In mid-May, the most tangled may be those college students with excellent professional grades.
At this time, the academic year is coming to an end, and the details of the requirements for changing majors and the number of recipients have been announced for each major in each university. And college students who happen to be qualified, everyone has to face a "college entrance examination" like a tangle - whether they should seize this opportunity to change majors.
If you change, all the things you have learned in the past year will be wasted, and you will have to take more courses; If you don't change, the opportunity to change majors will be fleeting, and you won't regret it if you don't go to a popular major.
Changing majors is seen by many college students as one of the few opportunities to "change their lives", but is this really the case?
Changing majors is better than the college entrance examination
It is actually a rare luck to read the major you want to study. Many people only know how unsuitable the major they accidentally chose is when they enter the school, and only by changing majors can they make their "gold" shine.
For example, the modern poet Lin Geng was originally admitted to the Department of Physics of Tsinghua University, but after completing his sophomore year, he ignited a spark of love for literature and chose to transfer to the Department of Chinese [1]. Qian Weichang, one of the founders of modern Chinese mechanics, was admitted to the Department of Chinese at Tsinghua University in the college entrance examination, and later transferred to the Department of Physics because he was determined to save the country through science [2].
It can be seen that it was not difficult to change departments at Tsinghua University in the 30s of the last century. In 1930, Tsinghua University stipulated that after the first year of the current year, students could be reviewed by the head of the department at the beginning of each subsequent academic year, and there were no additional rigid requirements for changing departments [3]. And now the policy of changing majors is not as relaxed as it was back then, and it is certainly not enough to rely on one's own enthusiasm for the major.
For example, if Lin Geng had been born now, he would have missed the last window for changing departments in the spring semester of his sophomore year at Tsinghua University and would have missed the Department of Chinese [4].
Nowadays, changing majors generally adds a lot of restrictions on grades, which is also a paradox of changing majors: if you want to give up this major, you must first study this major well.
The requirements for students to change majors in colleges and universities are constantly increasing
In addition, many schools will insist that transfer students cannot fail the course. Students who want to change departments will miss the opportunity to change majors as long as a certain door is missed and the teacher "does not fish", and the opportunity to change majors will be completely lost.
Some majors will also have additional restrictions on the individual subject grades and average grades of students who apply for transfer. According to a study of 40 undergraduate universities in Shanghai, 32.5% of the universities in Shanghai have academic requirements for students who change majors [5].
For example, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics requires students to change majors with a GPA of 3.4/4.0 or above, and a score of no less than 80 in advanced mathematics or English. Students at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, on the other hand, need to have a GPA of 15% of their majors in core courses [5]. However, in contrast, the top 30% of the entire department of Shanghai Jiao Tong University is more than enough for the research [6][7].
And even if you work hard to be at the top, you may not be able to change your major successfully, after all, many popular majors still need to be "admitted by difference".
Changing majors in colleges and universities often requires layers of selection/picture worm creativity
According to a survey of 38 985 universities, 36.8% of colleges and universities changed majors through three processes: student application, department selection, and school approval, which means that popular majors may have to be selected from the best and go through another round of selection [8]. For example, Zhongnan University of Economics and Law will comprehensively score the college entrance examination results, school results, interview scores and other multi-dimensional scores, and if you do not do well enough, you will be rejected [9].
In addition, changing majors generally requires students to spend a significant amount of time taking courses in other majors.
For example, many schools at Peking University are required to participate in written examinations for relevant majors when recruiting students, and the School of Life Sciences and the School of Information Science and Technology require students to complete the basic courses and compulsory courses required by the teaching plan of the grade to be transferred [10]. For example, the School of Life Sciences plans to take 150 credits in four years, with an average of more than 30 credits per academic year, which means that you need to take 7 more classes per week [11].
Of course, it is very difficult to take the required courses in two different majors in a year, so many times transfer students have to lower the first year and start again, as if repeating. The School of Electrical Engineering at Xi'an Jiaotong University does not even give the opportunity to take more courses, and if you want to get in, you have to be downgraded by one level [12].
"Choose a good major, every day is like the college entrance examination", this sentence is never a joke.
It's hard to open low and go high, colleges and universities are more savvy than you
Unfortunately, even if you make up your mind to work hard, you may not be able to get into the major you want to be. Although universities have given seemingly relaxed policies and respected individual development wishes, the actual implementation can be described as "encirclement, pursuit, and interception".
Many majors require the subjects and grades of the college entrance examination when recruiting transfer students, and if the subjects selected do not meet the requirements, then if you want to change majors, you can only go back to high school to "reopen".
For example, most science and engineering majors will require students to choose science when taking the college entrance examination, and some areas where the new college entrance examination policy is implemented also have requirements for high school subject selection. The admission requirements of the School of Energy and Power Engineering of Shandong University require that the transfer department requires that the provinces with the college entrance examination reform need to take physics, and the non-college entrance examination reform provinces must be science students [13].
