Is it smart to apply to very selective schools with an engineering major? I know sometimes engineering can be a more selective pool and I am not 100% certain that is what I want to do. I am thinking about biomedical engineering but any advice on maybe other majors to consider that will give me a better chance of getting in would be great! Thank you!
To be honest, I am not really sure what you mean by this. Either way, if you are interested in doing engineering, apply to engineering. It’s exactly as simple as that.
If you apply to another major there is no guarantee that you will be able to switch into engineering later. Generally speaking it’s easier to switch out of engineering than into the major.
This is school related. At schools like UC Berkeley and Illinois, engineering is a more difficult admit than their published acceptance rates. At some selective schools however, the converse can be true. That was the case for Duke, 5 years ago when my son was looking at schools. There’s even a third way, like Cal Poly, where every single major has a different acceptance rate. So, long story short…it depends.
More importantly, as @boneh3ad said, if you want to be an engineer, apply to engineering. I’ll take that even one step further. If you even think engineering might be for you, apply to engineering. It’s far easier to switch out of engineering than in.
Some colleges admit prospective engineering students to the university as a whole and then admit the students who were admitted to the university to their selected engineering programs if they qualify (so someone who selects an engineering major on their college application may get accepted into the college but not accepted to the engineering program and would just have to enter the college as an undecided major if he or she does decide to attend that college). If you apply to one of these colleges, you shouldn’t have to worry about you selecting an engineering major on the college application affecting your chances of getting admitted to the university in general. So you should research how the colleges you are interested in do admissions.