Major Change?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Michigan State University
1

I got my acceptance letter today via email and I applied for Civil Engineering. I just wanted to know if my major was binding or if I could still change it? If it’s not how do I go about switching?

And is changing from lets say, the School of Engineering to the School of Education possible or very difficult?

Thank You.

2

I’m pretty sure you can change your major whenever you please. The only thing is if you are a Junior or higher you will need to meet the requirements of the new major if it is limited enrollment (I think), in this case education is. Here is a link (at the bottom) to what I’m talking about. Just go to it and then click education. Also it could be difficult given that you may have to take a lot of new classes since civil engineering may not transfer well over to education but civil engineering is a tough major so I’m sure you could do education too.

http://admissions.msu.edu/admission/transfer_limitedEnrollment.asp

3

Technically you are not accepted into the Engineering school until you complete a set of core courses and with a 3.0 gpa so when you go to orientation talk to the counselor you will meet with about what makes the most sense for scheduling if you are undecided this summer. There is time because MSU has a core curriculum that all students must take so you’ve got some breathing room to sort it out during freshman year without too much penalty in terms of wasted classes.

For instance, if you were thinking of going into secondary education in Earth Science you will need Calc I and Chem…both of those are also required for Civil Engineering. As I mentioned above the university requires a certain amount of credits for ALL students in some humanities-type classes - get those out of the way while you are figuring it out and you won’t be “behind” being able to graduate in 4 years.

That said as the years go by it does become more difficult because you will be racking up credits toward a specific major but most kids get a pretty good sense of what they should be doing by the end of freshman year and are able to “declare” either through an auto-admit program like Civil Engineering or through a process for other majors during sophomore year.