is it true that the UC’s require you to declare a major?
then wouldn’t certain departments be a lot harder to get into?
how hard is it to change majors after you get there?
thanks
<p>No, the major does not affect admissions- only the college (ex. college of engineering) has a significant impact.</p>
<p>At most of the UC's, you dont declare your major until the second year.</p>
<p>The major does indeed affect admissions, and affects it greatly, if you are applying to the College of Engineering. Admission to the CoE is done by major, and it's significantly more difficult to get admitted into, say, EECS, than into, say, CivE.</p>
<p>Would applying "Undeclared" increase my chance of admission at the UCs?</p>
<p>thanks..but isn't "college of engineering" declaring that you're going to major in engineering?</p>
<p>not_silly:</p>
<p>Yeah. It's a bit confusing, so the UCs generally call it the School (rather than College) of Engineering, to differentiate it from the main College (of Letters and Science).</p>
<p>PXalpine:</p>
<p>Applying with an undeclared major does not increase one's chance of admission at the UCs compared to someone who applies to the College of Letters and Science.</p>
<p>Flopsy, I'm fairly certain that Berkeley calls it the College of Engineering, not the School of Engineering. I don't know about what the other UC's do, but at Berkeley, it's pretty clear. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.berkeley.edu/academics/#colleges%5B/url%5D">http://www.berkeley.edu/academics/#colleges</a></p>
<p>To not_silly, in the Berkeley College of Engineering, you can't just simply apply to the college, you also have to apply to a major within that college, and the admissions chances are different depending on what engineering major you choose. Like I said, it's more difficult to get admitted into EECS than to CivE. And you only have one shot. If you apply to EECS and get rejected, you can't just turn around and say that you now want to try for CivE, or that you'd rather not apply to the College of Engineering at all, but rather to some other College at Berkeley. You get one shot at applying to any of Berkeley, and if you don't get admitted, then that's the end of the story. </p>
<p>Furthermore, the ability to switch majors at Berkeley is dependent on how difficult it is to get admitted into that major in the first place. It is extremely difficult to switch into EECS, for example. You can't just get admitted to Berkeley in the College of Letters and Science and then simply decide that you want to switch into EECS. If you want to switch majors, you have to obtain the proper approvals, and the difficulty of getting those approvals depends on how difficult it is to get admitted into that major.</p>
<p>Yes, major matters. Enginnering as others point out at almost all UCs, Bio related majors at most and especially at the top 3, bizecon at UCLA and anything that works for premed are some of the hardest. Each UC publishes a list of "impacted" majors. Applying for something else will certainly help, but it would be very hard to transfer to an impacted major, so it's a bad strategy if you want a certain major. </p>
<p>Someone of the transfer board wrote that as a transfer, the average GPA for Iranian studies is a 3.18. Now there's a back door!</p>
<p>If you are applying to the College of Letters and Science (including undeclared), it doesn't matter which major you apply as. </p>
<p>"Bio related majors at most and especially at the top 3, bizecon at UCLA and anything that works for premed are some of the hardest. Each UC publishes a list of "impacted" majors. Applying for something else will certainly help, but it would be very hard to transfer to an impacted major, so it's a bad strategy if you want a certain major."</p>
<p>Impacted majors are majors that you have to apply to get into once you are admitted to that UC and have finished the pre-requisite requirements. For example, people may apply as pre-business economics to UCLA, but it's not impacted at this stage. Your major won't affect you. The impacted part comes in ONCE you're at UCLA, then you'll have to finish the pre-reqs and do well and apply to get into the actually Business Economics major. Same goes for every other major in the College of Letters and Science. </p>
<p>"is it true that the UC's require you to declare a major?"</p>
<p>no. according to my education professor (who used to read apps in the admissions office) who was trying to emphasize this misconception, over 40% of undergrads enter UCLA as undeclared. in other words, undeclared is the most represented "major" among the incoming freshmen. </p>
<p>but</p>
<p>"Would applying "Undeclared" increase my chance of admission at the UCs?"</p>
<p>no. it won't increase your chances nor decrease your chances in reality. </p>
<p>i am just trying to prove that many people apply as undeclared and get in, and that's totally fine, but that the factors of admissions are everything else (GPA, SAT, EC's, essays, etc)</p>
<p>I have to back up kfc4u on this one, at least as far as Berkeley goes (don't really know how the other UC's work). At Berkeley, the only college that admits by major is the CoE. All the other colleges unify their college-wide admissions. Once you're admitted into a college, then you can try to switch to an impacted major, but there is no guarantee that you will be successful. You can also try to switch colleges, but there is also no guarantee that you will be successful in doing that. For example, every year, plenty of L&S students try to switch into the CoE but are denied.</p>
<p>Anyone know if the major will effect the decision in other schools? Preferably at Ivies?</p>
<p>Sometimes. Generally, this happens only if a university has multiple schools. For example, getting into the Wharton School at UPenn to study busad is more difficult than getting into the UPenn SAS. Columbia runs different admissions processes for its various schools, i.e. the Fu Foundation SEAS vs. Columbia College. Perhaps the largest disparities can be seen at Cornell, which has 7 undergraduate schools/colleges of varying selectivity, with the College of Engineering probably being the most selective, and the 3 so-called 'contract' colleges (the ones that receive public funding from the New York state government) being less selective, especially if you are a resident of New York state. It's a little-known fact that Cornell University is actually a quasi-public university, with 3 of its colleges belonging to the State University of New York system, with all the in-state admissions preference and tuition subsidy that that implies.</p>