This fall I will be a freshman in college, with a major in secondary English education. Many of my friends are going to college undecided. Is this a good or bad thing?
If you don't know what you want to do as a career, it may be better to go in undecided, but it's usually easier to get into college when you have a specific major. It's also easier to earn scholarships when you have identified a major.
I won a scholarship from my town's education association. If I had decided to go to college undecided, this never could have been possible.
But what if you really have no idea what you want to do in life? Should you just pick something, or is it better to be undecided? I don't know. 40% of college students change majors. If you're one of those students who did change, would you suggest going to college undecided? It might be easier to pick a new major from an undecided one than to completely switch majors.
That's why most colleges let students wait until their late frosh or mid soph years to decide.
I'm quasi-undecided right now, and I would rather make a more informed decision a little bit later instead of declaring something just to declare something. You know?
Well, I thought I wanted to do journalism so that's what I went into college with and then I thought I wanted to teach history, now I think I want to do liberal studies. So that means I have changed my major twice. They don't make you declare your major until your junior year because you get your general classes out of the way your first two years, unless you've already declared your major and then you may take a few of your major classes.
I think if you arn't absolutely sure on what you want to do, go in undecided, because like me, I took a bunch of classes I don't need, and I didn't take many general courses, so now, I have to take full credit hours just so I can graduate on time. Plus, if you don't declare, you don't have to walk all around campus trying to get the signatures you need to officially change and you can think about it a little more. You change a lot in between high school and college and what you may have wanted to do in high school, may not be what you want to do in college. You have to allow yourself to grow.
You may be right about declaring a major for schlorship reasons, but for admittance it is easier to be accepted as an undecided. I had the bad fortune of an admittance worker loosing part of my application. I did not find out of their mistake until the deadline for applications had past. I appealed their decision (I was in the top 10% and should automatically be admitted to any public university in Texas). One of the admittance workers fixed the problem -- but he was fired before making my acceptance official. I appealed the decision again. I eventually won the appeal but only if I would agree to be admitted as an undecided -- even though I knew at that point what I wanted to do. So, it can go both ways.
For me personally, I don't think going in undecided would be such a great idea. My main reason would be what you've already mentioned above: more scholarship opportunities.
It's always hard to say on this issue. The way I look at it though, is that if you don't declare something, you're not going to really know what you want to do. Gen-ed classes aren't specific enough for careers, so you're already going to be wasting a few credits here and there mindlessly going through elective after elective until you find something you like. Plus, if you declare a major, you probably won't be taking many classes in your major your freshman year, so you won't lose much. But I do think it's better to see what a subject is really like by diving into it completely instead of just scanning the surface.
Going in undecided is good because you can "play around" with the majors the colleges offer.
I think that trying to decide on a major because it will give you the oppurtunity to receive scholarships is a bad idea. By all means if you know what you want to do then of course decide on that, but rushing the decision of a major is something that is a bad choice. The long term effect of falling into a major that doesn't hold one's interest is something that can leave more of an effect then going into college undecided. Some people use college as a tool to find out what thier passion is, if that is the intention of going undecided then I beleive it is a good choice.
You can find my blog about Are 18 years enough for........
and you can share your opinion about this even i think that having made the decision before going to college is avery imoprtat issue in your life.
Bibi-freak