By Katie Schleiss
Not everyone enters college knowing what major to declare. For some students, the right major becomes apparent after freshman year. But for others, answers remain elusive.
Instead of forging clear-cut paths, some students change majors once, twice, maybe even three times. But how many times can students change their majors before they begin to suffer, both in terms of extra time spent in school and financially?
According to Academic Program Counselor Aimee Davidse, changing one's major has different consequences depending on the nature of the academic expectations.
Changing majors in the professional schools on campus, such as the Engineering or Nursing schools, is more difficult.
If students come into these programs from the College of Arts and Sciences without having completed the prerequisites of these particular programs, then they may have to stay on campus to take classes for a summer or two, or maybe even an extra year.
Although about 700 students of 2013's class had declared their majors coming in, Davidse said that it's common for students to change their majors. Freshman are not required to declare a major upon entering UP.
"If they feel like they know what they want to do, then they can declare, but, there's always a handful of students who are undeclared," Davidse said. "It may seem on paper that they know what they want to do, but it changes."
If students change their majors their sophomore year, they can still theoretically graduate in four years if they fulfilled a lot of the core curriculum requirements in their first couple years.
However, for juniors or seniors, it's a little bit different.
"We hope that all students, by their junior year, have some idea what they want to do," said Davidse.
If a student really wants to change majors but feels apprehensive about increased time and money spent at school, Davidse would still recommend doing so.
"We would never advise a student to stick with something they don't want to study or aren't interested in," Davidse said.
Junior Erika O'Sullivan agrees that it's important for students to follow their interests.
She declared German as her first major during her freshman year because she wanted to study abroad in Salzburg for her sophomore year.
While studying in Salzburg last spring, she decided to declare a second major in Life Sciences.
Last Tuesday, however, she decided to change her major again. Now, she is double majoring in political science and German.
"People shouldn't be afraid to change their major," O'Sullivan said. "It's worth it if it works out for you and it can be a great learning experience."
She added a political science major because she said that she is interested in the subject.
She's also considering applying to law school or even entering into the foreign service because of her additional major in German.
Despite her numerous changes, O'Sullivan said that she's going to graduate early because she did about 20 AP credits in high school.
She was able to avoid taking some core English and science classes because of those AP credits. She also completed the language proficiency exam in Spanish.
"I had a lot of difficulty deciding what to major in," O'Sullivan said. "It was pretty stressful and it was a very difficult decision."
However, she said that she's feeling pretty good about her choice right now.
Even though she wouldn't recommend so many changes in majors to someone else, she said she changed her major so many times because she simply didn't know what she wanted to do.
"Maybe it would have been easier if I wanted to just be a nurse or an engineer and entered those schools, but I couldn't decide," O'Sullivan said.
Sophomore Cody Glaess went from an undeclared major to sociology, but is now second-guessing his decision.
He initially chose sociology as his major because he was slightly interested in that subject and wanted to learn some more about sociology in general.
Now he wants to change majors because he doesn't think there's a good job market or enough job security for sociology.
He's thinking about changing his major to either psychology or education and said that he's "just feeling up the core credits for right now."
However, Glass said that he plans to visit career services, hoping he might find some guidance to make a final decision.
