I submitted my application for EA already, and I declared BME with a secondary interest in ME. However, I would like to change my major to economics so I can start the coursework as soon as I enroll. Would this reflect poorly with the admissions office?
Georgia Tech admits to the school as a whole. I believe you can start coursework in your major in freshman year no matter what major you choose, so I don’t understand your major change. Think more about whether you want to design medical devices or work for a bank before choosing a major. Talk to engineers versus business majors to get more ideas about what they do after graduation.
Colleges ask you to “declare” a Major when you apply only to track the students intentions v their eventual decisions. In reality, the Major you declare at the end of your Sophomore year is the one that matters.
As a current student at GA Tech, I have seen some other freshmen have similar problems: They apply for one major and then want to change soon after. However, after Tech accepts you as a BME major, you will likely have to register for BME type basic courses (Intro Chem, Intro Bio, etc.) instead of courses tailored more towards Econ majors. You may be able to get around this during FASET (orientation) by asking your counselor about this. Know that many courses are major restricted for Phase I too.
I am pretty certain you can change your major at GT at any time, so before FASAT, which is the registration program ,
on campus the summer before freshman year. Georgia Tech does have a lot of requirements for all the engineering majors as well as CS. You can look at requirements for econ and attempt to take both in freshman year, which may not be as hard as it sounds, as freshman often end up taking their social science distribution requirements in freshman year. For you, that might end up being your major, so attempt to sign up for both BME and economics classes. If initially you keep your major as Bio Medical, you will have preference to register for the beginning required classes, and then you may still be able to get Econ 1, 2 etc pretty easily as its a large introductory courses. Then, once you are at GT, you can sort out if
you want to continue with engineering , or prefer a business/economics track. Quite a few students transfer to business or economics after freshman year, so you will not be alone, if thats your decision.