Universities Divided Into Colleges–Northwestern University in Illinois

Mark, in his recent visit to Northwestern University talks about the various schools that comprise the university.
Watch out this short video where he also talks about some of the dual majors offered at the university:

Mark Montgomery
Educational Consultant
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You may read the transcription below:
Here at Northwestern University, there are six different colleges to which students will apply.  That’s like many major universities of a certain size, where you make a decision as you are applying which of the various colleges you want to enter.  So there’s engineering.  There’s the communication school which includes the theater department, the music school, education and social policy; I forget they have a different name for it.  And I’m missing one but communications.  Oh, and of course, the Weinberg School of Arts and Sciences which is the biggest school and where you would probably go if you were an undecided major.
In any case, you do apply the particular school that is most appropriate to you.  As you’re thinking about universities, you do want to make a decision as to whether or not you want to have that kind of a gateway into your educational experience.  However, here at Northwestern, it’s fairly easy to move among schools. It’s even possible to double major from one school to the next.  For example, you could go into the school of music and you can also double major in say psychology in the school of Arts and Sciences. Or Northwestern also makes it possible that you can do say if you were in the music school, you can do a Bachelors of Music Performance but you can also take a fifth year and get a Bachelors of Arts at the Weinberg School of Arts and Sciences and get two separate undergraduate degrees in five years.
So there’s lots of different combinations of things and Northwestern, although its relatively large at 8,000 students, the administrative barriers to moving among the schools are fairly low. You still have to have an application and there are some administrative barriers that do exist, but it is possible to move among them.  So think about that as you’re figuring out which kind of college to attend.  Whether you want to have these separate schools of different kinds of specialties or whether you want something that everybody applies at the same thing.