Specialized or open minded?

Applying to College
1

<p>Hi,</p>

<p>Have applied to top tier schools and am already fairly certain of the career I want to take in life (neurolinguistics researcher). Consequently, the main reasons why I applied to certain colleges was because of their faculty and the reputation of their department of linguistics and department of neuroscience, as well as the majors and courses they offer in these fields.</p>

<p>Compared to the average applicant I would say that I am more specialized (in the sense that I already know what professional path I want to take, please correct me if I am wrong). My question is if you think that top school (Hopkins, Columbia, MIT, Brown etc) will treat this as something positive or something negative (maybe they don’t think I’m open minded enough for college, which offers a broad based education).</p>

<p>I should add that I am an international student.</p>

2

<p>I don’t think it will be viewed as a negative. It might be seen as a slight positive because it shows that you have researched the schools and chosen them with a specific purpose in mind. Overall, I think colleges understand that students come to schools for a variety of reasons. Some who think they are committed to a field end up changing their minds, others stay with it. I don’t think it will be much of a factor one way or the other.</p>

3

<p>It will be seen as neither a negative nor a positive. Colleges know that a good majority of all students, including those who are convinced of their career paths, will change their majors at least once during their career. They put little stock into it.</p>