My son applied to UMN for Chemical Engineering as first major, and listed Material Science as second choice major. Last night, the UMN portal admitted him into CLA with no mention of waitlisting into CSE. Is this normal? Or did the admissions office make a mistake?
I am quite confused. Anyone has similar experience? What do I do now?
@Bay_blade2000 on the application it lets you pick 4 majors and 2 colleges of choice. One first choice and 1 second choice college. If UMN felt like CSE wasn’t for for him they could have opted to put him into CLA as his second choice. However, if he did not mention CLA in his application I would give the admissions office a call.
^ @Bay_blade2000 In the past, Admissions has reserved the right to place the candidate where they believe is the best fit, even if the college wasn’t specified on the application. In recent years they have backed away from that a bit, just in order to help boost yield and fit (most who didn’t specify CLA don’t want to end up there so won’t matriculate). But a few still end up in that situation. They must believe that your son would thrive at UMN and CLA, even if he couldn’t make it into CSE at this point. It might suggest he would be a good candidate for a transfer later on (conditional upon 1st year grades).
Unfortunately, unless it mentions that he was waitlisted at CSE, he was denied admission there. Short of an appeal because you think there must have been a fluke (stats would need to be in line with the rest of the admits for that to prevail), he will need to start in CLA at UMN. However, he should definitely call Admissions for clarification, and ask about how to submit mid-year grades, if those will be helpful at all. He was doing well in PSEO, IIRC.
Good luck to him!
It sounds like my son was admitted into CLA only, and not deferred/waitlisted for CSE 
After talking with the CSE counselor, it also sounds like a VERY tall order to get into Chemical Engineering starting in CLA. A GPA of 3.8 was mentioned as a transfer requirement after freshman year for a CLA student to transfer into ChemE CSE. Bummer.