Internal Transfers: The LOWDOWN

Ruella76
Wed, 29 Jul 2009 18:19:57 +0000

I doubt that Cornell admissions cares a lot about what major you put down on your application, i.e. I don’t think they give that much more preference to someone who puts down a rare major like Asian Studies over a common major like Biology (I’m just talking about Arts and Sciences here, the other colleges operate a bit differently). Why? Because it’s so easy to change! The major you put down on your application is far from set in stone–you can even change it before you start your freshman year. I myself applied to Cornell as a physics major (with some demonstrated interest, and I’m female) so assuming admissions did give me an advantage over other applicants, what a bad idea that would have been! Because I ended up changing my major to undecided before I started in the fall, and am now thinking of majoring in something within humanities/social sciences.

College applicants often have very little idea of what they’re doing when they declare a major on their application, so their decision should be taken with a very large grain of salt. Cornell, I’m sure, knows this.

As far as internal transfers go, I know of a number of people who have applied and nearly all of them have been accepted. It’s more complicated if you’re transferring to something totally different like engineering to hotel school, but most people aren’t. The only real difficulties are juggling different kinds of classes (classes your old college requires and classes your new college requires) and getting to know a new advisor.