I prefer A. My daughter applied to 5 state flagships. At 2 of them, her major (business) was widely available. At 2 others, direct admission to the highly-ranked business school was difficult. At the last, admission to the business school was competitive and direct admission as a freshman was available to only a handful of freshmen. What was more troubling was that there were not definite objective criteria for admission as a sophomore. D got into all the schools, and while the school where she couldn’t get a direct admission to the business school was one of her 2 favorites, she chose to go elsewhere, and the uncertainty of getting into her major certainly weighed heavily in that decision. FWIW, she’s a strong student who most likely would ultimately have been admitted to the program at the school without the direct admit, but without the assurance of a specified GPA or similar objective standard to meet, it wasn’t a risk she wanted to take.