Tung: Simplify the Major Declaration Process
At the end of a Dartmouth student’s fifth term, they are required to begin the tedious but all-important task of declaring their major. The idea is that by the time a student has taken roughly 15 classes within their first five terms, they will have identified a department in which they would like to major. Most schools across the country have similar timelines, but the process by which students actually declare their major varies from institution to institution. At some universities — for example, Columbia University and Harvard University — students simply notify the department of their choice using online forms that take minutes to fill out. Dartmouth’s process, on the other hand, requires an extensive amount of work on the student’s part — work that does not involve students actually reflecting on the interest they have in their chosen department. Indeed, the majority of work Dartmouth students must put into the process of declaring their major is not for the purpose of finding and solidifying an area of interest but instead for fulfilling unnecessary administrative requirements.