My daughter is a rising senior. She loves UT Austin until we found out it’s hard to change your major there. She has a broad span of interests, in other words, she does not yet know what to study/major. UT Austin is pretty rigid especially when it comes to hot majors like cs or business. She has some consistency built into both CS and business, she’s also interested in public health and environmental science, but overall not really into biology and chemistry.
We are searching for a good school with more flexibility so that she can either change her mind in college, or double major, or major and minor in multiple areas. I’m not sure if TAMU is the right fit for her in this regard, and hope to get your insight.
What is her chance of getting admitted to TAMU CS, double major or minor in business, or double major or minor in public health?
What is her chance of getting into honor’s program? Does TAMU have a linguistics major (I didn’t find one)? She’s also interested in computational linguistics.
My daughter’s stats:
- Asian American, Texas resident, Female
- Ranking: 112/724 (15.6%)
- Weighted grade: 98.6/100
- SAT 1460 (720-reading/writing, 740-math)
- ACT 35 (36-english, 35-science, 35-writing, 33-math)
- Awards
- DECA freshman, sophomore, junior years: 1 state, 2 nationals (not ranked)
- DECA officer: VP
- NHS junior year
- NHTS junior year
- Gold Award (at her high school)
- Extra Curriculars
- Cross Country JV
- Piano 10 years
- Violin just started learning
- Volunteer
- Senior living: 100+ hours
- Others: some hours
Since TAMU comes into our consideration pretty late in the game, I’d appreciate any answers to my questions, or any advice in general you may offer.
Also, my daughter would have total of 10+ AP classes after senior year. so far she’s had four AP scores of 4, and one AP score of 3.
She has the stats for an Academic Admit (Top 25% and SAT of 1360) so she will have no problem getting in to TAMU. She will need to pick a College at least though in order to apply.
UT and Texas A&M are notoriously difficult to change majors, especially UT. Texas A&M is generally first come first serve, so it helps to apply early, but not a guarantee by far. If she wants to have the option to change majors, I would recommend not going to such a competitive school, like Texas State. It’s in a prime location exactly between Austin and San Antonio, which gives access to both cities with internships and job prospects. UT-Dallas and UT-Arlington are great options with plenty of opportunities, but tend to be nerdy commuter schools.
Changing majors at TAMU is not difficult for students with high grades. Some majors (like Business, which requires you to change to General Academics before switching in) are harder to transfer into, so she might think about starting where she is most confident. You can find good information on changing majors at https://us.tamu.edu/Students/Change-of-Major.
Double majoring is a little trickier. Mays Business School doesn’t allow double majors outside of the college, so if by “CS” you mean computer science, she couldn’t double major in both.
Minoring is easier. You can find more information about that here: http://registrar.tamu.edu/Graduation-Degree-Programs/Adding-Removing-a-Minor
Both Public Health (http://catalog.tamu.edu/undergraduate/public-health/bs/#programrequirementstext) and Environmental Science (we have two close majors, Bioevironmental Science and Environmental Studies - http://catalog.tamu.edu/undergraduate/agriculture-life-sciences/plant-pathology-microbiology/#majorstext) are going to be biology and chemistry heavy. However, if your daughter has interests in this direction, and is interested in business, she might check out the UNIVERSITY STUDIES - BS, ENVIRONMENTAL BUSINESS CONCENTRATION degree. (Also, if she is, please have her contact me about the Udall Scholarship - http://tx.ag/NatlFellows).
Linguistics courses at TAMU are taught in the department of English. If she’s interested in computational linguistics, though, she wants computer science: http://nlp.cs.tamu.edu/index.html, perhaps with a minor in English.
We’re just starting the review process for the University Honors Program. If your daughter completed her application, we’ll have responses back by the end of March.
Thank You for chiming in with your expertise @JKotinek Your participation is invaluable on these threads and I appreciate you taking the time to answer.