<p>My daughter is a freshman engineering major at UCLA. She’d like to transfer out of engineering into undeclared social sciences so she could take prereq classes to eventually major in communications, design, or film. What does she need to do to make that happen? Can she just sign up for intro to communications, american film history, and econ without transfering out of engineering?</p>
<p>i dunno about econ, but she can take comm studies and film history. they’re in the engineering school’s GE list anyway.</p>
<p>Yes, she can sign up for those courses. For more specific courses in the Film & TV school, she would be unable to. An example of taking a Film & TV class w/o being in the school would be something like American Motion Picture (Film 106A) or whatever. It counts as a GE class. For comm, she’d take Comm 10. It’s a GE class and anyone can sign up for it. She can sign up for econ courses with a problem. If it’s within the College of Letters and Science, generally, it’s not an issue to take those courses. She’d need to look up the pre-reqs for her interested majors, see if they satisfy GE classes in case she decides not to pursue one of the above majors/disciplines, and finally, figure out which she can take (if they’re Comm/Film&TV/BizEcon specific), etc.</p>
<p>all three majors have completely different paths. she would apply to comm studies in spring of her first year, and again her second year if she doesn’t get it. to bolster her chances she should look at the list of pre-req classes for comm, and take as many of them as possible, because the application is purely coursework/grades (no personal statement). this major is in the college of letters and sciences (not sure how to go about switching colleges; email a counselor?)
design… do you mean DESMA? (design/media arts)? that’s in the college of arts and architecture, so it’s got its own application process, as does film (a and a college as well). film/tv only accepts people in the junior year, and i believe it’s based on profiles/interviews… has she been actively involved in making films? or is she just intrigued by the process, what goes into films, how films function as a media? in that case, comm studies may be the best major for her.
because these three majors are so different from each other, encourage her to take comm 10 like mme-lin said. also, most comm upper divs are NOT limited to comm studies majors, so if you don’t mind that they aren’t GEs, they can help her discover where her interests may lie. take a desma class (such as desma 10), and look at the film/tv GEs.
good luck!</p>
<p>One other suggestion – have your D start taking advantage of the advising resources right there on campus to help her. There is ASK peer advising, counseling assistants, etc. She can talk to her RA if she isn’t sure where to go. While it is perfectly understandable that you want to help her, having her dad find the answers will slow her making the adjustment to the large U environment of UCLA.</p>
<p>Thanks for the suggestion of the RA. I wasn’t sure where the advisors were, and neither was she. I’ll tell her to ask her RA about ASK peer advising. (Though she did try some peer advising, and found the peer advisors extremely rude and unhelpful. I’m hoping that wasn’t the official peer advising.)</p>
<p>Unfair to generalize all peer advisors - there are different types and groups through various organizations (SAC, AAP, etc.).</p>
<p>another one bites the dust</p>