<p>What four year colleges do not have capacity or administrative limitations on choosing a major?</p>
<p>By this, I mean that an undergraduate student who enrolls at the college can freely declare or change to any major, constrained only by the following criteria:</p>
<p>A. Being in good academic standing at the college.
B. Passing the major's prerequisites (if letter grade is required, requiring just C grades or 2.0 GPA unless higher grades are required to maintain good academic standing).</p>
<p>Colleges do not count if any major:</p>
<ol>
<li> Requires a competitive admissions process to declare or change into.</li>
<li> Requires grades higher than C (or GPA higher than 2.0) in the major's prerequisites and/or overall (or higher than which maintains good academic standing at the college if that is higher than C or 2.0).</li>
</ol>
<p>Colleges with undergraduate divisions (e.g. arts and sciences, engineering, business, etc.) do not count if there either 1 or 2 above apply to changing divisions, even if declaring or changing major within a division is not so restricted.</p>
<p>AFAICT, Yale meets both of your tests. I believe that at Yale, you’d have to petition the Committee on Honors and Academic Standing to get a change of major that couldn’t be completed in what was left of your 8 semesters, though. Looks like Smith and Harvard also meet both the tests.</p>
<p>I suspect most of the “harder to get in than to stay in” schools that aren’t divided per your last paragraph would meet those tests. My state flagships (which might be characterized as “harder to stay in than to get in”) do not meet your tests.</p>
<p>I would imagine most universities have limits on the most popular technical programs (such as biomedical engineering) because of capacity. </p>
<p>At UVa, you typically have to do decent in the first couple classes in a major before they officially accept you as a major in your 2nd year. As far as I know, few majors have any numeric limits. The U. is moving to a financial model where the departments get to keep more of the revenue from their students, so there will be a financial incentive to attract more majors. Entry into the Commerce School (3rd year) is competitive - you won’t be admitted unless you did very well in the prerequisites, among other aspects. Many people who are not accepted into the Commerce School become Economics majors. There are some interdisciplinary programs that are competitive for entry because they like to keep their class sizes small.</p>
<p>Just about any LAC would qualify. They may do some “class crafting” up front (in admissions) that takes academic preferences into account. However, once admitted, every student can choose freely from just about everything the school has to offer (as long as they satisfy course pre-requisites and graduation requirements, and subject in some cases to limits on individual course enrollments). </p>
<p>Private universities with stovepiped undergraduate “schools” include Georgetown, Cornell, Carnegie Mellon, and the University of Pennsylvania. Yale has one undergraduate component, Yale College. Harvard has one undergraduate component, Harvard College. The University of Chicago has one undergraduate component, called “The College” (to which all undergraduate faculty are appointed, because it doesn’t even have undergraduate departments per se). These 3 universities (and others such as Brown and Dartmouth) are LAC-like in the freedom they offer all undergraduates to pursue their interests wherever they lead (which, however, may not take you very far if your interests include certain pre-professional subjects.)</p>
<p>Students at Cornell can transfer between 7 schools as long as they are in good academic standing. It is much harder to transfer in/out of engineering because of required course requirement. But within the school there is no limitation in choosing a major. Cornell A&S is very similar to other LACs, students are allowed to pursue any major they want. The difference is that it is a lot easier at Cornell to fulfil a major’s requirement because the same course could be offered at multiple schools. As an example, CS courses could be taken in Engineering and A&S. Stats could be taken in AEM, Hotel, A&S, Engineering…</p>
<p>Also, students transferring between divisions into the College of Arts and Sciences need at least a 2.7 GPA, or else the transfer is conditional on raising GPA to 2.7.</p>
<p>Most of the best private LACs and universities. There are a few that have separate divisions, such as Columbia and Cornell, but at the rest there is no issue, AFAIK. (With the exception of some special programs, such as dual conservatory/academic programs at places like Tufts and Harvard, which have special admissions.)</p>
<p>At many colleges, it is extremely difficult to transfer into the nursing program. Some colleges only accept students into nursing directly from high school. Others have a competitive program in which people are admitted into the nursing program before the sophomore or junior years. Penn State says their nursing students have the highest high school GPA of any group of entering freshmen. The main reason is that nursing programs are expensive to run, because of a need for a low student - teacher ratio. There also is a shortage of qualified nurse educators, and colleges in rural areas may have trouble finding enough clinical opportunities for their students.</p>