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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My DS applied for computer science. He did not get in to any top 50 in early action round, and I got the impression from these type of forums that regular decision was even more competitive. However, one top 40 deferral turned into an acceptance, and he was also accepted regular decision at a top 50. I would not say that I was worried at the time of the early action round, because it may not have been top 50, but he was accepted for an honors program and a respectable computer science department where he could have been happy too.[/quote]

CS is a much harder major to get into than basically any other major.  When people talk about admissions to a given school, the acceptance rates for different majors can be night and day. [/quote]

This. Threads like this one are so misleading, even pointless. People: do some arithmetic. The demand for spots in CS across the country, in state flagships and in top privates, is insane relative to the number of spots available. What is more, top 20 schools do not want a campus full of career-oriented programmers. They want dancers, comparative literature majors, physicists, yes even gender studies majors. My son's close friend has mediocre grades, a 1550 and no ECs. Applied as a music major -- he is not that good, to be honest -- and was admitted to a number of schools (like Vanderbilt) to which he would not have had a chance in hell to be admitted in a more competitive major. Universities want to be universities, not CS coding camps.

Try to understand how a university/college works, and understand the game you are playing. Act accordingly. And no, your high stats kid does not deserve to be at Cornell or Rice. They applied in an ultracompetitive field and lost the spot to someone with a better application. [/quote]
Yep because the country needs more dancers with $300k in loans [/quote]

The world actually does pay some dancers and needs them. It’s mean to them, but it doesn’t need them.

It doesn’t need a lot of bright but soul dead CS drones who have no interest in CS but major in it, anyway, because that’s the only way Mummy and Daddy would pay for college. Those kids are in trouble. [/quote]

There is nowhere near the demand for the number of graduates with soft majors that are churned out every years. Unless the school is HYPSM, all a large english/dance/history department does is ensure employment for history professors and applicants for law schools (because the one thing we need is more lawyers). Meanwhile applicants are clearly telling schools that there is more demand for business, engineering, computer science because students know that they will need to earn a living especially if they graduate with massive debt  [/quote]

You have a deep misunderstanding about the relationship between major and jobs.  The vast majority of people do not get jobs connected to their major--and often switch jobs many times in their lives.  The college education develops broad skills, you become marketable in many fields by figuring out ways to apply those broad skills and deepen your expertise.  [/quote]

Major is really most important if a student isn't summa cum laude, doesn't have good summer internship experience, and/or graduates in a down market. It's hard to predict any of these things (a little easier to predict the second) so if possible, students should hedge if going the LA route and do a double major in Econ and something they love that isn't as "practical" (Art History) or they should major in something more practical such as Econ but take a bunch of classes in other areas that they are interested in. If your kid absolutely cannot imagine a scenario where they do not do a single major in Dance or Art History they better work those internships. [/quote]

Econ isn't that practical.  My advice is if you're not into a highly marketable major, to major in whatever you enjoy that you can get a good GPA in and then acquire a practical skill that is in demand in the moment, get an internship or volunteer using that practical skill, and then use that to get your first job. Worked for me, worked for my kids.  [/quote]

Telling someone to acquire a marketable skill through an internship is essentially telling them to have connections [/quote]

I wrote get a practical skill and then get an internship. For instance, my kid who is a psychology major, taught herself R Programming for statistical analysis.  It's a marketable skill that gave her an edge in getting an internship with no connections where she did a lot more quantitative analysis.  That's what got her a job--but she wouldn't have gotten the internship without having taught herself R.  My older kid did the same with GIS.  It's not that hard to learn a specific program well and if it's newly in demand it can be the thing that pushes you over the edge in the competition for a spot.  In my son's case, he learned GIS and then volunteered himself to professor's projects saying that he wanted to build his GIS skills and then got an internship outside of academia that used GIS.  At any given moment, there's a new skill that's in demand that can get your foot in the door.[/quote]

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