I am a transfer student looking to transfer as a Junior and I was wondering if it is easier to get into a less common major (Latin American Studies) at a more competitive school as a less competitive applicant. Sorry if this question has been asked multiple times before.
The vast majority of colleges do not admit undergrads by major, so, no. It may be different for transfer applicants, though.
I can see where it might give you an edge, especially if you are Hispanic (a URM). But even if not, if you have two years of solid work in Latin American Studies behind you, and this is a major with a significant faculty but very few students majoring in the area, you might indeed get an edge. It doesn’t usually help students applying as entering freshman because admissions knows that many, even most, students will change their majors - those who claim to be German or Classics or whatever other under-represented major - are suspected of gaming the system unless they have a very solid track record built up in that area. As a transfer, you can presumably make a more compelling case that this really is your major.
I would also get in touch the the department faculty who are working in your specific area of interest. Present your interests to them and explain why you want to work with them. If you plan to do graduate work in this field, it’s also worth mentioning, as well as any other credentials you have in the field (language fluency, years spent abroad in the countries of interest, etc…) Make sure you research their work so you can mention that you are familiar with their work.
In your application to transfer, make sure you cite your interest in that faculty’s work and, if your effort to make contact directly is successful, mention that too. Good luck!
If the major does matter in terms of admission selectivity, it is likely that changing major to a more popular (relative to department capacity) major will require another admission process.
A transfer student who comes in at the junior level may be restricted in changing major due to the limited number of semesters left until graduation.
Since all of the above possibilities are very dependent on the school, you need to check each school and the departments of interest to see what applies there.
I applied to a very unpopular major at UCLA called “linguistics with computer science” last year. In the previous years, I had never seen more than 20 people apply for it and the acceptance rate was generally quite high. In the year I applied, apparently 24 people applied and only 10 were accepted - I was not one of them. I had a fair number of the requirements, but they were also quite vague such as “four programming courses”. I had the programming portion and language down for the major, but I was lacking in math. On the other hand, I recall another poster that was a bit of the opposite. He had the language and math down, but was lacking in the programming requirement - he was one of the 10 accepted. It’s really hard to say. I thought applying for linguistics with computer science rather than a more competitive STEM-related major would get me into UCLA while I would still have a major that would expose me to CS courses I longed to take, but that plan didn’t really work out 