If I apply to College of Arts and Sciences...can I switch to engineering later?

<p>I don't like how you're forced to apply (write different essays) to certain colleges in Cornell for the Undergrad App...
I mean im only in high school...I don't know whether I want to do physics or engineering...can I change later on?</p>

<p>Yep. Some transfers are harder than others though. For example, it’s a billion times harder to transfer from CALS to AAP as opposed to the other way around.</p>

<p>Yes, you intra-university transfer.</p>

<p>The first year of engineering is mostly courses that are taught in Arts & Sciences, so switching at that point shouldn’t be a big deal if you’ve taken the same courses.</p>

<p>The second year you have to take more engineering distribution courses, which will not all typically be taken by CAS students.</p>

<p>Everything is sequential & builds on prior, so if you transfer in without having taken needed courses previously you may wind up needing more time to finish the degree.</p>

<p>My son started in Arts and Sciences as a biology major and decided, after his freshman year, that he wanted to transfer to engineering as a bioengineering major. The engineering advising office helped him figure out the process and the courses he would need. Before he could apply to transfer, he needed to take almost 10 required engineering classes and then apply to transfer at the end of sophomore year. He was, in addition, able to use some (but not all) of his freshman classes and AP credits toward filling requirements for engineering. He spent all of his sophomore year and the next summer taking required classes and is now in the college of engineering as a junior. He is almost (but not quite) caught up with the core engineering requirements. You can definitely do this transfer if you want to, but it takes a lot of work. My advice would be to apply to engineering if that’s where you think you’d like to be. If, for some reason, you do attend CAS and want to keep engineering as an option, I’d suggest taking as many of the freshman engineering classes as you can!</p>

<p>it is possible. but it depends on the particular situation. someone who was studying food science and wanted to switch to AEP, that may be just about impossible. otherwise, it’s fairly common to do so.</p>

<p>why not do applied engineering physics?</p>

<p>Anyway as far as I know an internal transfer into engineering isn’t that difficult assuming you’ve been doing well since there are generally more internal transfers out than in. However you might be behind in the engineering curriculum if you don’t start in engineering, this is less important if you have a lot of ap credit.</p>

<p>As collegemom said, it’s much easier to start in engineering and switch to Arts and Sciences. My son’s apartment mate made the CAS to engineering switch, and had to take summer courses and an extra semester in order to graduate.</p>

<p>If you think you might be interested in engineering, then I would advise you to start out in that major and see if you like it. After all, you probably have some introductory knowledge of physics (assuming you took a high school physics course), but you probably didn’t take any engineering classes in high school. </p>

<p>Also, engineering tends to have very specific courses that often must be taken in a particular sequence (as each course builds upon the material learned in a previous course). Therefore it is much more difficult to switch from A&S into Engineering than the other way around without losing credits or having to stay an extra semester or two because a required course is only offered once a year and you hadn’t completed the prerequisites before it was offered.</p>