<p>Contrary to popular perception, College A is unlikely to be an engineering-focused school; those schools which have that little in the way of breadth requirements tend to be liberal arts focused schools like Brown, Amherst, and Evergreen State. ABET accreditation for engineering does require humanities and social studies courses, so Brown requires them for engineering majors even though its has no breadth requirements for other majors.</p>
<p>Indeed, some of the engineering focused schools like MIT have very heavy general education requirements of up to half of one’s courses, though courses can double up on general education and one’s major.</p>
<p>Declaration of major at time of application is usually a characteristic of colleges where some majors are at full capacity. The California State Universities are like that, but do not fit the College A model because they have extensive general education requirements.</p>
<p>This is really a very artificial and limiting comparison, since a large percentage of colleges do not fit either the College A or College B model. Also, a lot of majors do not require enormous numbers of courses or credits (and colleges with a lot of breadth requirements let students count courses for both their majors and applicable breadth categories).</p>