<p>My son and I visited UW again this week and had a great tour and a great day until our info session at the COE when we learned how tight the enrollment bottleneck into some of their programs is, particularly BME. We knew that as a freshman you are designated ENGR and must apply to your specific program (ME, BME, etc) at the end of first year, but didn't realize how competitive this process can be. In fact, in the most recent round of applications, 90 students applied for 30 BME spots. Apparently students apply a second or third time, but there's no guarantee they'll ever get the desired program and may ultimately opt for a second-choice engineering program or leave COE entirely. They're aware of the problem and would love to hire faculty, etc but cannot due to budgetary constraints.</p>
<p>Just a word to the wise prospective UW engineer: ask up-front for the acceptance stats for your discipline or you may tread water in COE for longer than you'd hoped. I'm looking for a silver lining but in all likelihood UW is now DOA for us due to this. Beating one's brains out as a freshman with 1 in 3 odds of acceptance is not super-attractive, which is a shame as UW is/was our far-and-away first choice.</p>
<p>Given the nature of engineering there are just limits in what you can do as a school. Engineering is one of those areas that blows hot and cold so some years it’s crowded and other years not so much–see what happened to Comp Sci a few years ago–from packed to dead. And it’s very expensive to teach. So they have to say this is how many we need to produce and that’s what we can do. Many top state engineering programs have similar limits. Just a fact of life. They addeed a surcharge a few years ago to allow some increases in faculty but the amount is finite.</p>
<p>“Many top state engineering programs have similar limits”</p>
<p>Not true of Illinois’ program. You are admitted to the College of Engineering and your specific major as a freshman. You are able to change your major as space and credits permit once you are enrolled.</p>
<p>barron, I always enjoy your posts, particularly the ones that put a nice spin on what most of us out here in the trenches consider UW’s achilles heel(s)! I’m not trying to blame the university or the college, just letting other prospectives know what they perhaps haven’t discovered yet. Does your crystal ball shed any light on when a problem like this might be solved? This pesky application problem is still 2 years away for us.</p>
<p>Christine, I agree although I know barron will scoff at the other direct-admit programs such as Marquette and Iowa and Illinois. It begs sort of an interesting argument: does the incremental prestige of the UW degree or campus experience offset what is certain to be a stressful situation which could potentially add a year or more to your time in school and MAY even cause you to bail out of your intended course of study for something else? Ummmm… tell you where my money is!</p>
<p>beastman- perhaps you should still consider UW so he can get his freshman college experience there and transfer if it doesn’t seem llike he will get into his then desired program. Maybe your son will be one of the top students and be likely to get his program. It isn’t a lottery (right?) so if he does well he improves his chances. If he doesn’t think he will have much of a chance of course he should settle for the sure thing. UW admissions are to the whole university, not a specific major/program so it doesn’t matter what one’s stated intentions are in the application process. As barrons stated the costs of some programs prohibit flexibility in numbers meeting variable demands at all schools. It is not just the current budget, but long term cost/benefit considerations. I wonder if some students are flat out denied admnissions at some schools as freshmen due to their proposed major. For example- some students may be denied admission to the program at Illinois as freshmen- these students may then enroll as another major and hope to get in like UW students do later. If your son is accepted to one of these programs as a freshman he may be one of those who would get into UW’s. You can always keep UW on the list and decide next spring when you have all of the acceptances/rejections known. This disappointing information now may help him be realistic in his applications this fall.</p>
<p>Illinois is direct admit BUT standards are very high–higher than the rest of Illinois and UW. Within it I also believe certain eng majors are more restrictive than others. They do have limits–they just handle it at the entry level. I’d also check on their flunkout rate. Some engineering schools use the let them in and then flunk out half of them approach. Note the following related discussion here</p>
<p>UWash has engineering quotas, Berkeley has as you apply as a freshman–very hard to get in, UCLA you apply to direct with much higher requirements to get in, etc.</p>
<p>The UW business school has the same problems–too much demand and not enough slots. They are looking at adding some direct freshman admits to the mix but most will continue to be done similar to engineering–the best in college will get the slot. In a way that’s very fair. Predicting college performance from HS records is still imperfect.</p>
<p>As to when it will improve, the Madison Initiative will add some faculty to popular areas. Initially the focus was on the liberal arts but other schools like business are now working on getting in on the deal so I’d suspect engineering would too. It would help a bit but not in a big way. I would not expect much change until engineering falls out of popularity again.</p>
<p>BME is the most rapidly growing department in the COE. They are doing great work and will certainly expand over time. As admission is not a lottery, I would encourage any interested, motivated and talented student to go for it. There are plenty of ways to get involved with the department during your freshman year. The time spent showing your interest and what you can do will likely pay off.</p>