My son was accepted ED1 to Lehigh college of arts and sciences. He doesn’t know exactly what he wants to do for a career so that is why he applied to CAS. As of very recently, he is thinking more and more about engineering. How difficulty would it be for him to switch from CAS to Rossin school of engineering, how early could he make this change, and any advice on which courses to take in CAS so that he would not be behind students who started off in Rossin (or would he automatically be behind?)
A traditional engineering BS curriculum has a lot of requirements, without a lot of flexibility. If you want to finish in four years, you pretty much have to hit the ground running as a freshman. In general, students who are uncertain about engineering are advised to start out as engineering majors, because it’s generally easy to transfer out of engineering and still graduate in four years, while it may be much harder to transfer into engineering and still graduate on time.
So I would discuss this question to Rossin, and see if your son can switch colleges before starting school. This may or may not be feasible; it wouldn’t surprise me if Rossin has stricter admissions requirements than CAS.
If not, then you can see the undergraduate engineering curricula at the Lehigh website. For example, the Mechanical Engineering curriculum is here:
http://catalog.lehigh.edu/coursesprogramsandcurricula/engineeringandappliedscience/mechanicalengineeringandmechanics/#undergraduatetext
Freshmen engineering majors are typically expected to focus on prerequisite courses in physics, chemistry, calculus and computer science (the exact courses may vary, depending on the engineering discipline). It should be possible to take the same, or similar, courses as a CAS student. My guess is that a CAS student with strong grades in freshman science and math classes at Lehigh would have a good chance of transferring to Rossin. However, the longer the wait to transfer, the harder it will be to finish in four years.
I am a current first-year who is in the same situation your son may be in. I am in A&S but transferring into Engr. If your son is serious about engineering, have him reach out to an engineering department that he may be interested in, and email the chair, sometime before July. It’s easier to start like he thinks he may want to engineer then decide not to, than the other way around. He should take Chem30, Engr10 (A&S students can enroll in Engr10 even though it is technically engineering), Math21 (calc I or whichever calc he places into), Engl001 (unless he has AP, then whichever English is recommended). He could take a 5th humanities/social science if he wanted (that’s what I did), but that’s on a more person-to-person basis.
In terms of “ease,” I knew for sure I wanted to do engineering by the time I graduated high school, emailed my interest’s engineering dept. chair and my assigned advisor, and things were smooth sailing from there. You technically need 20-some credits to officially transfer colleges (ie. end of freshman year), and I am on-track to do that. I also got an override from my engineering dept. to take an engineering specific course I needed this spring to not fall behind.
Let me know if you have any more questions!
Wow!! This is so INCREDIBLY helpful. Thank you so much! Are you enjoying your experience at Lehigh?
Thank you, this is very helpful!!!
- One of the reasons we chose Lehigh is the ease of changing majors and our DD's uncertainty. Lehigh is one of the easiest U's in terms of moving to or out of engineering. You may not be able to change his major immediately, but you can create a freshman schedule that looks exactly like a freshman engineer. Most of the courses are in Arts and Sciences anyway.
- You are wise to consider this now. If he is unsure between engineering and something else, it is wise to start in engineering. It is much easier to switch out of engineering later than into it.
catcat99 what type of engineering are you transferring into? Are you enjoying your Lehigh experience so far?
Lehigh has the engineering students get their basic engineering requirements done the first two year. They encourage the engineers to use their electives to enhance their engineering studies. My son stayed at Lehigh for his sophomore summer and was able to take 4 classes during the 2 sessions. With those extra classes he was able to have a business minor and a second one that complemented his engineering interests. During the summer he was also able to work with a professor and have his own project. He was paid a nice hourly wage through a research grant. When he was hired for his internship his company loved he had completed his own research project. During Parent’s Weekend you can go to a breakfast and talk with the engineering professors. They strongly encourage the engineering students to stay sophomore summer for research. And I found this wonderful professor who emailed my son and asked him to meet with him. He met with my son in the spring and helped him connect with another professor who was doing research that interested him. I could not believe how kind this professor was to me and how he helped my son. Lehigh is truly a close knit family!!!