First off, I think the schools can predict intended major and they are tracking hiring trends. Plus you can often tell from an application where a student’s interest really is. Not all COE will have robotics and programming on their resumes.
Mostly though, students actually have to get admitted first. DD’s friend with perfect SAT/ACT/GPA, tons of excellent ECs and awards was wait listed at Michigan. (OOS).
@boneh3ad, we’re hung on the semantics of “large number.” If one out of 6 don’t get their desired major, that is not trivial. No one believes they will be the one. I’m simply saying that it needs to be factored in.
UM-Ann Arbor has more “resources” than UIUC (on a per student basis), which gives it more flexibility in managing it’s enrollment. Let me give an example.
School: Undergraduate Enrollment: # Tenured Track Teaching Faculty
UM-Ann Arbor: 6,162: 417
UIUC:9,337: 446
Purdue: 8,490: 361
Michigan has by far the lowest engineering student to Teaching Faculty ratio.
They also likely have more facilities(as compared to enrollment), funding for design teams, etc, than the other BIG 10 peers. UM spends substantially more per student than it’s peers. It helps having that huge endowment, and the large number of OOS students paying OOS rates.
This all translates into more flexibility in enrollment.
You can dig into the numbers, look at non-tenured track faculty, etc.
$ doesn’t = Best
UIUC is under a lot of financial pressure (due to state funding issues), but it’s clearly one of the best engineering programs in the country. But having more resources, does equate to greater academic support, more facilities, and in UM’s case, more flexibility in enrollment management.
Which takes us back to your original question. Which school offers the best academic support to Freshman. I would think it’s UM-Ann Arbor, it simply has the most resources. How much of a difference is hard to qualify, the same with how much of a difference it would make for a student.
Keep in mind that many of these “First Year” engineering programs are not primarily about managing enrollment, but about better preparing students for engineering. The goal is to reduce attrition, not increase it. This is also a method of improving academic support for freshman, but having them work with dedicated “engineering” advisers.
Over the years, there has been a movement to improve engineering education. These first year programs sprung from these efforts, as have several other programs that target low SES students, minorities, women in engineering, etc. In fact, you find that several schools (UT-Austin, UWash, UF, Tufts, Northwestern,…) have started “Center for Engineering Education” that research these issues.
A student should consider how competitive their chosen major is at a prospective school, but these “programs” should really be seen as a positive.
How many engineering students in programs without first-year programs don’t get a degree in the major they desired as a freshman? I bet it’s higher than 1 in 6. What’s the difference between people not meeting the first-year requirements for their desired major and people simply falling behind the “normal” way? At least with first-year programs, there are more fallback options, typically including either other similar engineering majors or going a non-engineering route earlier before too much money is sunk into the engineering curriculum.
I guess my feeling is that, for a given student, if failure is probably, I see no reason that the traditional route to failure should be better than the “first-year” route to failure. If someone has data showing that first-year programs cause more people to fail than the traditional route, I’d be happy to change my tune here, but, at least on the surface, it seems to be the opposite.
@boneh3ad, no argument from me.
What I’m talking about is control and choice. At a school that doesn’t require competition for major after admission, a student’s success or failure at completing a degree in their originally intended major relies solely on their personal performance and isn’t relative to that of any other student.
Depends on which school is the “normal” way. If the “normal” way is a school where staying in the major needs C grades and a 2.0 GPA, then there is no difference between that and an FYE school like Michigan or Pittsburgh, but there is a difference compared to FYE schools where some majors have higher grade or GPA thresholds or competitive admission. If the “normal” way is a school like Wisconsin that has high grade or GPA progression requirements, then the comparable FYE schools would be those where similar high grade or GPA requirements exist to enter majors.
There is an older article that compiles research from 50 studies, reviews reasons for attrition, and possible avenues to increase retention: https://www.rise.hs.iastate.edu/projects/CBiRC/IJEE-WhyTheyLeave.pdf
It’s interesting to me that on the table about pathways to increasing retention, Purdue has implemented almost every single thing on the list.
Also of note is that of the 50 studies that were analyzed, only 3 found that a competitive environment was a factor in attrition.
Since you mentioned University of Washington, they did recently implement an FYE-type of program in order to move the primary admission gate (for its undersized-relative-to-demand engineering departments) back toward the frosh admission stage. Previously, admission to an engineering major was a free-for-all application process where any enrolled student can apply after completing prerequisites, resulting in large percentages of engineering hopefuls being denied entry to any engineering major they want, often despite GPAs higher than 3.0. Apparently, they realized that this high level of competition and disappointment among frosh/soph students trying to get into engineering was not very nice, so now frosh applicants apply “Direct to College [of Engineering]” so that the number of applicants to engineering majors later is more closely matched with departmental capacities.
It does mean that more frosh engineering applicants will be turned away at the frosh admission stage, but it is likely better for them to have to choose a different school then than have to transfer away after being shut out of their majors in their second year of college.
re #38, the term “a lot” of self attrition depends on standards for what “a lot” means. Graduation rates within Cornell’s engineering college itself (excluding transfers to other of the university’s colleges) have always been 80-90% at least, whenever I’ve seen these numbers. It may have seemed higher to someone based on their personal acquaintances with a small subset of the whole.
I am actually part of that number, but I didn’t bow out due to bombing the intro classes. I switched out to be a physics major in the arts & sciences college. I knew only one other guy who switched when I did, though I’m sure there were some others. But no avalanche. The people I knew who did bomb those courses : one took time off came back and finished in the engineering college, another flunked out altogether. They couldn’t transfer to another college within the university- particularly not arts & sciences- because those colleges had standards too and were not there to take engineering’s dregs.
