However, some of the schools have some programs which are filled to capacity, so they need to “ration” admits into those programs, as described in reply #6. Those where students are admitted to an FYE/undeclared status and have to face another competitive admission process or high GPA minimum to get into their majors effectively weed out enrolled students in order to keep their programs from going over capacity. In addition, Wisconsin (over)admits directly to majors, but weeds out with first year college GPA minimums that may be as high as 3.5 for some majors.
Can anyone compare engineering experiences at some of the better ranked Big Ten engineering schools?
I’m so curious how it is Michigan manages to let students choose any major without gpa requirements and without knowing what they will choose as they enter as freshman? How do they keep it balanced?
Well, they do require a 2.0, which isn’t very demanding, at least compared to other schools.
Look, you and I clearly just have different opinions on these programs. “Rationing” admits to a program through a first-year program is not necessarily a bad thing as you seem to frequently imply. It’s certainly something that students should consider when choosing a school, but it should not be disqualifying in general and it should not be viewed as some effort to thin the ranks artificially. In most cases, it is honestly aimed at improving retention and improving the quality of the higher-level courses.
You could certainly claim that schools simply shouldn’t over-enroll and therefore shouldn’t need to have such programs. I’d submit to you that this is not always feasible, however, particularly at state schools where the quality of admitted students varies so widely and you simply cannot save them all. I’d love it if every single student got an A in my courses, and I will surely try to educate them all to that level, but it simply isn’t realistic to expect that.
So, in short, under the assumption that there will always be some part of the bell curve of admitted students who simply won’t be able to handle the rigors of an engineering program, the FYE-type programs (attempt to) achieve the following:
[ol]
[]bring all admitted students up to the same baseline level (in terms of physics and mathematics) before entering the actual engineering majors;
[]prevent students who are struggling to reach that level from moving up into the higher-level courses, where they will likely struggle immensely and are likely to fail out of the program later after having wasted more time and money;
[]give those struggling students a little bit more time to get their affairs in order before hitting the rigors of the actual engineering programs; and
[]allowing the actual engineering courses for students who clear that bar to not have to slow down much in order to drag along as many failing students.
[/ol]
In my opinion, these are all noble goals. Of course, I’d love to see some actual data from the universities who implement such programs and how it affects overall retention and student outcomes. Anecdotally, however, I wish my own school had a similar program. I get a lot of students in my 300-level courses who got Cs and Ds in their math and physics courses and technically passed, but get into these 300-level classes and absolutely can’t handle it. We are really doing a disservice to these students in particular by throwing them to the wolves in these classes when they are woefully under-prepared.
I completed agree with @boneh3ad. What benefit is there to find yourself in junior year with a 2.0 or worse, struggling to get through courses, and realizing then that engineering is a bad fit? Or worse yet, a senior with too low of a GPA to gain employment or acceptance to grad school? There are many students who are pushed into engineering by their parents because they were “good at STEM” in HS, but really have no concept of what engineering actually entails.
In very competitive programs with too few slots to meet demand, many students who have the horsepower to succeed will be turned away from their desired major. Regardless of the justification, it’s something every student should consider when choosing to attend a school where admission to a major is competitive after enrollment.
Perhaps because they limit the number frosh admits to the engineering division so that the expected distribution of majors is nowhere close to the departmental capacities, so that year-to-year variations in interest will not overflow the departmental capacities.
And…
- Limit the number of students entering each major to stay within departmental capacity. This is the reason that different majors have different thresholds to enter the major. For example, a very oversubscribed major may limit major declaration to students with a 3.2 or higher college GPA, while a major that never fills up may allow anyone with a 2.0 college GPA and C grades to declare it. This does not necessarily mean that the former major's content is harder than that of the latter major.
C is supposed to mean solidly passing enough to continue to courses that require this course as a prerequisite. D is supposed to mean barely passing and not enough to continue (and the student is advised to repeat). If C students are not able to handle the next course, perhaps the grading should be re-evaluated. Perhaps your school should also explicitly state that prerequisites need to be passed with a C or higher grade.
[citation needed]
Are there really that many experiencing this or is it the possibility of this happening that gets people so up in arms? Most schools I’ve seen claim this is not really a major issue.
Want to study chemical engineering, biomedical engineering, or engineering physics at Wisconsin? Be prepared to manage your GPA like a pre-med in your first year to meet the 3.5 (in core prerequisites) to avoid getting weeded out of the major.
Is this such a bad thing, though? Wouldn’t you want your department to be within capacity and not have 150 students in a 300-level course?
This is an easy thing to say if you’ve never been involved in academia. First, those courses are taught by departments like mathematics, who derive a lot of their income from big service courses like that. They are incentivized to increase throughput. Further, since it’s a department in a college entirely separate from a typical College of Engineering, there is little that can be done about it unless the math department is feeling generous.
Second, if the math department did start grading harder, they’d get slapped by the university for failing too many students because the university is interested in retention.
Since a D is technically passing, you have to jump through a lot of hoops to justify this. We as a department are trying to do it for all our core courses.
It is obviously necessary to limit the number of students in each major to stay within departmental capacity.
