Which top colleges want you to know what you want to major in and apply as a spikey specialist?

[Anonymous]

It seems some colleges want you to know what you want to study and have been doing ECs and high school courses building toward this specialized major, while some other schools (like Yale) want freshmen to come in as a generalist who excel in everything and doesn’t decide what to major in until they get a chance to know themselves at Yale.

If you have BTDT, which schools prefer spikey professional kids and which prefer generalists?

[Anonymous]

Cornell and Penn want to know.

[Anonymous]

Cornell absolutely

[Anonymous]

Michigan too

Stanford to a degree. Looking for application cohesion.

[Anonymous]

I disagree about Yale looking for “generalists”. You can apply undecided and not declare until sophomore year but most schools allow that. They are looking for super accomplished directed students who will take advantage of what Yale has to offer. If an applicant says “hi, I’ve taken all of these classes but don’t have a clue what I want to study or do at Yale”, they will be viewed as a dilettante. Most applicants go on at length in essays about career aspirations and what they’be already done to work towards that goal. Remember also Yale can take only so many space engineers. Same as all the other schools.

[Anonymous]

MIT and CalTech.

[Anonymous]

This is very broad brush, but more about field than whole college. Any school where you have to apply direct admit to a school (business, engineering, architecture, kinesiology, fine arts) wants demonstrated interest/body of work in that major. They also want to see relevant coursework (ie, don’t apply as comp sci major if you haven’t worked in python).

CCO also told us that engineers and architects in particular, should have done extra classes/work in the field so they can say what type of engineer/architect they want to be.

[Anonymous]

Princeton
Dartmouth
Cornell
Stanford
MIT
Cal tech

[Anonymous]

The T20 schools want you to have a coherent story - about what you’ve done in high school and what you plan to study and contribute to campus when you get to college.

Within that framework, you can (should!) show curiosity about adjacent areas of study. But make it fit the base narrative.

The days of being a generalist high school student with no clue what they want to study are over.

[Anonymous]

It does freak me out to send my kid to apply stating that he will become a mechanical engineer, at 17, in order to even get a chance of getting relevant classes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Michigan too

Stanford to a degree. Looking for application cohesion.

I didn’t know that about Michigan. How can they do this with 100,000+ applications?