Should you put undecided on your college application?

RReaders in Stanford's admissions office paid close attention to a small field most applicants barely notice: future plans, near the end of the Common App's education section, with menus for an intended career and an intended field of study. Most students treat it as a formality. Many pick undecided on the theory that admitting uncertainty reads as maturity, and families often agree, since nobody wants a seventeen-year-old locked into a path. In that office, undecided read as an empty chair. The cost is easy to miss, because nothing on the page announces that the box mattered, and the reader simply moves on to the next file.