Just a misfire…no text.
@SouthFloridaMom9, just saw this and thought you might find it interesting:
http://undergraduate.ua.edu/find-your-passion-a-consummate-scientist/
A story about a current CE student.
Thank you @LucieTheLakie, and what an amazing young woman!
Yes, she is!
Bumping this for those high school Class of 2017 families new to UA. As soon as the ASEE 2016 statistics are released (i.e., those for the class that entered in Fall 2015), I’ll update. I have no idea if the stats will change significantly, but with Bama’s 2016 graduation now past, I wanted to share a few observations:
I noted a fair number of red mortar boards (students graduating with a 4.0 GPA) in the Engineering section at Commencement and some impressive FB announcements of future plans. (Students headed to medical school, MIT and Stanford for grad school, jobs with Google, etc.). I also saw a red mortar board atop the head of young woman who turned down MIT for undergraduate school because it would have been a financial strain for her parents. I share all this partially to “brag” about how well UA’s “best and brightest” are faring, but also as a bit of a warning to those who are using UA as a safety school with the guaranteed merit.
By all means, if you need a good safety school (i.e., one you KNOW you can afford), go for it! (It’s what we did three years ago.) But do keep in mind that as UA attracts more and more top students who were shut out of Ivies and other elites (or couldn’t afford their expected COA), or who turned down their topnotch flagships because the price was so appealing at Bama, that the competition in some majors is pretty intense. Not in terms of any cutthroat behavior (as far as I know), but because those high-stats students will affect class and test curves, etc. These are students who are excelling regardless of whether or not their individual instructors score well on RMP, or they’re stuck in tough “weeder” classes, or they’re sick or have personal issues, etc. It may not be the case for every major, but in engineering, you’d best be prepared to Work Hard before you start making a lot of plans to Play Hard, especially if you want to keep your scholarship for four years.
Also, one other thing: When you study engineering at a mid-tier public like Bama, where lots of kids in a wide range of majors seem to be coasting, you can have a false sense of security about your grades. Remember: You’re not competing for grades against the average UA student; you’re competing against other engineering students, some of whom had the stats to attend some pretty rigorous schools.
Right now there are a lot of students who had a rough first semester (or year) and are now very concerned about losing their scholarships. It’s likely some just may not have the aptitude for engineering or CS, but others likely didn’t do everything they needed to to excel that first year. Some have switched out of engineering; others are working hard to rectify the situation and continue on. Keep that in the back of your mind if you’re entering this fall or applying for the following year.
UA is ridiculously generous IMHO with merit money and patient with those who get into hot water GPA-wise, but the engineering professors don’t know or don’t care about that stuff. They’re there to teach ABET-approved curricula, and there isn’t a whole lot of hand holding–just like there isn’t at most big universities.
I just love stats, so I’m taking a break from what I am supposed to be doing, to further this discussion!
I just hand-counted from my commencement brochure, the # of engineering students, and other observations.
Forgive if my counting is off by 1 or 2 here and there, but I think this is pretty accurate.
There were 520 total engineering graduates listed in the Spring 2016 commencement ceremony brochure.
Aero: 32
Chemical: 126
Civil: 82
Computer Sci: 46
Construction: 7
Electrical: 64
Environmental: 4
Mechanical: 144
Metallurgical: 15
Of these 520 total graduates, 242 (46.5%) earned Latin honors, thus:
99 earned summa cum laude (GPA at or above 3.90). That is a whopping 19% of all engineering graduates: 1/5th!
76 earned magna cum laude (GPA 3.7 up to 3.89) - that is another 14.6% of eng’g graduates;
67 earned cum laude (GPA 3.5 up to 3.69) - another 12.9% of eng’g graduates.
If you achieve Latin honors, you get to wear the Engineering College’s colored stole (light orange), and it was very obvious to me, having viewed about 1200 Commerce and Business Admin graduates walk before the Engineering graduates, that there were a LOT more red caps on Engineering students’ heads and a LOT more orange stoles than there were tan stoles (the C&BA college color).
My husband (a ChemE himself) and I had an interesting discussion about honors and whether there should be different levels of honors, depending on one’s degree, to reflect the difficulty of that degree. His college (overseas) recognised %-ages of students (e.g., top 10% of graduating class cohort got Class I Honors, and next 10% got 2nd Class Honors, and so forth). This was prompted by the observation that fully 19 Aero students earned Latin honors (which is 59% of their class cohort). 6 Aero students earned the highest Latin honor, summa cum laude, and that is 18.8% of their 2016 Aero class cohort.
