Is it tough to apply undecided and transfer into desirable programs as a student?

It depends upon the school, it depends upon the student, and it depends upon what major the student wants to switch into.

Some top universities (MIT and Harvard come to mind) do not admit by major. You get to pick your major at the end of freshman year. If you want to switch to CS, then you switch to CS.

In most cases if it is more difficult to get accepted to a university for some specific major, there will also be some restrictions on switching into that major. University admissions have been doing this for a while, and “apply for a major that makes it easy to get accepted, then switch to the popular major” has occurred to them as a strategy that they do not want to encourage.

If a student really wants to major in CS or business, then they should attend a university where they can get accepted as a CS or business major.

Both daughters changed majors after they were in university for a year. One daughter for example started as a languages major, but was considering a biology major. She had to first get permission to take “biology for biology majors” as a freshman. Then at the end of her freshman year she needed to get permission to change her major to biology (at which point having already taken freshman year biology for biology majors helped her quite a bit). In both cases I think that having good grades helped, and might very well have been necessary.

All of which might just be a slow way to say “it depends”.

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