Can you change your major after being directly admitted as a freshman?

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Wisconsin
1

For example, if you were to be directly admitted into UW’s Foster School of Business, but then you decide to change your major to…like something health related, can you pull out from Foster and just go into UW as a normal freshman?
Or a similar scenario for other schools who offer direct admission into a major.

Thanks in advance for any answers.

2

Generally depends on how competitive the new major is to get into.

Unless you really do not want to do your current major, it is probably not a good idea to leave your current major until you are admitted to another major that you like better.

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@ucbalumnus
Thanks, so if applying as a high school senior into a direct admissions major, and being accepted, you could change your mind, withdraw, and just go to that university as freshman? Without any major consequences on the admissions side of the university?

I know its not a great idea to do a major change, but is it allowed…especially when committing as a new freshman?

4

Yes, but then you could have to go through a secondary admission process to get into the major you want to switch to. This typically means enrolling and completing the prerequisites for the new major, then applying for admission to the new major. So you will not find out if you are successful at changing into a competitive major until a few quarters or semesters later.

Note that the health related majors like nursing, medical lab science, public health, etc. at Washington are listed as competitive admission, as are some of the common pre-med majors like biology and chemistry (though pre-med does not require any specific major).

http://www.washington.edu/uaa/advising/academic-planning/majors-and-minors/list-of-undergraduate-majors/

At a school where the majors you are interested in have competitive admission, it is best to apply for direct admission to one of the majors that has direct admission (if any do). Which one to apply to is not always an obvious decision, since it depends on your preference ranking of majors and how competitive they are to get into.

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@languages, you should contact the specific departments to find out how “competitive” their majors are, as the average prerequisite GPA of admitted students may be 2.7 to 3.0 for some “competitive” majors and 3.4 to 3.7 for others.

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Thanks for the replies!!

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This thread has appeared in the UW- Madison- WISCONSIN- forum. Question about WASHINGTON.

Moderators- please fix this.

All freshmen are admitted to the university as a whole at Wisconsin. Easy to switch majors at any time. Good to do before SOAR so you get the most appropriate advising.