I’m a rising senior, though not completely sure how major affects acceptance. As in the title, I want to major in Computer Science, but I am wondering if it would be advantageous to apply undecided and then declare CS after (if I’m lucky) acceptance. The particular schools I’m wondering about are Berkeley; Carnegie Mellon; Harvey Mudd; U of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; and more broadly some other T20s. For example, CMU has an overall acceptance of ~20%, but 6% for Computer Science (as reported by a quick Google Search). And, according to my alumnus brother, applying Letters and Science and then declaring Computer Science at Berkeley may be beneficial (though he is not sure).
Thanks!
It sounds like the CS major is competitive. It doesn’t do you any good to get accepted to a college if you can’t get the major you want.
At some or all of those schools you have to apply to the CS major (or college, in the case of CMU). So you might get into the university, but not the major, and not be able to get into it later either.
Are you OK with going to any of them and NOT majoring in CS? That’s a real possibility.
If you want to do CS, apply to CS. Not only may you not be able to transfer into the major later, but you may not even be able to register for the pre-reqs.
While I don’t know specifically about these schools, keep in mind you might not be able to get into the comp sci program later if the competition is high. So if comp sci is the only major you want, you could be risking getting into a school you want but not being able to major in comp sci. So, if you are set on comp sci I would think it’s better to declare it with your application and to make sure you have some safeties on your list.
One thing you could do is contact the schools and find out what percentage of students get into the comp sci major if not declared as a freshman.
When we looked at GT a few years ago, they said they look at your application and if you have taken a bunch of CS classes and your EC are in CS that would could be a red flag. They said it is easy to change major but they are aware of people trying to game they system. I am sure some pleople are sussessful but it might put you at risk.
At UC-Berkeley, all L&S accepted applicants go in as undeclared. It’s possible that if you applied for say a somewhat related but not so popular major (let’s say ORMS) or even Undeclared (not sure if that’s an option) instead of CS, you might get better odds of getting accepted. (Probably not a good idea though to attempt to apply for say an Italian major since your ECs would need to back that up.) Hard to say though, there’s no published stats to prove either way, mainly because the data is not available to the student population to figure out who applied for what major and then match up to their actual declared major. Overall L&S acceptance rate for 2018-19 was 15%, and generally speaking, around 50% of those who actually applied and got accepted as L&S CS majors actually declare.
For Engineering at Berkeley though, you do apply directly for the major, it’s a Direct Admit, with Undeclared being the hardest one to get into since it’s like applying to each and every major. EECS acceptance rate is along the lines of 6%-7%.
So to summarize, the only sure way of getting in for CS (direct admit) is via EECS, while L&S is slightly easier to get into but then you’re not declared and have to get a minimum 3.3 GPA in your first 3 CS classes in order to be eligible to declare.
Thanks for all the responses. I’ll see about doing this; otherwise, I guess I’ll apply for CS.
At CMU you apply to a school/college/program - there is no “undecided” general CMU application. And I promise you won’t be able to apply to, and get accepted to, a different programs and then just say “surprise, I want to be in CS instead”. (Well, you can say it, but it won’t happen).
Do note that the UC system does have stats for admission rates for transfer students by major, but not for freshmen. FWIW, last year for Berkeley the admit rate for regular CS was actually even less than for EECS - both under 10%.