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That is untrue. I don’t know where you got this impression. This is how the university system works:</p>
<p>1) A university is divided into a number of colleges. Each college is an umbrella for a number of majors. At UCLA, some of these are Geffen, Samueli, Anderson, etc.
2) A person who applies to the college is reviewed by that college’s admissions officers. There is no general admissions reviewers. By this, I mean there is no admission officer that can offer you the choice to any one of the UCLA undergraduate colleges.
3) Once you are admitted into a college, you can change majors, but only within your specific college. In many instances, students can’t even cross enroll in courses offered at the university from a different college. For example, I’m enrolled in the College of Letters and Sciences. I cannot enroll into a class offered by Samueli.
4) If you want to switch majors offered across different colleges, you literally have to reapply to UCLA.</p>
<p>Again, this is true for every university and not just UCLA. Most universities have a “College of Letters and Sciences” for all general majors. This is the easiest college to be admitted into. Applying for any specialty college or one that doubles up as both a graduate and undergraduate college can be significantly more difficult. For example, I know UCLA School of Dentistry, the best dentist school in the nation, has an admittance rate of ~3% (However, that is an exclusively graduate college. The best example at UCLA is Samueli. Admittance to Samueli is more difficult than at the College of Letters and Sciences. At Berkeley, the best example is Haas.)</p>
<p>The “decisions” deadline really does not apply to specific colleges. Once you go to a university, you will discover that colleges for things such as Law and Engineering are practically autonomous from the College of Letters and Science (or the general college). Samueli can do what it wants. Anderson can do what it wants. etc. etc. Often, in academic papers, people even refer to the individual colleges instead of naming the University as a whole. For example, the headline of a Businessweek Article names, ‘Wharton’, ‘Haas’, ‘Marshall’, ‘Anderson’, ‘Sloan’, etc. Their respective universities do not receive much mention.</p>