Unsure what major to declare

<p>I've submitted my SIR and am positively going to UCSB. I have approximately 24 credits from AP tests from my junior year and a possible 50 total if I pass all my AP tests this year, so most of my GE's will be out of the way. That opens up my freshman/sophomore years to start doing most of my lower division classes for my major. </p>

<p>I am currently enrolled in the College of Letters and Sciences as Undeclared. I checked the 2009-2010 catalog and decided to declare as a Pre-Business Economics student, but received an e-mail that "Business Economics" was changed to "Economics with Accounting Emphasis". I don't know if the coursework would be the same as Business Economics or if it would be different because I don't have a 2010-2011 catalog yet, so I did not declare Economics with Accounting Emphasis. </p>

<p>After looking at the list of approved majors, I'm thinking of declaring Economics, but have not yet. </p>

<p>Should I wait to declare or declare now? If I should declare, should I declare Economics, Economics with Accounting Emphasis, or another?</p>

<p>you can’t be accepted into the major until you’ve finished all the prerequisites. As far as declaring “pre-this” or “pre-that” it doesn’t make any difference at all in what classes you can take or in getting into the major.</p>

<p>You have to be accepted into the pre-economics program. They look at various criteria. I would send an email to admissions. I was waitlisted in pre-econ, changed to undeclared while on the waitlist and then I asked to be changed back again after I was accepted.</p>

<p>If you don’t do it now, then you have to go 2 quarters until you can change and it is harder to get into b/c it is so popular.</p>

<p>Just change into the pre-econ major, if you don’t like the prereq’s, you can always switch out. Be glad you’re in L&S, there are ‘hella’ majors to choose from.</p>

<p>You’d be surprised to know how much your APs actually count for…</p>

<p>yeah, I checked the ucsb course credit list and the AP equivallents, that’s how I came up with those numbers…</p>

<p>There’s no harm in declaring a major and switch out afterward. Some classes give priority to people with specific majors.</p>

<p>Here is the info from the UCSB catalog

Bottom line, the only advantage of declaring the pre-major is it locks down the requirements for graduation with that degree. Once in the pre-major, if they decide to add 5 calculus classes or something to the requirements for Econ majors, it won’t apply to you.</p>

<p>However there is no other advantage. Pre-majors don’t get any special privileges for enrolling in classes. You can complete all the requirements to get into the Econ major as an undeclared or anything-else major. Being accepted into the pre-major doesn’t guarantee acceptance into the actual major, nor does it provide a boost over those who aren’t in the pre-major. </p>

<p>And as far as the OP goes, declaring the major now (assuming its possible for her/him) won’t allow escaping any of the changes mentioned in the original post since the guarantee of requirements not changing applies only after being accepted into the pre-major. Seeing as how they’ve already changed the program and the OP is not yet in the pre-major, no benefit.</p>

<p>okay, switched to econ major last night, pending approval. Thanks for all your help!</p>

<p>got into econ :)</p>

<p>Well you’re going to have an easy 4 years…econ is sooooo easy (no joke).</p>

<p>hotrokr, actually, econ is pretty hard at ucsb</p>

<p>Well the whole concept of it is easy…I don’t know why it would be considered “hard” at another institution (more work? harder tests? etc.) Shouldn’t it be the same “econ” at one school as it is another?</p>

<p>Nope.</p>

<p>Take high school calculus for example, the content is exactly the same across the board, but some teachers are better, some are harder than others, some have more demands and such, making it harder at some schools/classes than others.</p>

<p>Sb’s econ program is very highly regarded, and is even in the top-10 nationally in some specific econ programs, this may be why econ is so demanding on sb students</p>