<p>I want to go to Northwestern's School of Communication Studies. Because this is a very popular program, does applying directly to this school make my chances worse, than, say, were I too apply undecided or to a less popular program?</p>
<p>Depends on how admissions works at the university. If you are required to select a school, then the school you choose can affect your admissions decision; your major within that school generally will not have any effect though.</p>
<p>If you decide to apply to a different school with the intent of transferring to another school later on, be aware that adcoms are aware of students trying to do this, and internal transfers can be very difficult (i.e. At Penn, an internal transfer to Wharton requires an extremely high GPA)</p>
<p>The advice given in Post #2 may not apply to the OP's specific situation when applying to the School of Communications at Northwestern University since this includes the nation's top theatre program as a major, and the incredibly selective theatre major accepts only 100 students per year. Also, transferring schools within Northwestern University is either unnecessary or hard. Unnecessary because School of Communication students have the right to also take classes & declare a major in the College of Arts & Sciences. Hard to transfer into the Journalism School, which may be the best in the world, Music School which requires an audition, & Engineering School because of numerous course requirements. But it is easy to transfer to WCAS if necessary or desired.</p>
<p>It used to be that students used to apply directly to a program that was less competitive, say agriculture, just to get into the university system and then after the 2 years of gen eds they would change majors.</p>
<p>That may actually have occurred a year or two ago at Northwestern University which has the nation's only undergraduate School of Education & Social Policy (SESP), which is normally only offered in graduate schools. This small, unique and highly personalized school went from the lowest average SATs to the highest average SATs within Northwestern University.
Northwestern University allows students in any of the other five (5) schools to also take classes & declare majors & minors in the sixth of six (6) schools, the Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences so there is not a significant difference among the SAT I average scores school to school.</p>