<p>Why do universities expect high school seniors to be so sure when applying? What happens if a student applies for a biology major, but then wants to be an engineer during sophomore year? Is that student screwed?</p>
<p>Depending on the college, you can usually transfer if the engineering college has an opening and you qualify/ get accepted into the engineering college. If you transfer, you might be behind schedule to graduate though.</p>
<p>They don’t expect you to be sure about your major. Many engineering students decide after a few classes that it isn’t as interesting as they thought it would be. Others start out in another subject and transfer into engineering.</p>
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<p>Many universities don’t require you to have a school/major when you apply, and they will accept you based on your application. But it’s for your benefit to apply a particular school/major or decide early on so you can be sure and take your courses accordingly. What happens if you decide to join a major later, but the major is impacted? You may also miss out on prerequisites or courses you need to graduate on time. Yes, in that case student could be screwed.</p>
<p>Most engineering programs are highly integrated, and, being that they’re professional programs, there’s not a lot of stuff that can be ‘substituted’ for the profession-specific courses. For instance, your biology courses would have almost zero applicability to most forms of engineering. </p>
<p>Of course, once you’re already admitted to a school, you can often switch to engineering. The caveat being, instead of graduating in 4 or 5 years, it might take you 6 or 7 because you’ll have to complete all of the courses. </p>
<p>Switching from non-engineering to engineering is usually a piece of cake, and, assuming you have the passion and the brains for it, you’ll do all right (especially if you do it in 2nd year after you’ve developed better study habits…even though such a move will set back your graduation!). </p>
<p>However, switching from engineering to non-engineering usually comes at a very severe cost to your GPA, as engineering courses tend to be a lot harder than non-engineering courses. Basically, you’ll have a blotched academic record and GPA, which makes it very difficult to be admitted to post-graduate professional programs (ie: law, medicine) if you go that route. </p>
<p>With college being as expensive as it is, why not spend some time with a career counsellor or take one of the interest inventory tests that are available? Unless you’re made of money, College really isn’t a good place to ‘find yourself’ or figure out what you want to do with life. And even then, going into engineering and then dropping out is a exercise in masochism given the difficulty of engineering classes.</p>