Filling much of the class with ED admits is an effective preference for those who give the strongest signal of interest (applying ED), even if level of interest is not formally considered in admissions evaluation and the use of ED is for other reasons (e.g. yield predictability, tipping the applicant and admit pool toward lower financial aid need).
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Sure, but the question was about EA and outcomes if not shifting to ED2.
Applying ED is the ultimate display of interest. There is no way a school help but consider interest in ED, as interest to the point of commitment defines that path.
In general, restrictions on non-major access to courses tend to be based on how full the courses are with students in the major, which also correlates to how full the major programs are. I.e. when the department has no more instructional capacity after filling the courses with students in the major programs needing the courses, students outside of those majors will be unable to get into those courses.
For UCLA engineering majors, they already enroll as many as the department can handle (and the student interest is so high that these majors are more selective than the campus overall), so that there is no space in the engineering courses for non-engineering students after the students in engineering majors fill up those courses.
In contrast, many other departments are not at full capacity and welcome out-of-major students in their courses (and undeclared students in their introductory courses). However, some UCLA L&S departments are at or close to full capacity (e.g. economics), so getting into upper level courses may be more difficult for non-majors if the majors fill them up first.
I found this if WPI is moving up on your list. Think the times are EST.
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In the absence of disclosure by the college, evidences are going to be anecdotal. I believe in the case of CWRU, an applicant’s chance of deferral increases dramatically if her/his profile indicates s/he is likely a candidate for a more “elite” school.
Sounds like it could be a good setting for D. 
And thanks for the course link, very useful! I couldn’t tell if there was some type of shuttle between the colleges, though I found other shuttles going around town for shopping etc. But to Holy Cross, google maps shows at least 45min travel involving bus transfers, which would be a huge obstacle. Would also be nice to have some shops, restaurants etc in walking distance so she’d have to check that out as she researches more.
Thank you! Unfortunately with the time difference she won’t be available. But that’s ok as she’d probably prefer to attend a WPI specific session, which I found on their site and think will work with her schedule.
Thank you both!
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Amen! So glad she found her place, it sounds great! And thanks for helping my D find hers!
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Ah ok makes sense, and thanks for flowchart!
That makes sense, and I assumed this would be the case for most full classes across UC campuses or really any college. It just threw me off that UCLA Engineering had a blanket statement preventing non-Engineering students from taking classes in their school.
But at least they’re upfront about it. We haven’t seen that on the other campus websites. It’s probably there and we haven’t found it, but also never heard this mentioned in any UC admissions info sessions. In fact, very little explanation about the effects of applying to an impacted major versus undecided, etc.
Sorry to digress, I will surely post many more questions to you on the UC forums. 
Thank you both!
Same here!
You lost me now, but that’s ok, I’ll just drink more coffee.
Yikes, the no free electives may be enough to turn D off to SLO engineering or anywhere else the major is so restrictive of electives.
This sounds like it might be more her style, at least for engineering, but I could be wrong. Will have her check it out. Thank you!
They are upfront about it. Although not specifically banned at some schools, it is very difficult for some students to take upper division classes in departments that aren’t their majors. My daughter was in theater for a few semesters and the theater department blocked all course from general registration (even basic level, to make sure the majors got the needed classes). Usually all spots were taken by majors and if a spot in a class became available, the non-major would probably have to find the professor to beg his way in. No outright restriction on getting into a course, just extremely hard to do.
Other majors, like English or history, were easier to get into but did have pre-requisites, and daughter had more success talking those professors into waiving them.
Other departments like music, dance, and even agriculture had a lot of restrictions on cross registration. If the student can prove they are qualified, they could get a waiver.
I can see how this would explain the stats/patterns 1NJParent is seeing.
Well again, you’re offering an opinion with zero evidence that is completely contrary to my very recent experience. Of the 5 one did matriculate to CWRU, of the other 4: Duke, Brown, CalTech and University of Rochester. I would not discourage anyone from applying EA to CWRU - I would encourage them to have a genuine interest in the school and express it in a variety of ways to the administration. I do believe that they can tell when it’s an obvious safety school and the student has zero interest in actually attending.
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Yeah, I guess I actually prefer seeing UCLA’s statement on their website because that tells D exactly her chances of trying out engineering courses as a non-major (0). Since the ability to explore is so important to her, she’ll have to sit down and research each school to see how likely her course sampling plans will play out. We guessed less likely at our state schools, but I know some popular classes can be hard to get into at private schools too. Thanks!
CU - Boulder has a pre-engineering program which is actually part of the A&S school. If the student takes certain required classes and gets a certain GPA, then transfer to the COE is guaranteed. Some who apply to engineering are accepted to this program and may not be happy but some like it because it does give them more opportunity to decide about engineering. The classes are the same as first year engineers are taking (calc, chemistry) but those can a be used as A&S core requirements too if engineering isn’t the ultimate choice.
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In general, at the UC’s and even the CSU’s, students that have been admitted into the specific Engineering majors get priority on enrolling for Engineering courses. After that, if there any open spots in the Engineering classes, then non-majors can enroll.
Some UC’s are more flexible (they offer minors in some Engineering disciplines) than others as evidenced by UCLA’s policy.
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This is actually quite common in nearly all engineering programs. No free electives, does not mean no choice in classes. There are 40 hours of General Education which are not technical. There are MANY ways to fulfill those requirements. My son took Philosophy of Space, Time and Matter and The Films of Stanley Kubrick, as examples. There are also lots of ways to fulfill technical electives. Free Electives are essentially junk hours that don’t fulfill a specific requirement, but are needed to get to the total hours required for a degree.
This is sort of academic anyway as students from outside of a major wouldn’t have the foundation or prerequisites to understand the material. It’s not like you can dabble in thermodynamics or vibrations to see if you like it without a boatload of classes before that.
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While this is common in science, math, and engineering, there are some other subjects where upper division courses may have few or no prerequisites, so they are relatively accessible from a prerequisite standpoint to students outside the major.
For example, CPSLO’s upper division history courses list prerequisites of:
- Junior standing or history major.
- Completion of GE area A (English composition and communication).
- Completion of GE area B4 (quantitative reasoning).
- One or two lower division GE area D courses (social sciences).
https://catalog.calpoly.edu/coursesaz/hist/
A junior at CPSLO in any major should have completed the GE area A and B4 requirements by then, and lower division social science courses are popular out-of-major electives (introductory economics, introductory psychology, lower division history courses, etc.), so the listed prerequisites are not much of a barrier against non-history-majors taking upper division history courses.
However, if the subject is popular enough that the department has to limit the number of students in the major, it is very likely that the upper division courses will be filled with students in the major, so there may not be much space for non-majors in those courses.
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I think my daughter only had 15-20 electives for non-engineering courses, and even those weren’t ‘free choice’ as she needed 2 English w/ writing courses, a civics-type course and one other I can’t remember. She started with no AP or DE courses and started in Calc I and Chem I, so if a student came in with more AP/DE or at a higher level in math or chem, that student might have had more options to take more electives (music, art, business, psych). If she had high school to do over, she would have taken English as a DE course rather than college prep and gotten those requirements out of the way. In high school, she didn’t even know she wanted to be an engineer or what courses were required. I don’t think the DE writing courses were very good and I think she learned more in other hs writing classes, but got no college credit for them.
Live and learn.
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