<p>Does anyone know how easy it is to switch your major once you are into University of Illinois? Especially into some of the more competitive schools, are undecided students stuck because a specific schools is more competitive for admission initially?</p>
<p>Switching within the same college (such as within LAS in which you would be if you apply undecided) is generally not difficult. However, as you may surmise, going from undecided in LAS to either the engineering or business college is not so easy. Engineering and business will get to determine whether you can transfer and both require fairly high college GPAs (generally you need a minimum of 3 to 3.2 to attempt a tramsfer and the minimum does not guarantee transfer). Moreover, although you can try to transfer after first year, both have a preference for transfers after second year, and you need to meet course requirements, e.g., you need to take those courses that freshman and sophomores in those colleges would usually take during their first to second year. Seats available at time of transfer generally affect what is needed to do so. It is easier to transfer to engineering than business as long as you meet the requirements mainly because during first and second year engineering tends to lose a higher percentage of its students originally admitted to its programs than business does.</p>
<p>i'm not sure about this, so don't accept it as the truth, but i heard that last year, the average GPA for people transferring into business was around 3.6 to 3.65. also, you're not allowed to transfer into business right off the bat, but i'm not sure how much time has to elapse. </p>
<p>if you're thinking about transferring into business, you have to mirror what freshman business students' schedules look like (in other words, you have to take computer science, econ 102, 103, and business math courses, etc.)</p>
<p>My son opted not to take the chance at UIUC because of the difficulty of getting into the business school (from LAS). There is no set criteria of requirements to meet for an "automatic" acceptance into the business school (unlike at other colleges such as IU and OSU). The admissions people told us carte blanc it was not an easy or guaranteed.</p>
<p>To be honest, I'm more interested in the difficulty of switching into Engineering. However, I may end up denying general studies for elsewhere if it is too difficult.</p>
<p>As I noted above, having the prescribed minmum requirements in courses and GPA for transfer to engineering usually gives you a very good chance of succeeding in transfer because Engineering usually has a lot of open seats come junior year. The real issue is meeting those 3.0 or higher (depending on particular engineering program) GPA requirements. The courses you have to take to be able to transfer include calculus (through 3 semesters at least), calculus based physics (through two and possibly 3 semesters, depending on program you want to transfer into), chemistry (two semesters for most, one for a couple programs), and usually a comp sci course. Many get As or Bs in those required science and math courses but be aware that a number of them are considered weed-out courses, example: the first two physics courses often have 25% or more of the class end up with below C grades, and another 10% to 15% withdraw to avoid getting a below C grade.</p>
<p>one more problem is the fact that in order to adequately mirror what students in the college you want to be in are taking, you will have to register for classes that are sometimes reserved for people within a particular major/ might be hard to get into anyway.</p>