CSU and UC Major Myth

State Forums
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<p>Hello!
I am a senior in high school, trying to pull through this last semester with exceptional grades :o)</p>

<p>I am also in AVID Senior Seminar, and the AVID program has their own guidance counselor. Our counselor is wonderful, insightful, and all around subservient to all her students. But while the senior class was doing their applications for CSU's and UC's, she mentioned something that I felt needed some revision. </p>

<p>She told her students that declaring a major that (by instinct) seemed less impacted, actually improved our chances into getting into the harder CSU's and UC's.</p>

<p>Well, College Confidential, I want some clarification. Is this necessarily true?
Personal anecdote, I applied to CSU Fullerton, San Marcos, Los Angeles with a Criminal Justice/Criminology major and to San Diego State with a Pre-Latin American Studies major.
For UC's I applied at Riverside, San Diego, Santa Barbara with a Latin American Studies major and Irvine with Film and Media Studies.</p>

<p>If this is actually true, is there any impact on the majors that I chose for each school?
Thank you! :o)</p>

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<p><a href=“University of California Counselors”>University of California Counselors;

<p>Hopefully this provides some answers.</p>

<p>As shown:
Riverside: UCR does not consider a student’s major in admission decisions unless the declared major is a selective major.</p>

<p>San Diego: UCSD does not admit applicants by major. </p>

<p>Santa Barbara: Major is not considered in admissions decisions for the College of Letters and Science (except Dance and Music)</p>

<p>Irvine: Applying Undeclared/Undecided does not improve or detract from one’s chances of admission. (Meaning - it doesn’t matter what major you list)</p>

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<p><a href=“http://www.calstate.edu/sas/documents/impactedprogramsmatrix.pdf[/url]”>http://www.calstate.edu/sas/documents/impactedprogramsmatrix.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>And here is a list of the impacted majors in the CSU’s</p>

<p>Every major at Fullerton is impacted.</p>

<p>Criminal Justice is impacted at Los Angeles, but other majors are not - so the counselor’s strategy might have helped … Or not - some schools make it very difficult to change majors (especially into an impacted major).</p>

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<p>CSUs admit by major, although unimpacted majors at unimpacted campuses are admitted at baseline CSU eligibility. However, changing major after beginning attendance requires applying to change major, and acceptance into the new major may be difficult to get if the new major is impacted. Here are SJSU’s thresholds:
[url=&lt;a href=“http://info.sjsu.edu/static/admission/impaction.html]Info.sjsu.edu[/url”&gt;http://info.sjsu.edu/static/admission/impaction.html]Info.sjsu.edu[/url</a>]</p>

<p>UCs generally do not admit by major in the main division (usually College of Letters and Sciences), but different divisions (e.g. College of Engineering) may have different standards. In some cases (e.g. Berkeley College of Engineering), they do admit by major.</p>