But, rewinding to the student’s senior year in high school, that brings up two questions:
How well can the students themselves or their parents estimate the likelihood of staying in the original intended major versus changing major? (Of course, if the original intended major is "undecided", it will change.)
How should the intended major and the likelihood (or not) of changing major be accounted for when selecting colleges?
Note that there are many aspects of question 2:
a. Limiting college choices to those where the majors of interest exist and are of decent quality.
b. Matriculating to a college where the intended major is strong, but other aspects of the college (cost, other majors or academic programs, non-academic factors, etc.) are less optimal. Could result in regret or need to transfer if the student changes major.
c. Matriculating to a college where changing major is difficult because other majors that may be of interest are oversubscribed and have competitive admission to get into the major.
d. Considering major-specific scholarships when deciding which college to matriculate. If the scholarship is necessary for affordability, then changing major could require transferring to a lower cost college. Otherwise, changing major could still result in higher costs.
e. Applying to a specific more competitive major for frosh admission, versus applying to the school for general undeclared admission.
My daughter is interested in two not-overly-common majors, and the fields are pretty different from each other.
I was happy to use this as a first cut for colleges to consider, because I figure any school that has both of those will have lots of other interesting stuff for her to choose from should she change her mind down the line.
(Neither of them are competitive-entry majors, though, at least not at the schools remaining on her list. That would throw the entire line of reasoning into a mild panic.)
It depends on the kid. I’d have been astounded if my older kid had majored in anything but CS. He caught the bug in 2nd grade, and had enough work experience when he applied to college that he had a pretty good idea what working in the field was like.
Younger son who majored in IR might have been better off with history in retrospect. He didn’t change.
I think the statistics are that half the students end up switching majors at least once. So I do think you should choose a school that has multiple strengths if you can.
Some students changing major may change to a closely related one (e.g. math to statistics, or English to comparative literature), but others may change to a very different one (e.g. English to math). Is it possible to estimate the likelihood of each type of major change for a given student?
Post #5- For some students yes and for some no. I do think some students are more set on a major going in than others as mathmom’s students demonstrate. I think a lot of kids say Engineering or medicine but either do not make it through the weed out classes or find a major they had never encountered or considered. A 17 year old is only exposed to so many options, a 20 year old a lot more and of course a 45 year old a ton more. What you major in still doesn’t seal your fate.
I’d say an engineering major has a higher chance of changing than a math major. I have no facts to back this up only anecdotes. But the kids I know weren’t really exposed to engineering before college. They were good STEM kids whose parents and teachers said- be an engineer. Once they saw real engineering (or st least the college version of it), they did not enjoy it.
Perhaps, as noted or hinted above, there is also a “push” factor in that some majors at some schools are oversubscribed, so that some students are forced to change (intended) major because they could not get admitted to their majors, or did not meet progression requirements to stay in their majors (where such admission or progression requirements require a GPA substantially higher than 2.0 and/or competitive applications with essays and other items). For example, a student earning a 3.3 GPA in college may be forced into changing his/her (intended) major if that major happens to require a 3.5 GPA to enter.
Some students are different from others or we may call some apples and others oranges. My guess is that stronger students are less likely to change majors. Stronger is school specific.
Both of my kids had the same academic strength. Both had demanding majors. One added a second major…am S the other didn’t. In the case of the added major kid…that kid should have just switched majors.
Whether someone changes majors or not is very individual and highly dependent on whether he/she managed to find and focus on a few intellectual/pre-professional interests early on or not.
Saw both sides of this as most HS classmates I knew DIDN’T change their initial majors as they either knew strongly what they wanted in terms of academic major/career paths early on* whereas many college classmates changed majors at least once and a few did so multiple times.
I was closer to one of the former as I majored in a field I had strong intellectual interests in since I was a child. However, I also used my undergrad to explore the fields of CS, Politics, and East Asian Studies without necessarily majoring in any of them.
This wasn't always necessarily a good thing as some found while they enjoyed studying the academic/pre-professional major leading to career paths they thought they would like working in, they found the actual nature of the work in that career path left much to be desired**. Worse, the fact they were such strong students they excelled in their studies/career meant that realization didn't come until they've already invested several years into a career they later realized was a mistake.
** I.e.: Someone who enjoyed studying engineering, but found he/she hates the reality of working in the field of engineering after undergrad/grad school or likewise…someone who enjoyed studying law…but found he/she hates the reality of working as a practicing lawyer***.
*** One example of the former was a former supervisor at a tech startup who left the field of ChemE despite finding gainful employment and passing the first part of the 2 part Professional Engineer licensing exam in the '80s for computer programming. One example of the latter I knew ended up being a lit Prof.
Out of curiosity, why would history be better than IR for him?
Am asking as someone who was deciding between history and poli-sci/politics and opted for the former and because IR is a subfield of Poli-Sci/Politics. Ended up minoring in Politics…though doing so mainly from a comparative rather than an IR angle.
This is an issue we’ve been considering, since D plans on a rather uncommon major. It made me uncomfortable to exclude many very good schools that fit her in alll other ways, simply because of a major that she might not ever fully pursue. But in the end, major availability was as good a way as any to pare down the list. Also, the schools that had her major tended to offer a similar constellation of her other areas of interest as well. Additionally, since she will apply ED, the fact she can only pick one school for now anyway make me feel better about this. If she doesn’t get in ED, though, we will definitely expand the list to include schools that only offer the subject as a minor or concentration, and maybe even schools which offer just a few classes in it.
When a kid says, “I want to do X,” it’s very difficult to look at schools that don’t have X. My oldest wanted a career-specific, rather uncommon major. She also had requirements about size of school and distance from home. Really limited the search. She dropped major X first semester as the first course in the major required job shadowing. She realized that all the “cool” parts of the job were really just a tiny piece of what the career entailed. Do I wish she’d been at another school with more options when that happened? Yes. Without a doubt. Would she have considered schools without major X when she was a junior and senior in high school? Definitely not.
@cobrat, because he didn’t like his Poli Sci courses and didn’t feel he learned anything useful. He also didn’t feel the beginning economics course he took were enough to really learn anything useful. Having to take Arabic every year for IR also was a big time suck. But mostly he just enjoyed all the history courses he took and did very well in them. He’d have had a much better GPA if he’d majored in history.
We encouraged our S to be undecided as we believe college is the place for discovery. He ended up majoring in Politics and minoring in History. His job has nothing to do with either major.