When thinking about colleges, you should be investigating individual majors and schools within the college. Such considerations aren’t only a matter of what you’ll do once you get there but may also be the key for getting admitted.
Competitive colleges want a mix of students – geographies, ethnicities, intended majors, etc. If colleges fail to monitor intended majors, then they could wind up with half their freshman class being white New York girls who want to major in English or psychology – and then the Classics and History of Science departments atrophy. It happens.
So claiming a desirable intended major can be helpful. No college is looking for more female English or psych majors, but most will be interested in a female candidate whose intended major is chemistry. Of course, everything else on your application must support your intended major – you can’t claim your intended major is chemistry if your test scores, grades and everything else don’t support that claim.
If you’re considering a university that has several schools or colleges within the university, then you need to consider each school/college within the university on its own. For example, saying you’re looking at Cornell is meaningless without considering the individual schools within Cornell. Cornell’s overall 2014 admission rate was 15%, but depending on the school to which you applied, the admit rate may have been much higher or even lower. Here’s Cornell’s 2014 admission rates by school:
Of course, there are a variety of other factors, including ethnicity, gender, geography, and – very important – your demonstrated interest in that specific school (these other factors are among the many reasons that overall admission rates aren’t helpful for any college – there is no generic pool of applicants against which you’re competing). But the starting point for all of that is the school within Cornell to which you apply, and most students apply to Arts & Sciences – which actually has a lower admission rate than Cornell overall.
So you don’t apply to “Cornell.” You apply to a school within Cornell. If you’re looking at a university that has several undergraduate schools/colleges, consider them separately and formulate your application strategy based on the specific school.
Keep this in mind as you visit colleges and review them online. If a university has multiple undergraduate colleges/schools, then you’re applying to that specific college/school. And in all cases, you’re applying as a specific major. Keeping those two factors in mind will improve your college search and strengthen your applications.
