I was admitted EA for Mechanical Engineering. Since then, I have had a change of heart about my major. At other colleges, this is not much of a problem because they have lax major-change rules or I selected undeclared engineering, but I have heard that at the University of Illinois it is difficult to change to certain majors. I would like to change from Mechanical Engineering to Computer Science (COE). I already tried to change with the Office of Admissions, but they said it was past the deadline. Let’s say I enroll now: can someone walk me through the process of changing majors? I’d prefer to change it before the fall semester starts, but I would also consider switching later in freshman year as an option.
CS in CoE is a crapshoot to transfer into. People with college 4.0s have been denied transfer. If you want to do CS, I highly recommend going somewhere else.
Thank you.
You cannot even try to make a change now. During the application process, you could have requested a change by about Jan 10, but that kind of request is the kiss of death, because to be considered for CS, you would have been required to relinquish the admission you already had, and then if rejected for CS, you would have had no admission.
The earliest time you can now apply for a change to CS (an inter-departmental transfer within the college of engineering) is during second semester, freshman year (during February) for the beginning of sophomore year, and then the decison is usually made after you get second semester freshman grades. You first see your acedemic advisor (who will likely tell you how hard it is to change to CS), and then submit an application which includes essays. CS is currently an impacted major, meaning essentially that the applicabre department has far more students than it wants for the facilities and professors available. Despite how high your grades, well-written your personal statement, and how impressive your accomplishments, you should still assume that the chances of being allowed to change are fairly low – as an impacted major, they often get a large number of students with high grades wanting to change to CS but usually have a only small number of seats open.