<p>How easy/hard is it to change your major at Cornell if you would end up in a different school? If you go from Chemistry in A&S to Chem Engineering in Engineering School? Or from Civil Engineering to Architecture? Or a bigger leap, say from undeclaried in the A&S school to the ILR school?</p>
<p>Changing Majors:
Within your colleges (changing majors within A&S, within CALS etc), it’s pretty easy, as long as you meet the requirements for the new major. Any classes in the “old” major often can be used as distribution requirements. Engineering is a little bit tougher since the curriculum is much more structured/plenty more required courses per major. You’re probably better off making up your mind by the end of soph year though so that you can take advantage of the depth of academia that Cornell offers (there is a very clear difference between 4XXX/5XXX level classes than 3XXX and below). Your major would likely be very diluted if you graduated with a bunch of 3XXX classes everywhere. Most 4XXX and above require prerequisites.</p>
<p>For example, if you take chem A&S classes freshman year, many of your classes would likely overlap with a physics/bio major etc and you simply need to make sure you take enough physics/bio requirements to “switch” your major.</p>
<p>Changing Schools:
First of all to clarify your wording, no one “ends up” in a different school. If you want to change into a major offered by another school, there is an internal college transfer process that you can apply (not sure if a requirement but everyone i knew who switched colleges applied in freshman year. Some switched later but will be graduating in 5. not sure if you can apply later than fresh and still graduate in 4). For example, unlike what i’ve described above, if you were doing Chem A&S you can’t just decide to take engineering courses and decide to graduate with chemE.</p>
<p>The transfer process is pretty painless. It’s just a lot of extra paperwork and meetings with the registrars of both schools. </p>
<p>Moving into Architecture for architecture from anywhere is next to impossible. Their program being 5 years is one reason this is so. I don’t know anyone who switched into architecture.</p>
<p>One thing to note about A&S (not sure how it works in other colleges) is that students come in as undeclared, no matter what they put down as their interested major on the application, so from that viewpoint, you can start off trying different things before formally declaring. </p>
<p>As for switching majors and schools, it depends on the switch. Some colleges have more core requirements, and some are more or less flexible in what those are (some require explicit classes to be taken, others allow you to choose from a slate). Similarly, some majors will require more prerequisites or just require more courses. Obviously a switch to a major or school with less prerequisites or required core courses is easier than vice versa, but you may have to do some research to see which is which.</p>
<p>PS: It’s possible to switch to Architecture I’ve just been told. However you basically have to start over as a freshman.</p>
<p>To add to gateways’ comment, engineering has the most structured curriculum and if you start in engineering it’s much easier to switch out to the other colleges smoothly since there are “engineering” versions of classes like math which are required. Not sure if you can petition out though…</p>
<p>Chemistry -> Chemical engineering is not that bad since many classes overlap. Chemical engineering is pretty structured though, so if you do that after freshman year you will have a pretty tough schedule.</p>
<p>Someone at AEM told me that you can’t transfer schools if it would mean that you would take longer than 4 years to graduate. This is even if you are not getting financial aid. I’ve gotten misinformation from people at Cornell so maybe this isn’t true.</p>
<p>Internal transfer can be difficult if your grades are poor. I know of a few unfortunate engineers who wanted to transfer because they struggled with the mathwhich led to low grades which led to a very difficult transfer process.</p>