Many of UCI’s majors will accept a student’s change of major if they are in good academic standing, that is, if they have a minimum GPA of 2.00 and are making normal progress toward a degree. However, some majors have more restrictive criteria, as approved by Irvine’s Academic Senate Council on Educational Policy (CEP).
This website contains information for those majors that have had additional criteria approved by CEP. If a major is not listed here, students may assume that no special criteria for a change of major into it are in effect.
Change of major criteria are approved based on several established principles (see General Principles). Four of these principles are of special importance to students:
- These Change-of-major criteria apply to students who have 120 units or less, unless stated otherwise.
- Students are allowed a period of one calendar year to meet any newly approved major-change criteria. In the meantime, the currently approved criteria remain in place. At the end of one calendar year after the new criteria are approved, students wanting to change majors will have to meet the new criteria, or whatever criteria are in effect when the change is made.
- Academic units will process change of major requests at any time during the year.
- In admission to a major, instances of academic dishonesty may be taken into consideration. (Approved January 2006)
For more information on how to change your major, see the Registrar’s web site at https://www.reg.uci.edu/.
Important Note for Academic Units
Academic units wishing to revise their change-of-major criteria must submit their requests to CEP via CIM Programs.