i am a rising senior in high school. i constantly hear my friends saying that getting accepted into a competitive major is very hard if you are an average student. i was wondering how hard is it to change majors in freshman year in college? I’m afraid that i will not be able to change my major during my first days in college if i go into an easier major. i have been dancing throughout my whole life and have won national awards. however, i also have a lot of interest in marketing. i feel like it would be very hard to change majors from dance to marketing.
@cherrycanvas There are many colleges within the university (14 now, I think). The majority of applicants enter the College of Letters and Sciences, which also has the most majors. Theater and Dance is in this College. When you apply, you specify an interest, but you actually enter as undeclared in the L&S college, and declare your major after certain prerequisites are met. Some impacted majors, such as Hass Business School and a few others are competitive, and your chances of enrollment are dependent on your GPA in the prereq courses. Economics is a capped major, so you will have to compete for a spot (but less competitive than Haas). You would have to check the status of any possible major that you may change to. Other scenarios such as changing to or from EECS, and to/from other Colleges vary in difficulty. L&S to CNR? (easy), L&S to Engineering? (not likely at all). I suggest starting at the website for College of L&S - you can check majors there and link to the specific Dept. websites for all the details. Good luck.
Successfully changing majors is more likely when going from difficult to easier. @UC911doc gave perfect examples.To pursue Marketing at Cal, you need to be admitted into Haas Business School. You don’t apply to that until your sophomore year. It is extremely competitive to get in, so you would need a plan B (which is Economics, but with a cap, that too may not be an option). Why not just go in as L&S undeclared? You don’t have to declare until the end of your sophomore year. By that time, you may have a better idea of what you want to pursue. Marketing and dance are two very different paths of study.