<p>I’m a prospective freshman at some of the UC’s with a bit of a problem.</p>
<p>I have taken a pretty diverse amount of courses throughout my high school career and I’m interested in a wide variety of subjects. I recently brought up the possibility of going in undeclared to some of the UC’s to my guidance counselor, and she said to be very careful with that, saying that in some cases, I may not get enough credits to graduate or the classes I won’t since priority goes to college juniors and seniors and community college transfers.</p>
<p>So I’ve been looking into more specific majors to get more focused, but I’m still interested in exploring potential interests, double majoring and minoring in said programs.</p>
<p>But just so I know what I’m getting myself into, how is changing/declaring majors/minors at the UC’s? Is it really that difficult? Is it inflexible? What about interdisciplinary studies? getting the classes you want?</p>
<p>Any advice I can recieve would be appriciated.</p>
<p>Thanks in advance :)</p>
<p>For most UCs, almost all freshmen are treated as undeclared and declaring/changing major involves filling out a form that requires a signature or two from academic advisors and/or faculty advisors. The only time being undeclared may be a problem is if you are really a pre-med or pre-engineering disguised as undeclared … pretty much all UCs restrict engineering courses to declared engineering majors and many UCs give priority registration for science courses to declared science majors, so you’ll run into all sorts of problems enrolling in your required courses if you are not declared for those majors. Other than that, it doesn’t really matter … you can be whatever major you want (and probably get priority enrollment for the lower-division courses in your major) or be undeclared (you’ll have the same priority as everyone else for the general education requirements).</p>
<p>I’ll tell you how it works at UCSD. AND THIS ONLY APPLIES TO UCSD BECAUSE I DON’T KNOW HOW THE OTHER UCs WORK AND THEY ARE ALMOST CERTAINLY DIFFERENT.</p>
<p>If a major is not impacted, you can switch into it simply by going online, selecting it from a drop down menu and clicking submit. Impacted majors you have to apply and they only accept so many people. Even if you applied to UCSD with an impacted major, it wouldn’t hurt your chances of getting in. They would just admit you as undeclared and you could pick whatever non-impacted major you wanted. </p>
<p>At UCSD, being undeclared doesn’t restrict you from taking any classes so you could take whatever classes you wanted until you figured out what you wanted to do.</p>
<p>By the way, the impacted majors at UCSD (as of last year) are all biology majors, mechanical engineering, and aerospace engineering. If you even remotely think you might want to be one of those majors, apply to them because it is easy to switch out of them but hard to switch in. You’ll have better chances of getting into that major when you apply than trying to switch in later, although it’s still possible.</p>
<p>I hope that helped, but like I said, the other UCs are almost certainly different.</p>