Can I apply as less competitive major first and change to my "real" major after 1-2 years of college

I want to major in CS at CMU, but my stats are pretty weaker than other students who might be applying the same major as well. So I’m considering to apply some random major that are not so famous and change it later once I’m accepted to the school? I heard that’s one of the strategies lol

I’m guessing that the people at CMU have also heard of that strategy.

Check to see how easy it is to change from a “random” major into CS.

Most schools have stringent requirements for transfers into impacted majors. You would need near perfect grades and be able to access some of the core courses you would need, otherwise you wouldn’t be graduating in 4 years. IMO, it makes more sense to target schools that are matches for your major now.

As mentioned above, it may not be very easy to change to CS at CMU or other universities and then you also have the problem of taking required courses in one major while needing to accumulate required courses in the other major. And you also have the issue of your assumption that majors that are not popular are easier to get into. Possibly somewhat easier but often not. It is a matter of resources. Unpopular majors have far fewer professors and classrooms devoted to them than popular majors. As a result they accept far fewer applicants, e.g., 400 may apply for CS and 100 get accepted for an acceptance rate of 25%, while some unpopular major gets 50 applications (half of whom are thinking the same as you are), and accept pnly 8, for an admission rate pf only 16%.

It looks like CMU admits by program so you would probably have to do an internal transfer to get into CS. Most colleges make these types of internal transfers exceedingly difficult so people don’t apply to an easier program and then think they can easily flip into a program that is more competitive for admissions. Plus CS will have a lot of sequential courses so if you don’t start in that major early on it is unlikely you will be able to graduate on time.

Keep in mind that any ploy you come up with to try to get an edge in admissions, college adcoms have seen thousands of times over. IMO your time would be better spent searching out a group of reach, match, and safety schools based on your academic stats and academic interests that appear affordable and that you would be happy to attend.

Thanks for all of your responses! I think you guys are right.

SIS is slightly easier to get into than SCS so that is a route you might want to explore.

@kwcho19 it’s very hard switching majors at CMU. My son’s friend just finished freshman year there. He was a recruited athlete, wouldn’t have gotten in otherwise, but still wasn’t admitted to engineering. He went as a bio major, planning to transfer to Biomed engineering. The coach said he would help push it along but even with his help, he advised it was not a slam dunk. He had to apply at the end of freshman year; not sure if he’s heard back. It can be a dangerous strategy if you are sure that’s what you want to study.

CMU CS is more competitive to get into because it is more “full” (i.e. the department has no extra capacity to take more students). This means that changing into it after enrolling will be difficult.

https://www.csd.cs.cmu.edu/guidelines-transfer-dual-degree-minor-and-additional-major-cs indicates that you need a 3.6 college GPA in specified CS prerequisites and 3.0 college GPA overall to apply to change into the CS major, and it is competitive beyond that (i.e. just having those GPAs does not guarantee admission; essay required also).

It been done before, but I heard transferring into CMU SCS right now is pretty impossible. So no, I wouldn’t take the chances.