However, different colleges handle it different ways (and not necessarily only in engineering). Common ways are admitting to the major at frosh admission, or admitting to undeclared/pre-major/FYE/etc. and then having students compete for high GPA or admission to major while enrolled. Some colleges do it both ways, by admitting the top applicants directly to the major, while others admissible to the college are admitted as undeclared with competitive admission to the major later.
None is always better in all cases or for all students, but students should be aware of how each college does things before making the matriculation decision, so that they are not blindsided by earning a 3.1 GPA and getting denied their major with a 3.2 or 3.5 GPA minimum and then having to choose between a different major or transferring to a different college.
So with grades with Michigan if you get too many c- you might not be able to advance in your major or declare especially in the first year.
@adaorange. Keep in mind it’s not an easy school. They view their courses very hard compared to just about any other school out there. It is not a guarantee either. Their avg GPA for engineering is 3.93 with something like 34 Act but after the first year a lot of kids are 3.0 or around. Having high 2.xxx is not unheard of. I don’t know how they figure it all out.
But Bryon Encohs might. He has helped me and others I sent to him. He is a wonderful contact for your son to learn more about the programs and is responsive to emails.
https://www.engin.umich.edu/admissions/undergrad/
His information is at the bottom of the page.
BTW - have your son send quick letter of Letter of continuing interest to his Michigan Regional counselor.
Now go find data that shows that they are actually turning large numbers of students away who otherwise wanted to study those fields. That data may exist, but I am not aware of it. A high GPA requirement does not equate to turning away students from the desired major.
I’ll counter with this, which does provide such statistics.
https://engineering.tamu.edu/academics/entry-to-a-major/index.html
The program at TAMU places 86% of students into their first choice, which is a pretty solid statistics. A full 93% got into one of their first two majors (so 7% went to their second choice). Another 7% went to a third or lower choice. Now, those are fairly small percentages. Clearly some students get turned away from their desired major, but the overwhelming majority do not as long as they meet the minimum requirements for entry to a major.
Of course, every school is different, and every school’s program is going to have some of its own strengths and quirks. That said, I just haven’t seen any actual evidence suggesting that large numbers of eligible students in these programs are being turned down by their desired majors.
More examples:
CSE is a limited enrollment major at UCSD due to limited departmental capacity. Some students are directly admitted as frosh, but others must apply later after completing some prerequisites. Under the old system, the minimum GPA for admission was 3.9 or 4.0 most quarters. Due to apparent issues with grade-grubbing and similar undesired behavior, they changed it to a minimum 3.3 GPA, but with a lottery for those who meet that minimum. https://cse.ucsd.edu/undergraduate/admissions/cse-capped-major-status describes the process and has some stats at the bottom, showing the substantial numbers of eligible students were not admitted to the major.
CSE at Washington in recent years admitted 30% of students through direct frosh admission and 15-20% through direct transfer admission. The rest are offered for competitive admission to undeclared students enrolled there. About 35% of these applicants are admitted to the major, according to https://www.cs.washington.edu/academics/ugrad/admissions/freshmen . Note: CSE at Washington will be changing to admit most students through direct frosh admission.
What you’re seeing is that each engineering major has different levels of popularity with students. The COE knows this, and can predict it’s enrollment by major. It then adjust faculty and other resources to meet the expected demand. Also, note that the COE undergraduate enrollment has been growing slowly over the last few decades, so they have time to make these types of adjustments.
Here’s the ASEE online profile for UM’s COE, which includes faculty by department (EE, ME, etc.)…
http://profiles.asee.org/profiles/7862/screen/15?school_name=University+of+Michigan
You can compare 2017 to 2003 and you can see how staffing has adjusted over the years, based on a program’s popularity.
Popularity is linked to market demand. CSE is a perfect example of this, as the major has gotten much more popular, as market demand has increased.
This makes perfect sense…BUT…how come other schools in its class don’t seem to do the same thing?
Purdue’s transition to major stats are similar to TAMU’s. I believe we were told 94% of students get their 1st or 2nd choice major.
Schools that don’t have a competitive transition to major program still have a lot of self attrition. My dh is a Cornell engineer. Many many of his cohorts transferred to other majors after bombing first year calc, physics, or chem classes. Engineering is tough at every ABET accredited program, many students are ill prepared for the rigor, and self select into different majors.
Ok, so I checked out the link you provided a little more, and this time I also checked out the trends at another school (uiuc) to test your theory. Well, the same thing shows true. Over the years the staff has also adjusted in a very similar way at both schools in most departments. So this doesn’t explain how Michigan does it without having caps. Why does one school require caps and another school that measures just about the same in rankings and other aspects, not require caps?
As prospective students, knowing there’s no caps, why doesn’t every prospective CS student in the region go there, knowing they can get CS at a great school without competition? (Because the university has no idea if 100% of their applicants will choose CS). There has to be some kind of internal check. The 2.0 requirement isn’t it, because that applies to any/all engineering majors. So you can’t choose ANY major without that 2.0. So that may kick students out of COE as a whole, but not help balance the departments within COE.