<p>I am working on my application and it asks you for your "Academic Interest Area" and you need to select a school. Are you applying to Penn State as a whole or an individual college? If to an individual college, once you get in is it easy to switch?</p>
<p>Thanks</p>
<p>Admissions to certain schools/majors at Penn State are controlled, and there can be an advantage to applying to the school you want vs. applying undecided (Division of Undergraduate Studies). For instance, the GPA requirements to be admitted to the Smeal College of Business are higher for students who are not already enrolled in Smeal. There have been a couple of other threads discussing this. The moral is, if you know what you want to study, apply to that school. <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/penn-state-university-park/1189901-smeal-college-business-undergrad.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/penn-state-university-park/1189901-smeal-college-business-undergrad.html</a></p>
<p>You are applying to PSU as a whole, but your choice of college may influence the ad decision. Confusing? Welcome to Penn State ! Anyway, nobody is “official” until the entrance to major process during your sophomore year, so yes, it is relatively easy to switch. There is a form, which your former college signs, and your future college signs. You might be admitted as a college of liberal arts major, and by entrance -to-major time, you could decide to be an engineer. You’d be behind, but you could still get in if you meet the controls. Penn State is in no hurry to graduate anyone in any particular time frame (this is a good, and bad, thing)</p>
<p>As pamom has noted, many majors (PR, Smeal, Sec Ed, others) have “controls”, i.e., gpa requirements, # of students, portfolio requirements or auditions. This is all listed in the undergrad major information, so it’s not a secret. If you are applying to a school which is predominantly made up of controlled majors, they are more careful about who/how many they take.</p>
<p>Thanks for your posts:</p>
<p>And on the application, if I decide to go into the Division of Undergraduate Studies:</p>
<p>I would do Academic Interest Area and select Undecided(Exploratory) </p>
<p>Then it asks for your intended major and gives you the options of:
<p>Does anyone know the differences between the three?</p>
<p>The variations are an indication of whether you have narrowed it down to a few (Exploratory) or if you are completely clueless in all ways (DUS). The differences for the purpose of your application will make virtually no difference. </p>
<p><a href=“http://dus.psu.edu/documents/publications/brochure_trifold.pdf[/url]”>http://dus.psu.edu/documents/publications/brochure_trifold.pdf</a></p>