At NCSU, CS is in the engineering division, where all admits start as “Engineering First Year”. EFY students later have to apply to their desired majors. There used to be a “CODA calculator” that gives an idea of the chances of admission to each engineering major with a specified college GPA, but that is no longer available, so it is not easy to know how competitive each major is (although CS should be assumed to be among the more competitive majors).
Really, this thread is another variant of the choice between:
- More expensive, assured of desired major.
- Less expensive, unlikely (or unknown how likely) to get into desired major.