As the title suggests, I’ll be discussing one of the things that might be on your mind no matter the school you decide on: your prospective major. At a Liberal Arts school like Amherst, especially with an open curriculum, this is an entirely different experience from the ones my friends at other schools have had and is question that is deserving of its own discussion. To break it into shorter sections so you can focus on what you might be curious about, there will be a few central questions I’ll discuss:
1. Does your incoming prospective major matter? 2. What do most majors look like? 3. How hard is it to change majors / declare your major?
1. Probably the most important question as it applies to the current incoming freshman and future applicants, does your incoming major matter? To answer briefly: No, it really, really does not. Technically, you won’t even enter the school with a declared major; everyone enters undecided and is assigned an advisor. That assigned advisor may be in one of the areas you showed interest in–I, for example, got a Classics advisor since I showed interest in Classics, and another of my friends’ advisors is the theater director, since he did theater-tech in high school. For more popular majors, though, you may get a professor in an entirely different field. My roommate is a Physics major who got a Philosophy advisor when he came into the school. But don’t worry about your advisor; almost all of them are amazing, and if you somehow end up with someone who isn’t, you only need to interact with them as much as you want to, whether that’s hands on getting advice and input from them, or just someone who approves your courses for the next semester until you declare a major–since when you declare, you are assigned a new advisor in your department…But that is a whole other factor.
Coming in with a major in mind, or one that you put down on the CommonApp, also has no bearing on your classes. I ended up dropping one of my Classics courses for a Math class during my first semester. How early or late you start your major really depends on the program, so I’d do some research on the ones you’re interested in, but I’ll move to that briefly now.
2. What does a major look like? Well, obviously, it depends. Most humanities majors require X amount of each level of course (100s-400s), and most majors I know of total around 9 – 10/11 courses, with the upper end being those who intend to write theses in that subject. Math, my first declared major, is much more structured as you start, but develops freedom as it goes; same idea with a social science like Economics. According to my roommate, Physics is relatively structured with a set timeline, but it samples parts of every (branch?) of Physics. In short, they vary, but expect around 10 classes for a major in my experience.
3. How hard is it to change / declare majors? It’s not that hard, it’s actually pretty easy, barring random circumstances. Obviously if you’re looking to declare in your second semester of junior year, that’s a lot different than starting sophomore fall. You’re required to declare by the end of sophomore year, but you can declare any time before that too. I know a guy who declared both his majors late in the fall of his first year, and I know another guy who just dropped one of his majors and added another in his sophomore spring. There is no set timeline. Personally, I never intended to major in Math. In fact, I intended to avoid it. Once I took that first semester Math class though, I loved it–so much so that I just declared this spring, the second semester of my first year. To declare in Math, all I had to do was meet with the department chair (conveniently my advisor), discuss why I wanted to declare, and make sure I could feasibly finish the major requirements on time. After that, it was as simple as submitting a form online. In short (I’ve used that phrase a lot, huh?), it’s easy to change your major once you’ve started, and it’s even easier to declare one if you’re looking to pursue it from the get-go.
Don’t let majors be a major obstacle to pursuing what you want. With an open curriculum you can explore for a while until you find something you love with any class you want, as opposed to having to explore with one or two electives every year while you fulfill general education requirements at most other schools. Most departments have “pathways through the major” pages on their department sections on the Amherst website, and that should give you an idea of what fields might be interesting to you.
Thank you for reading! If you have any questions or anything else, feel free to reach out. My email is jdesmond28@amherst.edu.