<p>I know for a fact that the admissions committee will compare each applicant to other applicants who wish to study the same thing. </p>
<p>So-- does anyone know which major has the highest acceptance rate?</p>
<p>I somehow managed to stumble upon the highest major acceptance rates for UC Berkeley and it proved very interesting…</p>
<p>A few points:</p>
<p>UC Berkeley only cares about majors for certain types of engineering majors. If the acceptance rates are dissimilar, this reflects the different merits of students applying for the different majors.</p>
<p>At Harvard (and any other Ivy League school), your major does not matter <em>unless</em> it is engineering.</p>
<p>You should select a major you are interested in at this time. They do expect you to change it.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>Not true – at Penn, it also matters if your prospective major is nursing or business; at Cornell, it also matters if your prospective major is anything outside the liberal arts (architecture, agriculture, hotel management, etc.).</p>
<p>At all Ivy League schools, it does not matter which LIBERAL ARTS major you choose, and at Harvard, that means it does not matter across the board.</p>
<p>Well, the examples you mentioned have their own colleges/schools so it’s not really the <em>major</em> that matters. I suppose I could have been more specific though.</p>
<p>Good job, Hanna.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>That’s true, but incomplete. It’s not just engineering majors. Certain majors are only taught at certain colleges, and the various colleges have different admissions competitiveness. For example, if you declare a major of Environmental Sciences or Nutritional Sciences, then you are, by definition, applying to the College of Natural Resources (CNR). CNR is probably easier to get into than Letters&Science.</p>
<p>Not to nitpick, Hanna, but I do think Harvard pays attention, in a general sense, to the way prospective majors (or “concentrations”) will fall.</p>
<p>They do want a certain fraction of science majors, economics majors, history majors, etc. and if things looked way out of whack after the first cut, changes would be made. </p>
<p>Likewise, they have a general desire for 50/50 male-female now, and they wouldn’t allow the matriculant group to stray too far from the target.</p>
<p>Thanks for the clarifications. :D</p>
<p>At Harvard (and any other Ivy League school), your major does not matter <em>unless</em> it is engineering.</p>
<p>Why does choosing engineering matter at Harvard? I don’t get what you mean. Please explain. Thx</p>
<p>Don’t choose a major based on acceptance rates. Adcoms know better than you do in these cases and will probably be able to sniff you out unless your application shows that you are genuinely interested in whatever you put down for a major as opposed to using it for admissions gain.</p>
<p>At most schools you will either apply to an arts/sciences school or engineering. Some schools, like U Penn, have various schools you can apply to, like wharton for business, and some engineering and nursing schools. They don’t really look at a major because usually the admissions automatically balances things out so that there is an equal amount of each.</p>
<p>I think the OP was asking about Harvard - not “most schools”.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>Well, it truly matters if you’re a female since engineering is so male-dominated and they really want to make it closer to equal. I would guess that it matters for males too, since I can’t imagine the yield for engineering students being as high as it is for the overall Harvard College due to primarily competition from elsewhere in Cambridge.</p>
<p>Not so this year, for whatever reason. Havard’s cross-admit yield vs MIT rose substantially, and, in fact, females matriculated at a higher rate than males.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>Engineering students too?</p>
<p>Yes. .</p>
<p>in short, they wouldn’t ask if it didn’t matter.</p>
<p>Correct .</p>
<p>I have passions in a great deal of things and don’t know exactly what to choose a major in. It would really be the pits if someone tried to get into Harvard for engineering but didn’t get in because the competition was fierce and then ended up studying social work at another college when that person could have gotten into Harvard for social work if they had just put that on the application initially.</p>
<p>Beverly… do you have any insight for me?</p>
<p>It would be a mistake to tailor your professed interests to fit slight perceived differences in the “admit rate” for those planning to major in this or that field - if for no other reason than because numbers and needs can shift markedly from one year to the next.</p>
<p>Byerly, how do you know that the cross-admit yield for Harvard vs MIT rose this year, even for engineering students? Could you post your source? Not that I don’t believe you, but I’d like to see the data for myself.</p>