S2E21: How to Choose Your Major When Applying to College
IN THIS EPISODE, THOMAS CALEEL discussED major selection when applying to college.
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This week we are discussing major selection when applying to college. Do you need to be strategic about it?
Thomas Caleel, former Director of Admissions gives his take. Make sure to follow for more college admissions tips.
Have your own question you'd like answered? Send us a DM on social media @admittedlypodcast for a chance to be featured.
About Thomas
Thomas is a parent and alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania. After earning his MBA at the Wharton School in 2003, he moved to Silicon Valley. For three years, he was director of admissions and financial aid at Wharton School. He worked closely with admissions professionals, students, alumni, and professors to create the best possible MBA class.
Thomas has been an entrepreneur his entire life in the fields of finance, agriculture, wellness, and sporting goods. As the founder of Global Education Opportunities, he works with diverse and underserved communities to help them become successful college students. Thomas started the podcast Admittedly because he is passionate about demystifying the application process for parents and applicants.
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Hello, and welcome to the admittedly podcast. I'm your host, Thomas Caleel. And today's question of the week has to do with major selection, something we're getting a lot of questions about right now, how do I choose a major? What majors should I choose? Should I pick a major that is less popular, or more popular? What we want to do is to start by stepping back and saying, that there are actually people reading this application, these people are smart And these people are admissions professionals. In some cases, they will have been doing this job for 5 to 10, 15 to 20 years, when I worked at Wharton, I had admissions officers, Associate Directors, and Senior Associate Directors, who in some cases have been in the office for over 20 years.
And when you do this, you're in you're out for four years or decades. You've seen everything And it's very unlikely that you're going to fool this experienced professional. And so I really, caution people don't major shop, you know, it's so obvious, don't apply as a journalism major, if you have not been deeply involved in journalism, you can see right through it. And yes, you can do something, you know, between your junior and senior year, you can go take a course somewhere, or you can sign up for the school newspaper.
But the reality is, is that when they judge you against the other applicants for that major, who have put in years of work and for whom it is a passion and where their recommenders are talking about their love of writing their love of journalism, their quest for the truth, you're gonna fall very short.
So it is absolutely much better for you to really step forward and boldly declare it, this is what I love. Now, some students will say Okay well, you know, I want to go into computer science, computer science is probably, along with business, the most competitive major right now. And so I want to look at something a little bit computer science, adjacent data analysis, data, science, things like that. Certainly, I think that's an option. It's an option if it's something that really interests you.
And if you can show, hey, look you know, you can even say, look, I used to be interested, I originally was interested in just straight-up programming Computer Science at hackathons I know, computer science club, but I brushed up against this concept of like big data. And I realized that the ability to use computer science to aggregate analyze, and extract meaning from data really resonated for me, that was really, interesting. And if you can show that path right or computer science, I took this biology course. And I realized, oh my gosh, like I love, the fact that biology deals with human systems or organic systems. And those systems really resonate with me, I see them as like lines of computer code.
So I would like to get into bio-engineering Because, you know, I realized that I love programming, but I also love biology. And so this is a way for me to marry those two things, and do something creative and unique with it. So you're not going to outsmart the admissions officers is the big lesson here. In many cases, you can change your major when you get to when you get admitted when you get into university. That part of the joy of university is going there expanding your mind and finding new ways and pathways to satisfy your intellectual curiosity.
But being disingenuous will usually backfire spectacularly on you, and it's not something that I recommend at all. Good luck with your applications this fall.
