<p>So I recently applied to UDub, and on my application I declared myself as a business major. However, I've been doing some thinking lately and have decided that I want my major to be better tied to a specific job market. And seeing how I've always found Computer Science interesting and UW happens to have an incredible CSE program, I think I'd rather pursue that as a major (not that I wouldn't consider a business minor). Anyways, my question is: are you "locked in" to the major you specified on your application? And while I'm at it, is entry in the CSE program super-competitive?</p>
<p>Are you locked in? Not at all. They use the majors you’re interested in as a way for them in statistics. Also, if the major(s) you want have a direct admit program, you are automatically thrown into the pool of students who can potentially become direct admit students (yes, business is one of them). Basically it means that the admissions office for each department will take a look at these students’ high school information and figure out who has the most potential (or something… each dept has different reviewing processes) and admit them into the major without you having to finish all the prereqs beforehand. It relieves a lot of stress for those students as they go through the intro courses.</p>
<p>Is admissions into the CSE department competitive? Very. It’s getting more and more competitive each year, especially with the idea that CSE will be a valuable field to be in for the future. We have 160 undergraduates per graduating year. </p>
<p>Here, take a look at the website and see if you can hone in more specific questions from there:</p>
<p>UGrad program: [Undergraduate</a> Program](<a href=“http://www.cs.washington.edu/education/ugrad/]Undergraduate”>http://www.cs.washington.edu/education/ugrad/)</p>
<p>CSE Application Review Process: [Application</a> Review Process](<a href=“http://www.cs.washington.edu/education/ugrad/admit/reviewprocess.html]Application”>http://www.cs.washington.edu/education/ugrad/admit/reviewprocess.html)</p>
<p>CSE Requirements: [CSE</a> Admission Requirements](<a href=“http://www.cs.washington.edu/education/ugrad/admit/programapply.html]CSE”>http://www.cs.washington.edu/education/ugrad/admit/programapply.html)</p>
<p>Thanks for your informative response! Helped clear things up nicely for me. Yeah based on being in lower-level math classes throughout high school and only really discovering that “hey, I might actually have an aptitude for STEM after all” over the course of this year, I’m not much of a poster boy for the direct-admit program.</p>
<p>But having looked into the resources you provided there, I’ve learned that I need to be in the top 10% of my intro-programming courses if I want to get a spot in accelerated admissions, which would be the most ideal scenario. Think I’ll be taking that MIT OpenCourseWare Intro to CSE course over the summer to get a leg up…</p>
<p>Thanks again for your help!</p>
<p>Good idea. You can also just head on over to the intro class websites and start learning! The lectures are online, as well as homework assignments. Obviously, the solutions won’t be posted, but you can get a feel of things. In many cases, they use the homework over and over again, maybe with a few tweaks, so you may have over half of the homework assignments done by the time class starts! 
Of course, this means that you should just keep working on improving the program so that you don’t miss any silly points (missing comments? missing brackets? vague variable names?) from homework.</p>
<p>Here is the first intro course website:
[CSE</a> 142, Autumn 2011](<a href=“http://www.cs.washington.edu/education/courses/cse142/11au/]CSE”>CSE 142, Autumn 2011)</p>
<p>Woah that’s too cool! Thanks for the tip, speedsolver. I’ll be sure to get started with that as soon as I can.</p>
<p>[Applied</a> and Computational Math Sciences Program (ACMS) - University of Washington](<a href=“http://www.math.washington.edu/acms/]Applied”>Applied and Computational Math Sciences Program (ACMS) | College of Arts and Sciences - University of Washington |)</p>
<p>ACMS - Applied Computational Mathematical Sciences - is a pretty awesome major too. I’d recommend checking them out.</p>