<p>Just wondering....At UF if a student applies to a major where he/she is part of an underrepresented group, does that increase his/her chance of getting in? For example, if a male student applies as an elementary education major or a female student applies as an electrical engineer, might they be admitted more easily than other students?</p>
<p>I don't think so. Many students are "exploratory" in their first year, and most end up changing their major at least once during their academic career. The adcom knows this, which is why that part of the application is very insignificant. They're looking at the important stats, like GPA, SAT, courses taken, rec's, etc to base their admissions decisions.</p>
<p>I think the major just gives them an indication of what the class is going to look like, and they want it to be fairly balanced. If they see that nearly 100% of students want to study engineering, then there could be a problem with the distribution of students they just accepted.</p>
<p>They have some special programs for students that want to go into engineering, but they wont know that your pre-eng if you dont put it on your application.</p>
<p>STEP-UP (for URM's)</p>
<p>Words from the 3 college counselors at my school is that it doesn't make a difference. The only thing that it is REALLY used for is to see part of your personality (hollistic review?)</p>
<p>From what I understand, at UF it doesn't matter. However, other Universities I applied to required you to apply to a specific school (i.e. school of engineering). However, that doesn't mean that you can't still transfer...</p>
<p>Yeah UF doesnt require you. When I applied to Carnegie Mellon, I got into the engineering school specifically. At UF you can flip-flop you major very, very easily, until you reach 90 credits and then its get very, very hard.</p>
<p>Out of curiosity, why 90?</p>
<p>Generally it takes 120 credits to graduate (Engineering --> 124-135). At 90 they believe that you should know your major and stick to it. Also the state of florida wants you to leave in 4yrs or less. If you switch major to something totally different then it might take you and additional 2-3 yrs to complete and they dont want that.</p>