<p>Does not knowing your major decrease your chances of getting into top colleges?</p>
<p>Also, do admissions people essentially say “We need X students majoring in Y and W students majoring in Z.”?</p>
<p>A major <em>might</em> help if it’s needed at that college and one has ecs to back it up. Choice of major usually doesn’t matter except specialized cases like business or engineering. In any case, it’s very difficult to predict which majors are in demand at a particular college. “Undecided” is perfectly fine is you’re completely unsure.</p>
<p>Colleges that require you to designate a major always have an undecided designation (or similar named category like “general curriculum” which means the same thing). It generally is not a disadvantage for admission and, at many, a significant percentage of those admitted are undecided, e.g., UIUC usually has about 30% in that category. Since undecideds are usually placed in the Arts & Sciences college of the university, it could later be somewhat of a disadvantage if you want to switch to the business or engineering college at the university which are often choosey about whom they will take as intercollege transfers from Arts & Sciences.</p>
<p>As to your question as to whether colleges have numbers they are looking to admit for a major, the answer is often yes. Many generate desired enrollment numbers per major (or at least per department) that they then rely on in determining how many they admit from those who apply for that major (they usually admit a lot more than the desired enrollment number because they know many admitted will ultimately not enroll). Many of those have a high number designated for “undecideds” because they know a large percentage of high school students are undecided and they still want to admit those students.</p>
<p>One red flag to an application would be putting down that you want to major in a field that is not offered at the college. But the converse – putting down undecided – shouldn’t be a problem.</p>