Regardless of how you skin the statistical cat, what I most appreciated about the Engineering students’ obvious work ethic is this: while the overwhelming majority (like, truly, 90%) of the College of Commerce & Business Admin students chose to exit the coliseum immediately after they walked , the vast majority of Engineering students returned to their original seats and waited while ALL Engineering graduates walked. There is something to be said about waiting nearly 3 hours to toss one’s cap in the air…and those students who stayed behind until the very end of the ceremony got to do just that. It was a wonderful visual display of camaraderie and ‘tightness’ amongst those engineers, and that’s something I will never forget.
@aeromom amazing post!!! It makes me feel better that UA has many great kids with amazing work ethics to get through engineering AND with honors. That is an awesome accomplishment that shouldn’t be taken lightly. Thanks for the great detail!
Aeromom, thank you SO MUCH for putting together your statistics above. As a mom of 3 engineering students (2 at UA) I know how hard they have to work to keep their grades. 46.5% graduating with latin honors is amazing!
I know there have been posts about attrition in the UA engineering department, but I know that happens at every school. Engineering and CS are tough fields and are not right for every student that begins in those fields. Thank you LucieTheLake for pointing out what it takes to succeed.
I wish I could “Like” your post 100 times, @aeromom!
Different schools have very different requirements for Latin honors, including schools that set different GPA requirements by college.
UA:
UF’s requirements vary by college, here’s a few examples:
College of Engineering
Cum Laude: 3.3 GPA on all courses taken at UF beginning the semester after accumulating 60 credits.
Magna CL: 3.5 GPA on all courses taken at UF beginning the semester after accumulating 60 credits. Completion of an approved research project or creative work.
Summa CL: 3.8 GPA on all courses taken at UF beginning the semester after accumulating 60 credits. Completion of an approved research project or creative work.
Compare that with the School of Business.
CL: 3.5 GPA in all UF, core and major courses.
Magna CL: 3.7 GPA in all UF, core and major courses. Completion of 90 credits prior to enrolling in honors thesis course and completion of an approved thesis.
Summa CL: 3.9 GPA in all UF, core and major courses. Completion of 90 credits prior to enrolling in honors thesis course and completion of an approved thesis.
https://catalog.ufl.edu/ugrad/current/Pages/graduating-with-honors.aspx
Georgia Tech, on the other hand, is similar to UA, in that they don’t require a research project/thesis and use the same GPA requirements across all colleges:
^ Just shows the grade deflation at GT (or inflation elsewhere?). GT has no + grades. 80 and 89 get the same B, a 3.0 instead of 3.5. Those high 80’s grades (which DS has several) are real GPA killers. His GPA would be several tenths higher if they had plus grades.
The plus grades at UA make it easier to obtain higher GPA. This is especially true for strong students who can bank some A+ grades. Those are above 4.0, so it’s like banking extra credit to “negate” a B+ in another class.
Really? UA has A+ grades? go figure…
UF has + and - (except A+'s), but they tend to cancel it other out. A low 90’s(90-92) can earn you an A- (3.67 GPA), a high 80’s (87-89) earn you a B+ (3.33)and a low 80’s(80-82) can earn you a B- (2.67). The grading scale is set by each class, so the ranges can vary, and some classes will use a curve, while others do not.
At UA it’s the same as UF, with the exception of the A+…
A+ [4.33], A [4.00], A- [3.67]
B+ [3.33], B [3.00], B- [2.67]
C+ [2.33], C [2.00], C- [1.67]
D+ [1.33], D [1.00], D- [0.67]
“F” [0.00] – Failed
While GT’s method is worse for students in the high 80’s and 70’s (and 90’s if compared to UA), it’s better for those GT students in the low 90’s, 80’s and 70’s.
Of course, this doesn’t take into account how class rigor can be different amongst the different schools or just between classes.
They don’t show up in your official GPA, @Gator88NE, once you reach 4.0. But you can bank that .33 from an A+ to offset a lower grade in the future.
Latin honors at UA are based on grade point average, and I was proud of my second son for achieving this. However, my oldest didn’t at his university and he is just as smart and did as well in school. However, at his school (University of Minnesota Twin Cities) a thesis or a present research project was part of the latin honors requirements. I know my oldest decided AGAINST trying to achieve this as he didn’t have the time (or inclination) to do either. I don’t know if graduating with latin honors would have made a difference in his job search, but my thought is it probably wouldn’t. I’m still proud of those at UA who get to wear the shawls though!