How often do people change their majors?

There is absolutely nothing wrong with changing your major in college. In fact, many people even change their careers several times during their lifetime. One of the important things to consider is how passionate you are about the major you are studying in college and whether or not you can see yourself making a living out of it. You may love studying history but you may not want to become a history teacher (not that that's all you can do with a history major) so it is important to consider passion and realistic job expectations.

Personally, I was very passionate about dancing and drama and started to study those in college. However I learned very quickly how competitive and how hard it is to make a living in those fields. Around the same time, I started to take some business school courses and realized that is something I am good at. One thing to consider is if you are even thinking about a specific major, it doesn't hurt to check it on your college application because some schools require you to apply to your major after you are in college but by checking it in your initial college application, you may get direct admission. Please check with your college and career counselor on that as every school has different requirements and processes. I could have saved myself the trouble of applying twice to my major have I known about this direct admittance process.

Hey Victoria! Great question! I would say for the most part that schools make it easy to change majors as they realize people might come in with one idea of what they want to study but may change their interests quickly. I don't know the statistics on how many people change their major but its safe to say that it is a common occurrence. You can also enter college "undecided" meaning you don't declare a major up front. Many students do this and this can allow to take a handful of different classes before deciding what major path you want to go down. Even after you declare a major, you can change your major which requires approval from your school's registrar. My advice is to plan before making that decision as you want to make sure that you have time to finish your major. By this I mean that you can take the remaining courses in time for graduation. Talking to your course adviser before submitting your major change paperwork is a great idea.