I don’t know how you would even make that comparison. What are you looking to optimize? Salary?
SLO prepares kids exceptionally well for their careers, so I would not worry about salary and career preparedness. Kids in these fields will also do fine coming out of a UC, if it is a good fit for them.
The big difference is going to be student experience and learning environment, which is different at SLO by design. If you are choosing between these options, the question is which environment is going to be the best fit for your kid? Where will they have what they need to excel and grow? The answer is not the same for every kid.
My kid got into CP for business and UCLA for undecided.
My concerns re CP - Difficulty in changing majors (since kids do change their minds) - since part of their formula to allow a student to do so is that they would have been admitted to that major as a freshman, which is based on their MCA score. However they don’t let kids know what their score is or what score they would need to get inot the various programs. Does anyone know if psychology majors require a higher or lower MCA score?
My concern about UCLA - it seems students have to apply to pre major, and then apply to get into their major. UCLA doesn’t offer a business major, the major desired there is psychology and add business related electives. Does anyone know how difficult it is to get into that major (competition)?
While both schools state on their websites what is possible, we are intersted in the probablility of doing so. I am hopeful that someone here has some information
Many schools accept students pre-major. For UCLA Psych, it means that you need to complete your lower division courses with at least a 2.5 GPA. Applying into the major means that you need to file paperwork, not that it is competitive and that some students won’t get in.
I believe @goldrush2 might be able to answer some of the business questions.
Edit: At UCLA, Psychology is a very popular major. Many first pass upper division courses are held for students who are Psychology majors (no longer pre-major).
Please remember that enrollment for Psychology Department courses is restricted based on your major and class standing! We do not make exceptions to these enrollment restrictions.
If you have pre-major standing, you may need to wait until second pass to enroll in some Psychology upper division courses. If a class requires major standing to enroll, you cannot bypass this restriction.
If you are completing your last preparation courses in Winter 2023 to declare major standing, note that you cannot petition to declare the major until all prep grades have posted to your Degree Audit Report. No exceptions are made to this policy.
For UCLA, if you were accepted into the school then completing the GPA and course requirements should not an issue and you can declare. It is not a competitive secondary admission since you only need a 2.5 GPA.
Pre-Psychology Major Requirements Students may declare the Pre-psychology major once they have established a prep GPA by taking at least one prep course for a letter grade at UCLA and have an average prep GPA of 2.5 or higher.
All of the following Procedures and Requirements are strictly enforced:
A C or better is required in Psychology 10, Psychology 100A and Psychology 100B. A C- or better is required in the other preparation courses. All courses must be taken for a letter grade.
The seven preparation courses must be completed by the end of Fall quarter of the 3rd year after the student has entered UCLA.
Repetition of any preparation course more than once results in automatic denial of admission to the major.
Repetition of more than any two preparation courses results in automatic denial of admission to the major.
Seven (7) Preparation Courses for the Psychology Major
Complete seven courses, one from each box:
Life Sciences 7A or 15* or Physiological Science 3
Statistics 10* or Math 2 or Program In Computing 10A or One quarter of calculus
Physics 1A or 5A or 10* or 11* or Chemistry 14A or 17* or 20A
Philosophy 1* or 2 or 3 or 4* or 5 or 6 or 7* or 8 or 9* or 21 or 22 or 22W or 23 or 31
Psychology 10
Psychology 100A**
Psychology 100B**
Suggestions for preparation work: Students should take Psychology 100A and 100B early in their academic careers and in consecutive terms. Note that Pre-Psychology students may enroll in some of the Core and Elective courses. Refer to the Schedule of Classes for enrollment restrictions.
That Payscale financial ROI listing of entire colleges means that colleges that have large percentages of engineering and CS majors will do well.
If you want to get more specific to majors that your student is likely to choose, try https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/ , although it (a) is limited to students receiving federal financial aid, and (b) it may not show data for small majors, especially at small schools.
We totally agree but wanted to gather data for the newly admitted student with high stats who could not get into UCLA. he is disheartened. He is ranked #3 in my students school.
even other students in their school are choosing cal poly over UC’s because of small class sizes, internships ,tech clubs and alumni placed in FAANG.
been asking people in various social platforms to gather info for him.
cal poly even published in their news
will screenshot your response to him:)
This time is hard for kids who set their mind on certain colleges.
but then they are just 17 yr olds.
On the UCLA website it states that students must have a minimum of a 2.5 prep GPA to be eligible to apply to the Psychology major, however only students who have a 2.9 prep GPA or higher and completed their 7 prep courses by the Fall of their 3rd year at UCLA will be guaranteed entry into the major. That doesn’t sound so bad, but for many, it ain’t gonna happen.
In today’s Daily Bruin I read about a pre-psych student ( admitted with pre-psychology staus as a freshman), as well as a few other students with impacted majors, of which Psychology is at the top.
So to confim I looked up both courses and learned the following: There are typically one or two sections of Psych 100A which are always overfull with approx 250 students per section.
Typically only one section of Psychology 100B, is offered and reaches an overfull status of 350.
You can do the math on this one…about 150 kids each quarter can’t get into the next course in the sequence.
You suggested taking premajor courses, such as these as soon as you can, however this would ot be possible because the registration pages for both of these courses state that enrollment is “limited to sophomore/junior/senior departmental pre-majors” Reading the words senior departmental pre-majors made my head spin as I couldn’t imagine being a senior and still working on pre major requirements would be a “thing” and shudder to think about the amount of interest on their student loans those kids accrue by graduation.
I would contact the department and ask questions to determine if this is a viable option for you before committing. On paper very doable but in reality it may be different.
Perhaps it is not surprising that the departments with the most overloaded introductory courses are in L&S (where students are not formally in majors to start) and in very popular majors or in pre-med subjects that can be taken by any major.
Admission by major with potentially restricted change of major, as practiced by CSUs like CPSLO, helps regulate class enrollment, but has different downsides.
Thanks for the link to the daily Bruin article. It does look like the article is dated 2019 so it’s probably worth talking with current students as well to see if the situation is still the same.
Regarding 100A and 100B, they are offered every quarter as well as twice during the summer. Yes, they do fill up as multiple majors are required to take those courses. Both courses are limited to sophomore/junior/senior departmental pre-majors and Linguistics and Psychology majors for first pass (enrollment).
I am not able to see how fast the courses filled in previous quarters but, looking at the availability, both courses still have openings this summer.
I would be happy to answer some questions about majoring in business economics, @lnmcabound – our son is almost at the point of being able to declare for that. There are definitely students who are admitted from the get-go into pre-business econ, but he started “undeclared” and is just now trying to complete all the prerequisites.
I just wanted to mention that there is a non-insignificant number of students that change their majors, sometimes more than once. It creates issues with scheduling. My daughter’s current room mate has changed from economics to geology, and will potentially switch again. Another friend switched from music to psychology and there are many that are pre-med that do the dance between biology, chemistry, biochemistry and others. There is a bit of a “gaming the system” strategy going on. I’m not sure if the freedom to switch relatively easily is, in total, a benefit or a hinderance to students. I have mixed feelings on the issue.
ETA: this is regarding UCLA. Sorry for the omission.
Someone who changes major is more likely to fall behind, unless they were previously careful to take courses to work toward the new major before changing to it.
At a college where students start undeclared and declare major in second or third year, that can make management of introductory course capacity more difficult for departments. They obviously want any of their potential majors to be able to take the course, but do not want to be overloaded or have students taking it as general education or free electives squeezing out those who need the course as a major prerequisite.