UMich is an exception compared to many other public flagships. Purdue, Texas A&M, Minnesota, and Virginia Tech all force engineering frosh to go through a weed-out process requiring a GPA substantially higher than 2.0. Washington does for most students (a few may be direct-admitted). Wisconsin admits to major, but requires a GPA substantially higher than 2.0 to stay in most engineering majors.
Some of those privates you mention are wealthy enough to maintain excess capacity to accommodate students changing major freely. At a public university, you would probably hear complaints about “wasted capacity” while more students are clamoring to study engineering.
It does not support your claim that the differences in CoE EECS versus L&S intended CS frosh admissions have anything to do with possible gender representation differences. In both cases, admit rates are similar for male and female applicants (but slightly higher for female), but yield rates are higher for male applicants.
Although “admission by exam” allows for an alternative means of eligibility, simply meeting the eligibility score by exam does not mean admission, just like meeting the minimum a-g course GPA of 3.0 (3.4 non-resident) does not mean admission in the usual criteria.
This method may not be only for the homeschooled, but it is rather likely that they are not impressed by students in regular high schools who either did not take the full a-g course list or earned poor grades in such courses who think that acing a few standardized test will get them in.
UCLA engineering is so popular relative to capacity that it can only admit a small percentage of applicants. Would you rather it admit from the most academically qualified applicants, or some other method of selection? Rather rare to see someone complaining that the graduation rate is too high.
They are forthright in saying that the listed score is only for eligibility, which does not necessarily mean admission.
Why didn’t your student apply using the usual criteria? Was she home schooled, or did she have a non-traditional high school background? Or was she in a regular public or private high school but did not take all of the a-g courses, or did not do that well in them?
"Would you rather it admit from the most academically qualified applicants, or some other method of selection? "
But why is the wide net/ holistic approach preached for general admissions but not COE? UC has always accepted the fact that graduation rates will suffer somewhat in order to take a risk on someone who might not have had the same opportunities as the no risk applicants.
Again. If they say that ‘high scores’ starting at 425 make one eligible, one would think that 459 would look like a lot more than eligible. Just like a 3.8 makes one look a lot more eligible than a 3.4. And it is ‘admission by exam.’ Not admission by ‘exam and a-g courses.’ Again, if 425 is laughably low, CHANGE THE NUMBER. Don’t pretend that there’s an avenue that doesn’t exist and bilk applicants.
Your 93 percent grad rate doesn’t look right to me.
2009 has a breakdown and there were approximately 2200 engineering students who were junior or seniors.
I don’t think you can just add freshmen and transfer admits and look at grad rates and calculate grad rates.
^The average number enrolled as freshmen was pretty consistent over 3 years 2012-2015 at around 640 students. We know the degrees awarded per year during that time averaged 700/year over 3 years. Average number of transfers over those years were 120 students/year. Transfers come in as juniors, but they are coming in at about the same rate each year adding to the preexisting class of students for a total of around 760 undergraduate enrollees/year. Of course the transfers have already been “weeded” in community college, but they are only about 19% of the total class.
Note that the numbers are “degrees conferred”, so it is independent of the number of years required to degree.
From #347; “Engineering programs nationwide grapple with sky-high dropout rates. According to the American Society for Engineering Education, about 40 percent of U.S. engineering students didn’t finish their four-year programs”
But not at UCLA, where almost no one seems to be weeded out. What does that mean for competition in classes once someone is accepted? Hasn’t everyone in STEM had the class where the professor says, “Look at your neighbor, half of you won’t be here by the end of the semester”? At UCLA they must say, “Look at your neighbor, you will be sitting next to them at graduation”.
High graduation rates are good, but the higher the rate the less risk was taken on individual students. That is Caltech mentality, not UC mission.
UCLA as a whole has graduation rates that are higher than expected for the entering student stats. How is that a problem?
Or are you saying that it is a problem that UCLA is highly selective, because it gets so many high end applications for each seat? Note that the high selectivity includes substantial numbers of Pell Grant recipients.
Re: “wide net”. I’m talking about high GPA kids from sketchy high schools with few or no AP classes and little opportunity for enrichment activities. Since the demise of affirmative action UC has had to use different metrics (i.e. emphasis on GPA over SAT) and the personal statement to ensure access to these kids. It is a gamble and a risk worth taking because some of those kids will rise to the challenge and flourish while others will become overwhelmed and either drop out or change majors until they find one that suits them. A 93% graduation rate indicates that virtually none of the incoming COE students are switching out of the major, almost all of them were prepared for the rigors of an engineering curriculum upon admission.
Switching into COE is extremely difficult. The campuses want to discourage all the students who think they’ll enroll as a Life Science major and then ‘just switch’ as a way to overcome the low admit rates to COE. As shown in your own post earlier, the more common phenomenon is that ambitious kids enroll in engineering and then come to the realization that they are not cut out for that major. They downshift to other majors and there is a pruning of sorts such that a smaller percentage go on to graduate in the major. This ensures healthy competition from a diverse palette of talent.
I understand its difficult to change majors. I don’t disagree.
But you can’t add freshman and transfers and divide this into the amount who graduate and get a percentage who graduate. You need more information. You need to know how many students switch. Your percentage can be way off.
Berkeley’s grad rate is around 80 percent and UCLA’s is 93 percent. I don’t think so.
I used the 2009 data about UCLA engineering students. Page 3. Check it out.
990 lower division students are studying engineering. If there are 600 freshman engineering students entering UCLA every year, there should be 1200 lower division students majoring in engineering. Not 990
Then there are 2200 engineering students who are upper classmen. I guess a lot of students are not graduating in 4 years.
@ucbalumnus
“In both cases, admit rates are similar for male and female applicants (but slightly higher for female), but yield rates are higher for male applicants.”
I couldn’t agree with you more. Following, which I extracted from this forum, is the summary of the article.
@momsquad
“But why is the wide net/ holistic approach preached for general admissions but not COE?”
Probably they tried, just couldn’t get enough. As you can see, EECS male applicants were over 4 times of females. Berkeley accepted more % of female applicants, and lower yield rate for females further aggravated the gender imbalance. I don’t have the data for mechanical engineering, but I think it’s probably worse because I don’t suppose females like to work at the shop.
“For the EECS side, 1258 females and 5353 males applied. 125 females and 416 males were accepted. 39 females SIRed, and 215 males SIRed. This translates to a 9.94% acceptance rate for females, and 7.77% acceptance rate for males. Also, 31.20% yield rate for females, and 51.68% yield rate for males. The end ratio is 1.66 males to 1 female.
In 2015, 727 females and 1805 males applied to L&S, marking their majors as CS. 236 of the females were admitted, 136 of which SIRed. For the males, 452 were accepted, and 308 SIRed. This translates to a 32.46% acceptance rate for females, and a 25.04% acceptance rate for males. Also, 57.63% yield for females and 68.14% yield for males. The end ratio (actually attending students) is 1.18 males to 1 female.”