outstanding delegate at a Model UN conference. This person who belongs in international relations! Denied.” No.</p>
<p>The answer “yes” is probably more common than you think. In the OP’s list, the UCs, Penn, Columbia, NYU, and Michigan are all divisional (Letters/Arts and Science, Engineering, Business, etc.), so choice of major on application matters, at least in terms of which division one is applying for.</p>
<p>At NC State for example, you apply directly into the college of your intended major, not just ‘NC State University’ - so as a result its much much more difficult to get into NC State engineering than say NC State education.</p>
<p>At Penn State where I’m going, you don’t enter your major until Junior year, however if you’re applying to an enrollment controlled major IE: Business and Engineering school, you’re going to need higher stats because only so many students can be in the program.</p>
<p>I don’t know how this works at other schools, but what I did at Penn State was apply as undecided, get accepted under the undecided banner, and then I have free range to choose any major I want minus nursing and architecture assuming I meet the standard enterence to major requirements. PSU holds spots in those controlled majors for undecided kids, so thats like the ‘back door’ through the tough admission requirements. That may or may not work other places though.</p>
<p>Thanks everyone! The general consensus seems to be that it depends on which school in a college I apply to, which is what I thought as well.
My college counselor, however, has repeatedly stressed that my major matters A LOT. Like, he discouraged me from apply as an econ major because I got a B in pre-calculus and I’m only taking AP Econ in senior year. And really discouraged me from applying as a business major because I have no business extracurriculars and nothing in my profile that says ‘business’. So it got me quite confused…</p>
<p>I mean…there really aren’t many ‘business’ extracurricular activities you can do. </p>
<p>This is taken from the UPenn website about declaring a major and its importance: Not very important is the short answer. Identifying a major certainly gives the admissions committee a sense of which direction you’re leaning, but what you check on the application has no bearing on your course of study once enrolled. Over half of the students who identify an intended course of study on their application end up pursuing something else once at Penn. Half of the College’s applicants check the “undecided” box from the outset!</p>
<p>Yeah, you say that just about every time, ucbalum. And I truly am open to the possibility that I may be underestimating the frequency with which it matters, although I’m not interested enough in the question to go research it myself. I suspect our takes on this question are so different because your background is in a university that practices administration (including admission) by divisions, and mine is in one that doesn’t.</p>
<p>But there’s some fuzziness, I think, in the way we (meaning, people on College Confidential–meaning chiefly high-school students) discuss this issue. Not infrequently, a young poster will ask, “I see that [name of dream college] has hardly any Jewish Studies majors. I really want to major in political science, but they have a lot of political science majors. So would I have a better chance getting into [dream college] if I apply as a Jewish Studies major?”</p>
<p>Even in most divisional colleges and universities, as you’ve called them, Jewish Studies and political science are going to be in the same division, and the answer is pretty certain to be “no.” And I said “mostly no” to vivendium’s question because I *think *that in a lot of colleges (though, notably, not Georgetown), economics and international studies are both going to be housed in arts & sciences. (Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service, I believe, is choosier than Georgetown College.)</p>
<p>And when I give my “mostly no” answer, I do try to qualify it by saying that there are universities where some divisions are more competitive than others, and there are universities with impacted or limited-enrollment majors.</p>
<p>In addition, I just somehow don’t like to encourage thinking of majoring in something you didn’t want to major in as a back door into a college. Really, if you want to be an engineer, you should study engineering where you can, and not elementary education where you wish you could go. You see what I’m saying?</p>
<p>I agree with this last paragraph. Also, the “back door” may not work anyway. Someone who applies to a school where major or division matters in frosh admissions and applies to a less selective major or division is likely to find that declaring or changing into the more selective major or division requires going through another competitive admissions process.</p>
<p>True “major arbitrage” opportunities are uncommon. These might be situations like computer science offered in both an engineering division and an arts and science division, or computer science and a similar software engineering major. At least one “school arbitrage” opportunity exists, where engineering majors considering Florida State can get the same engineering education at the less expensive Florida A&M (the two schools have a joint engineering division).</p>
<p>As others have said, it will matter a lot if your specific university has college of x and college of y. However, even without specifically colleges, I have found that it does matter. I applied to a lot of places as a bio major and was rejected even with GPA that was above average for the school. The places I applied to had rigorous bio/pre-vet programs (I mean I chose those schools for a reason) so yeah. If I had known I’d change my major or that it did weigh a bit, I would’ve gone undecided whilst applying.</p>
<p>How is that finding that choice of major does matter?</p>
<p>I mean, you found that you didn’t get in–about which, by the way, I’m sincerely sorry–but how do you know to attribute that result to your choice of major? There are a lot of possible reasons why a person might not get into a college or university.</p>
<p>"In addition, I just somehow don’t like to encourage thinking of majoring in something you didn’t want to major in as a back door into a college. Really, if you want to be an engineer, you should study engineering where you can, and not elementary education where you wish you could go. You see what I’m saying? "</p>
<p>I said applying as undecided as a back door, not a completely other track.</p>
<p>I have to confess, Etuck, that I had somehow missed that post of yours about the back door when I wrote that paragraph. I didn’t mean to snipe at you personally.</p>
<p>Not an issue. I also wouldn’t endorse applying for an easier major that you don’t like, just to get into a school. But in my case I didn’t see anything wrong with applying undecided, since the school holds slots in those majors for undecided kids anyway.</p>
<p>Entering Penn State undeclared is not really a back door into enrollment-controlled majors, since you then have to maintain a higher college GPA than needed to stay in good academic standing to be admitted to such a major.</p>
<p>Well I’m not completely sure, but I mentioned that I applied to schools that were known for the major I wanted to apply to. I selected “biochemistry” or “biology” for a lot of them. I was rejected to the schools with the most rigorous pre-vet programs in the country, but was accepted to schools with decent pre-vet or biochem programs that set you on track for vet school (basically, not schools everyone raves about going for the rigor and education). Not to mention, my grades were bio were not all that great so that doesn’t put me as a top Biology major applicant, does it?</p>
<p>These were just state schools and I really wasn’t a terrible high school student. If anything, all of these universities were considered safeties with my grades (based on average GPA and SAT scorings) except one or two being matches and one reach.</p>
<p>I know there’s a lot that goes on to what gets a student rejected/accepted, but I would assume in schools with specific programs or good schools within the university, they only accept x amount of students a year. So this is going on the assumption that OP is applying to schools that are really good for his/her major (which usually means it is competitive).</p>
<p>State schools are more likely to have different admissions selectivity by division or major, since they are less likely to be able to maintain spare capacity in high-demand majors, due to budget limitations (this may also apply to less well endowed private schools). But without naming the schools, it is impossible to even try to determine if that is true for the particular schools.</p>
My personal thoughts - Econ is one of the most popular majors at most schools, so it definitely won’t help your app. I don’t think it’ll hurt you, but most of those schools are a shot in the dark for almost anyone. For schools that allow you to switch your major easily, you should probably apply as IR because it fits with your profile and they can see you’re passionate about it and then switch to Econ if you think it’s safer. Alternatively, you can somehow tie economics into IR and seem passionate about that if it’s not too late to change your app.