Does applying for biology make the University of Maryland or Brandeis more selective?

At Brandeis, listing biology should not make your application more selective in any meaningful major-specific way. Brandeis admits undergraduate applicants to the university rather than through separate, capacity-controlled biology admissions, and intended majors are generally exploratory because students declare later.

At the University of Maryland, biology falls within the Biological Sciences Limited Enrollment Program. Applying for biology can make direct placement in that major more competitive because the program has enrollment limits.

For a student whose priority is guaranteed or immediate access to a structured biology major, Maryland’s direct-admission decision deserves close attention. For a student who wants room to explore biology alongside other fields before formally declaring, Brandeis’s model is more flexible.