Does your Major affect the Decision

Any major with significant Labs will cause concern for some coaches. However you should put down your intended major to avoid any misunderstandings/credability issues upfront.

Afterall part of "the process" is selecting the right coach and school to support both your academic and athletic ambitions.

CollegeParent gave you good advice. If thats what your son wants to study, then he should put it down. Personally, I think it reflects positively on your son.

But a dose of reality...very, very few college athletes can handle a sport AND a major like nuclear engineering or pre-med. It is not a bad reflection on athletes but merely a reality that many student athletes face...not all, but many. If your son's biggest dream is to do one of those, I would be asking some serious questions of the coach to make sure that he will get the time to do well.

You also need to ask the same question of the dean of the school your son is interested in. At the University my son will attend the dean of the engineering school said he saw no reason he couldn't do it and then helped him with his schedule.

Who knows how it will work out but the coach is ok with missing some practice for labs and the dean of engineering is on board.....for now.

I can give you a good example of where a major can have an effect on recruiting.

I was interviewing the assistant director of financial aid at a D1 school recently and we were discussing financial aid, acceptance and recruiting.

Many schools ask applicants to apply to a specific "school" or major i.e. English, Business, Nursing.

Because some programs are more popular than others, this has an effect on the number of applicants. The school I spoke to had an extremely popular engineering and science program and thousands of applicants applied to these two majors making acceptance more difficult to that particular school/major.

The college's arts and education department didn't have the popularity of engineering or science so the school was trying to increase enrollment in arts and education. How does a school do that? Easy, offer more financial aid to students applying to those majors as an incentive to come to the school.

Since getting into this school is very competetive, what types of students the school is looking for can have an effect on coaches. Many coaches work with admissions and the financial aid department in order to find out what the school is looking for in a particular year.

If a coach has two potential recruits of similar talent both interested in the school and one wants to apply to the science department and one wants to apply to the arts or education department, in this case the latter (the arts and education applicant) may not only have a better chance at getting accepted, but a better chance at receiving more financial aid and grant money (assuming their grades warrant such money). This is a win win for the coach and the recruit because the player may have a much better shot at acceptance and pay less money to attend the school.



Many times you can tell what types of students a school is looking for in a given year by their promotional material. If there are test-tubes and bunsin burners on the covers of their catalogs, they may be trying to attract more science students. If there are stock charts or graphs, they may be looking for more economic or business students. And so on...

Dave G
http://www.varsityedge.com

You always apply in the major you have an interest in.

ghouse

Perhaps I am reading to much into your post but why go to college like UCLA if you're going to let the financial aid and/or the baseball coach dictate your major? Admititly some kids go to just play baseball so the major doesn't matter (?) and, yes can always change schools/majors once your in, but you're not going to be able to change from "Art" into Engineering, Chemistry, Math...... Why spend four years studying poly sci or history at UCLA when you could have gone to UCD, UCI, LMU, USC, UCSD, UCSB etc. in your preferred major?

My point is if you are interested in engineering or science find the school that meets your needs academically and financially.

Collegeparent, my post wasn't meant to encourage kids to switch majors or apply to a major they have no interest in.

It was meant to describe from the schools end what often goes on. If you need or are expecting a lot of financial aid and help from a coach in getting into a particular school, what major you apply for may have an impact on your recruiting process and may have an impact on how hard a coach pursue's you.

I think that you think that the coaches at this school are telling kids to apply to a different major and that is not the case at all. The coaches are getting reads on what types of kids the school is looking for and then trying to find kids that may be interested in those programs because they will have a better shot at both getting into the school and receiving more financial aid.

If you have no or little scholarship money to offer and your school costs 40,000 a year and some science majors are not going to get much financial aid and there are a couple of recruits who might want to be education majors and might get $15,000 or $20,000 in aid, then those are the kids you might have to recruit because not everyone will be able to afford your school.

Perhaps he would have never heard from them anyway but when my son told several coaches (who he had been in some continuous contact with) that he wanted to major in architecture, he never heard from 'em again.

Two did discuss it with him and flat out told him he'd have to choose, that it just wasn't possible to do both, mostly due to scheduling, labs, etc.

Many on this board say it can be done, but there are certain majors that I think are near impossible to pull off and still play a varsity sport. Knowing some architects and architect majors they have assured me it couldn't be done

Bottomline would be to simply talk it over with the coach.

Not for nothing but we include the players anticipated major as part of the players data for the coaches at our events.

It certainly helps if a coach knows he does not have the players proposed major --- of course if the coach really wants the player he might just try and convince the young man to change is mind regarding his major

Heybatter,

I hear you, but things can get done including majoring in architecture and playing baseball. My son would have taken Engineering this fall if his school offered it, but he is now majoring in Computer Science which is still fairly rigorous. My plan with him is not to pressure him to graduate in four years. I would rather see an excellent GPA with a lighter class schedule so that is what we are doing. Of course, this approach is more expensive. What exactly is the difference if you graduate when you are 21, 22 or 23 for that matter? Not much IMHO.

Tr,

Agree that if your major is not offered the Coach may not call. We tried to be flexible by listing a couple of possible majors. For instance, if your major is architechure and the school does not offer it, you can probably major in something like mathematics or mechanical engineering and still get a degree that is close that you could possibly follow up on for architecture at some other school with out too much additional course work.