<p>I am currently a senior in high school planning to apply to Cal and UCLA. The problem is.. I really have no idea what I wanna do in my life as a career, but i've narrowed it down to studying medicine or being a certain type of engineer (Chemical, Aerospace, Civil, or Electrical) since I'm pretty skilled in math and science. I really honestly don't know what I wanna do, so I'm planning to put "Undecided" as a major choice on my application. However, I heard from a prominently known forum member here that in the event I do get into UCLA while having marked "Undecided" as a major, I will be automatically put in the College of Letters and Science. This brings me to my real question.</p>
<p>I heard that once I do get in, and I think during my vacation "Hey, I wanna be an engineer now!" that I have to wait til Fall Quarter of Freshmen year to apply for engineering school (Henry Samueli). I wanna know whether it really is much more difficult to get into that school as a college student instead of a high school student when I actually put engineer as a major.</p>
<p>Another question I have is regarding the UC application itself, suppose I pick engineering as a major or biology for example. Will my chances of getting accepted be much lower? I'm basically asking whether my major choice affects my chances of getting in.</p>
<p>You've got to understand that if you apply for engineering, then you're applying to a college (HSSEAS) with different and presumably higher standards, and you'll also be part of a more competitive, self-selecting group. HSSEAS and L&S obviously look for different things in each applicant, but if you're already qualified, applying to HSSEAS probably won't substantially affect your chances at admission to the university.</p>
<p>If you're not too confident in your chances to get in as an engineering major, then you can go ahead and apply as a biology major. If, and when you are accepted and do choose to attend, you can then apply to HSSEAS in the fall quarter of your freshman year. As far as I know, if you do this, then they'll evaluate you based on you high school record; basically, it's somewhat like initially applying for engineering. I doubt it would be that much harder to get into HSSEAS through this option, unless there was a glut of engineers in your year or something of that sort.</p>
<p>the thing is.. I'm barely qualified for UCLA (3.9 UC GPA, 2040 SAT). It's still a slight reach school for me, so I'm worried whether applying to HSSEAS will pretty much be an automatic rejection for me.</p>
<p>If you're worrying about it, and still really want to do engineering (ie. you're confident you'll do it if you come here), then you could just apply for a nonimpacted major, take the engineering pre reqs freshman year, and then transfer sophomore year into HSSEAS. Mind you, you'd have to be pretty committed.</p>
<p>No, a nonimpacted major means that you aren't going to feel more competition just because a lot of people apply to it. For instance, biology and prebiz are generally speaking the most popular majors at UCLA. However, because they're nonimpacted, despite the fact that half the school can fit into one of those two categories, an applicant applying for that major will not have his/her chances diminished. Of course, the college as a whole probably gets a lot of competition, but you won't necessarily be screened again after getting into the university (as is supposedly the case for engineering)</p>
<p>mhmm yeah along this boat - how difficult is it to tranfer into HSSEAS as a freshman? i read somewhere that you need to have generally, grades of a B or better after having taken one chemistry and math course - but really, how strict are they with this? i'm worried that i will not have grades decent enough to transfer in after this quarter - does it get more difficult to transfer in later quarters/sophomore year?</p>
<p>oh, and DO they really look at HS grades? if so that'd really help me out quite a bitttt hahaha</p>
<p>Transferring into it as a freshman is equivalent to being admitted in the first place. The school will review your request in light of your original application and determine whether or not you'd be admitted anyways as a freshman engineering major. If not, then you'd have to go the other way and wait a year before transferring into that major (I think there's a GPA req)</p>