I’m a little bit confused about the “capped major” concept. For example, for CSE, are there freshman that are directly admitted to CSE majors? If so, how many? If not, do everyone have to go through the lottery?
UCSD admits into the University first and then into the major. Freshman are directly admitted to the CSE major if you meet UCSD’s competitive criteria. You need to select a non-capped major as an alternate in case you are not admitted into CSE directly or would be then placed in Undeclared. To switch into the CSE major later from your alternate or Undeclared major, you would need to take the pre-req courses and receive a minimum GPA to be placed into the lottery.
Do you know how many are accepted into CSE directly each year?
Also, this basically means that if you are not directly admitted, don’t come. Correct?
The link I gave you shows the # of change of major students admitted to the CSE major as of Summer 2017. Starting Fall 2018, UCSD will be using the lottery system and it states they will take 75 applicants for each cycle (Spring and Summer 2018).
For 2106, UCSD has 147 Freshman enrolled in CSE. How many the accept vs how many enroll is not posted but for many colleges, they accept 3x as many applicants that enroll. Of course, this does vary by college and major.
https://studentresearch.ucsd.edu/_files/publications/digest/Digest2016.pdf
If CSE is ultimately your 1st choice major and you are not willing to consider an alternate, then yes if you are not directly admitted into CSE then you may want to consider attending another school in which you are admitted into your 1st choice major. I would apply and see what happens before I cross off UCSD from the list.