<p>Alright so from the gist of it the general format of responding to the UC prompt is to basically tell a story about an experience you had and how you learned from it and to tie that into other activites/achievements/experiences you've had in relation to the major you want to pursue.</p>
<p>I want to do an engineering major at UCSB (in particular Materials Engineering) but since it's impacted heavily I'm not sure I have the grades/scores to get in, I do however think I can get in for regular admission. So I learned that even if you get rejected from the college of engineering your app gets handed off to the College of Letters and Sciences to give you another shot at making it in regular admission</p>
<p>The thing is if I write in my app how I really want to be an engineer and how all my experiences lead up to that, wouldn't that severely disadvantage me in the case that my application gets deferred to the College of Letters and Science and they end up reading how "I want to become an engineer"?</p>
<p>Do you think it would be best to avoid mentioning a major at all (a fatal flaw, or so I've heard) or to just talk about engineering and hope the college of letters and science doesn't end up thinking that "if he's really interested in that, he probably won't attend here anyway since he didn't get in for engineering"</p>
<p>Thanks for your time</p>