Guanghua School of Management, Peking University is one of the top management schools in the country, with a high admission score and difficult to transfer
Many people think that as long as they get enough grades to get the lowest score in their ideal university, then they can study hard during their time at school and then move on to a popular major. But where can this kind of careful thinking be hidden from the eyes of major universities, and those majors with admission "dividends" are more likely to be restricted from transferring out.
Just like the "Strong Foundation Plan" implemented by many schools, it is a measure to select scientific research talents in basic disciplines for the society. Since it is a basic subject, it will not be as popular as computer science and other majors in recent years, and the score is relatively low.
For example, the dean of the Undergraduate College of Tongji University has made it clear that students are not allowed to change majors at the undergraduate level, and students who are not interested in basic disciplines will face the dilemma of not being able to change majors even if they enter the university through the "Strong Foundation Program", which is not conducive to students' future growth [14].
Want to get into a prestigious school with a low score, and then change majors by studying hard? Don't even think about it, don't think about opening high if you go low.
Changing majors requires advance planning and adequate preparation
In all fairness, changing majors is about being "fast, accurate, and ruthless".
To be fast is to make decisions quickly, and it is best to set goals as early as possible. After all, many schools have a limit on the time to change majors, and there are generally only one or two application windows. If you don't think about it at that time, you miss it.
Accurate, that is, to clearly anchor the target major. The college entrance examination can also choose several different majors, while most colleges and universities only let students choose one target major when changing majors. Whether to choose the hot to rush or the unpopular to be stable and stable, this needs to be thought twice.
Ruthless means to know what you really want, don't regret it. After all, if you make a decision because you are in a hurry, then students who change majors may usher in deeper despair. According to a study by the Institute of Higher Education of East China Normal University, the vast majority of universities only give students the opportunity to change majors once [8]. If you enter a new major and find that you don't like it, it's too late to regret it.
It can be seen that college students want to change majors like walking a tightrope, even if they accidentally take a wrong step, they will not be able to successfully "go ashore".
The freedom to come and go requires a lot of educational resources
A survey of more than 1,000 college students and faculty found that the two biggest reasons for college students to change majors are "academic frustration" and "employment prospects" [15].
Because of this, the popularity of majors is relatively concentrated and polarized, and it is obvious which of the "four major sinkholes" or "computer science" has a higher status in the hearts of students. Most students also want to move from relatively unpopular disciplines to popular disciplines, and popular subjects such as computer science have always been a popular choice for changing majors in recent years [16].
Why can't students be given the freedom to choose their preferred major?
The reason is that the university that seems to be accessible to everyone is also a university with too many monks and too few porridge, and the educational resources are really limited.
Teaching resources such as professional laboratories are limited, and it is difficult to meet the needs of too many students
The teacher-student ratio also affects the quality of students' learning, and in the context of the expansion of mainland universities, the teacher-student ratio of ordinary undergraduates in China has reached 1:17.51, which is close to the minimum student-to-teacher ratio requirement of 1:18 stipulated by education regulations [17][18]. If additional students are enrolled, it is impossible to guarantee the quality of learning for students in this major.
For those schools with more abundant teaching resources, there are naturally more free ways to transfer departments.
At Yale University, where the student-to-faculty ratio is 1:6, most students only need to take general education courses in their freshman year, and in their sophomore year, they can choose a major according to their preferences [19][20]. Harvard University, which has a student-to-faculty ratio of 1:7, does not have a grade requirement when changing majors, and only needs to fill in the reasons for changing majors [21][22].
Rather than focusing on the core "curriculum" of a certain subject, foreign university systems place more emphasis on students' general education. Moreover, according to the current undergraduate management system in China, even if the system of changing majors is relaxed, it will not be much easier for students.
For example, undergraduate students at Harvard can choose a second field of study that is not related to their major in addition to their major area. Moreover, Harvard students take a large number of general education courses, such as aesthetics, social sciences, and history, which account for 25% of the curriculum [23]. In other words, even if you don't change majors, you still have enough time to learn the subject content that you are interested in.
In contrast, the proportion of general education courses in Chinese universities is not high. Some undergraduate general elective courses in some majors at Tsinghua University have only 13 credits, which accounts for less than 10% of the credits required for graduation [24]. Among the 88 undergraduate majors, Tsinghua University will only have 41 majors open for minors in 2024, less than 50% [25][26].
The phenomenon of mismatched majors after graduation is also more common / Picture worm creativity
In other words, the flow of information between various majors is still relatively small compared with foreign countries, and the barriers to changing majors are naturally greater. If you want to change your major, it is naturally not as easy as that of foreign universities. That's why we have the aforementioned reductions and extra classes.
Regarding whether to change majors or not, there is really no need to worry too much. It's good to be able to read about your favorite major, but if you don't succeed, you don't necessarily miss something. Studies have shown that more than one-third of the graduates have a mismatch between their jobs and majors, and there is also a mismatch between the cultivation of students' abilities and the market demand in colleges and universities [27].
In other words, even if you can really change your major against all odds, the final job may not have anything to do with the industry you originally wanted. How to say, where there is a will, there is a way, and the paper internship is not bad!