WHen you apply to a specific college, do you have to specify which school within that university you are applying to? Does which school you apply to within the university change your chance of admissions? is it easy to transfer school within the university/ How does this differ from choosing a major? HELP
@HighnessHKPK depends. Sometimes the university will look at your major and say, if its engineering, automatic College of Engineering. For most of the universities I applied to, it will base it on your major unless otherwise stated.
Again it depends on your major. For many schools, the college of letters & sciences (or the business/liberal arts college) is much easier than the impacted college of engineering. It really depends whether or not the major you are applying to is impacted or not.
It is difficult to switch between colleges because you have to fill different pre reqs (from what I know, I could be wrong though). Switching out of an impacted college is easy, into is extremely difficult. The college you are in depends on your major. If you are an engineering major who decides to switch to accounting, you will change to the college of letters & sciences (or whatever its called at the specific college) and it will be easier than vice versa.
@iamsaucy Will the school I apply to within the university affect my chances to be accepted to the university as a whole? For example, if I apply to U Michigan school of computer science, will I have a different chance of being admitted if I apply to a different school within U Michigan.
So you need to know what schools exist within a given university, and what majors are within the school. You can look at their websites as one way to determine this. I think at Michigan, for example, CS is a major within LS&A (School of Literature, Science, and Arts). So you apply to LS&A, and can major in any of the majors offered within that school. Examples: CS, Japanese, English, math, economics.
But say you want to be a finance major, you have to apply to the Ross School of Business. Or if you want to be an engineer, to the School of Engineering.
Switching schools isn’t always easy, but I think you can find some info on the school websites.
But every university organizes differently and has different rules, so you have to research each one. And smaller schools usually don’t have different schools within them – you just apply to the college and get in, and can move freely among majors.
Some universities admit by major within the schools, too – you will hear the phrase “impacted major”, which means too many people want that major and it is hard to get into.
You really need to study each college website as a starting place. If you are having trouble identifying schools, a copy of the Fiske Guide to Colleges is useful.