Changing Majors Can Mean Major Change

By OMAR PAGAN

As City College students learn, the college experience is not just about cracking open books and studying. It is a period when students face tough decisions, make changes, and find direction in their lives.

“I had no idea that it was going to be that hard,” said Xavier Salgado of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. “I needed to find something else to do.”

“I hated it,” said Linda Cruze of the Lower East Side. “I just didn’t see myself in it.”

“I needed to reevaluate myself,” said Jennily Torres of the Tremont section of the Bronx. “I couldn’t take it anymore. It was stressful.”

Each of these three students share something in common. They changed their major throughout their college career. While the City College of New York offers roughly 80 majors, 13 doctoral programs, and 7 main schools of study, such a large variety makes picking a major to start off a college career difficult. But it becomes more so when one already picks a major and later decides to change it.

Some schools, like the School of Architecture for example, lost 20 percent of its students who signed up as architecture majors.

When Salgado, 21, enrolled into CCNY three years go, he decided to pursue a career in architecture.

“I got interested in it because I found it fascinating,” he said. “I thought it would allow me to expand my imagination.”

But, Salgado did not expect to change his major after three semesters.

“Architecture got too hard, too time consuming,” he said. “I ended up failing.”

Torres, 21, also enrolled in CCNY three years ago to pursue a career in biology.

“I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do in school,” she said, recalling her first semester here. “I thought biology was something interesting to learn about.”

But for Torres, her major quickly became difficult.

“I was doing badly in it, especially with the pre-calculus classes,” she said. “I was putting so much time and effort into it. The material was hard to understand.”

Cruze, 21, originally from Bangladesh, came to the United States with her education based on a science background.

“I was ready for the workload of college,” she said. “I already knew what to expect.”

But like Torres, Cruze’s major in biology quickly proved to be too hard.

“I just ended up hating it, it got so depressing,” she said.

While each department reports a number of students changing majors annually, specific numbers are not kept on record. According to the English Department’s undergraduate advisor Michelle Valladares, many students tend to change their majors without informing their advisors.

“Students just go to another department and change their major with them,” she said.

Valladares added that major declaration forms are always available for students in all departments, making a transaction to change them easier and simpler. According to CCNY policy, once a student declares a new major, the previous one is automatically cancelled.

CCNY School of Architecture’s undergraduate advisor Arnaldo Melendez said that he usually tries to talk to students he sees to find out what their interests are when pursuing a major and why they choose to pursue it. He also says that when students leave a department to pursue something else, it is usually for many reasons.

“There is no perfect way to make a decision,” Melendez said. “They’re personal.”

Melendez added that in the school of architecture, students sometimes blindly enroll in the program, not knowing what to expect.

Melendez offer advice on choosing the right major for a student.

“Get a variety of experience, whether paid or unpaid internships while in college,” he said. “Some students don’t even know what people do in certain jobs. One will never know unless they see what’s out there.”

Students think that finding what is right for them and moving in the direction they want to go are all part of the college experience, as in the case of the three students.
“I think people are born to be good in what they’re good at,” said Torres, now an Advertisement and Public Relations major. “For me, I had to figure out my strength and see what I was good at.”

For Salgado, changing his direction meant leaving the CCNY community.

“I go to another school now,” he said, now a Marketing major and Graphics Design minor at Baruch College. “It’s a lot of work, but I like it.”

Now with her biology major out of her picture, Cruze is more content with her college experience.

“Everyone noticed the change in me after I left biology,” Cruze said, now an English major. “I became happier, more outgoing. It was a big difference.”