Impacted Majors

A “target” school may become a “reach” school if you are applying to a competitive and impacted program or major.

It is true that, for schools that consider majors, certain majors are harder to get into than others. In fact, applying to an impacted major may mean that your chances of getting in are lower than the school's normal admission rate.

Below we go over some of the more competitive majors and some of the least competitive majors. It's important to remember that this will vary by school, but we've included examples of particular schools to show how the data actually looks. This data comes from a combination of the most current admissions statistics provided on individual schools’ websites, data from US News and World Report, and the data compiled in this spreadsheet by a helpful Redditor! We’ve focused on UC System schools since they have the most complete data sets, but these trends typically hold true across other schools’ admissions statistics as well.


More Competitive Majors

This will vary by school, but these majors are often particularly competitive and have lower acceptance rates than the school's average.

  • NURSING

  • COMPUTER SCIENCE

  • ENGINEERING

  • BIOLOGY

  • BUSINESS

  • PSYCHOLOGY

  • FINE ARTS


Less Competitive Majors

This will vary by school, but these majors are often particularly competitive and have lower acceptance rates than the school's average.

  • MECHANICAL ENGINEERING & MATERIALS ENGINEERING

  • SOCIAL SCIENCE MAJORS

    • History

    • Sociology

    • Political Science

  • MATH MAJORS

Pulled from "Does Your Major Affect Your College Admissions?"