There was some shifting of intended majors within the engineering college before junior year, , eg from intended chemical engineering to industrial engineering for someone who bombed organic chemistry; intended EE finds out he likes ME more, once he’s been exposed to it; etc That was a lot more common than switching out of engineering altogether.
Switching out definitely happened too, it’s just I would call it “some”, not " a lot". Lots, probably most, of non-engineering colleges have graduation rates lower than the graduation rate of Cornell’s engineering college.
You are right @monydad and obviously my experience is not statistically significantly. My point was only that there is still attrition in non competitive transition to major programs as well. When we toured Cornell with my daughter, COE, said their graduation rate was over 90% now.
Note that Cornell engineering is structured as an FYE program. Note that most or all engineering majors are not technically open, since they require GPAs usually around 2.5 (rather than 2.0) to declare (but non-competitive). However, given how selective Cornell is generally, there are probably not many students in its engineering division who would have trouble earning a GPA substantially higher than 2.5.
To stay in good academic standing at Cornell, students need a 2.0, no failing grades, and nothing below a C- in a course related to their intended major. The bar isn’t much higher than that to declare a major.
Cornell’s recommended first year COE courses are more flexible than schools like Purdue, GT, etc…There is also only one semester of intro to engineering that at many other schools is a more intensive, year long program.
I don’t know if those grade thresholds were exactly the same back in my day; I believe gpa averages were generally lower back then. The one friend of mine who was seriously scraping those lower levels really received a lot of leeway from the college. They went to substantial effort to help him get through.
My knee-jerk reaction was if somebody is doing that poorly maybe they should be in a different major, or a different engineering school at least. But then thinking about it, that guy wound up having a very good career.
All of the schools mentioned will offer academic support (office hours, some type of academic support center, peer tutoring, etc). The real question is whether or not your student will take advantage of them.
My engineering kids have gone through both types of programs: first year general engineering (FYE) and direct admit to major. I don’t think it matters which you select; success in engineering will depend on your student.
One thing I liked about the FYE program is there is usually an effort by the College of Engineering to expose the freshmen to a variety of engineering fields. Since approximately one third of undergrads change their major (source: https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2018/2018434.pdf), I feel the FYE program either reinforces the choice of major or helps a student realize early on they are in the wrong major. I also don’t think kids are purposely weeded out; rather, I think the programs are identifying which students belong in engineering.
OP - don’t get bogged down by rankings or a bunch of statistics. If your student has been accepted to an affordable college which he’s excited to attend, then you’ve hit the jackpot. I don’t honestly believe there is much, if any, difference in the programs mentioned.
There is attrition everywhere, regardless of approach. Some students simply are not cut out for the rigor. The question is, are students who are qualified to continue in a major being denied that major due to competitive forces, not due to their personal ability to succeed. One would have to imagine if the bar is set at a GPA of 3.5, that could possibly be the case.
Note that UIUC and Purdue take different approaches to handling departmental capacity limitations.
UIUC admits students directly to major to mostly fill departmental capacity with frosh admissions, with a small number of spaces available for competitive admission for undeclared students later. Students in the major need only earn a 2.00 or 2.25 technical GPA in college to stay in the major (see http://catalog.illinois.edu/undergraduate/engineer/#TechnicalGPA ). However, students wanting to change to a different engineering major may find that the process is highly competitive and requires a much higher GPA, depending on the major. So UIUC may not be the optimal choice for an undecided engineering student or one who is likely to change major (actually, this extends beyond engineering at UIUC, since many majors, not just in engineering, are capacity limited).
Purdue uses an FYE program, but does not guarantee that all students who pass the FYE course work can choose their first choice major, due to capacity limitations. What it means is that most students at Purdue are likely to face a higher GPA threshold to meet than UIUC students who were directly admitted to the major and will not change major, but a lower GPA threshold to meet than UIUC students who were admitted undeclared, or who decide to change major.
Which is better (assuming affordability is similar or not a concern)? It depends on the student. A student who is certain of his/her major and is directly admitted to it at UIUC will have fewer worries there than at Purdue. But an undecided student, or one likely to change major, is more likely to find Purdue to be more accommodating.
Of course, if the student is admitted to Michigan engineering, then Michigan is the answer, since the FYE student can choose or change to any engineering major if s/he maintains C grades and a 2.0 GPA, due to the lack of any capacity limitations imposed on enrolled students (looks like the purposely admit fewer than the maximum possible frosh engineering students in order to have enough reserve capacity in each department to allow for non-competitive major declaration and change).
OP,
I am not sure if you are only considering public Us within Big Ten; at Northwestern, you wouldn’t need to worry about most of the issues discussed in this thread.
“At a school that doesn’t require competition for major after admission, a student’s success or failure at completing a degree in their originally intended major relies solely on their personal performance and isn’t relative to that of any other student.”
That’s not necessarily the case, many first and second year classes at colleges we’re discussing have curves where you’re definitely graded relative to other people in the class. I agree that if you’re already in the CoE or in say the dept of EECS, you don’t have to worry about applying for entry, but if you get Cs and Ds your first semester, it’s because you did worse than your classmates.
At Ohio State, the calculus series and physics are known to be weed out classes. Many engineers choose to take those classes at Columbus State to avoid the negative impact of taking them at OSU on their gpa. My daughter’s calc 2 class, for example, had typical mid-term average and median grades in the 60s. Several of her friends had to withdraw from the class to avoid failure. There was a very slight curve on semester grades at the end.