Class of 2023 TAMU Engineering at Galveston

Colleges and Universities A-Z Texas A&M University
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@Thelma2 thought it might be good to have an Engineering at Galveston thread for this year’s Class of 2023 admissions group. So far, the three-way choice of TEAB (TAMU Engineering Academy in Bryan at the new RELLIS campus), or Engineering at Galveston or McAllen has been offered to some applicants, and there may be others later who might be offered only a Galveston slot in the future.

For the Class of 2022 decisions, some students were offered the Galveston (GV) option in Feb. 2018. There was not a choice of venue offered at the same time for most of them. Some of them waited six very long months to receive an admission decision. The Feb. 2018 GV admission pool consisted of students that could definitely be seen as having a strong history of specific engineering interest and/or high potential for engineering success, but not those eligible for automatic or academic review admission to College Station. Not every engineering applicant received an admission offer of any type to A&M, and some of those students elected to attend different universities or to apply to the TAMU Engineering Academies other than that in Bryan. Admission to the Bryan Engineering Academy is only offered through the main TAMU admissions process and is a hybrid enrollment process between Blinn College and TAMU wherein students take some courses at RELLIS and some on the CS campus. The RELLIS campus is very new, having opened just this year. The other TAMU Engineering Academies are based at other two-year campuses around the state, in Austin, Dallas, San Antonio, Brenham, and others. The students there are co-enrolled at these two-year schools and TAMU but take all their classes at the two-year school location. TAMU hires its own engineering faculty to teach students at these Academies. I suspect that we could ask @trinley about his son’s experience this year at the Blinn-Brenham Engineering Academy, one of the oldest and largest of the Academy programs.

Many students offered Engineering at Galveston were not at all interested in this option, but many investigated it and ultimately decided to accept. These students are fully admitted A&M engineering students (as are McAllen engineering students) and would transition to College Station after ETAM requirements are satisfied. The 2018 admission pool to Galveston yielded about 400-450 enrolled engineering students. I attended the New Student Conference with my son in summer 2018 and have visited TAMU-Galveston several times since. TAMU intends to grow the Engineering at Galveston program to around 1500 students in the future. The program enrollment has increased each year during these first few program years. TAMU has been investing in building projects at Galveston to support all its majors there along with Engineering at Galveston and has completed 2 of 3 planned large buildings there in the last few years. Their strategic plan has them starting the third of these there soon. They built some new dorms there in the recent past as well.

It is difficult to let go of the idea of attending College Station from the beginning of engineering studies, but, as with so much of life, there are pluses and minuses to every situation, and we need to learn to take best advantage of the opportunities available to us. I believe my son is happy with his choice of starting in Galveston rather than enroll in a lower-ranked school. Although he had good test scores and a lot of AP and dual credits, some years of engineering classes, and other admirable and varied accomplishments, his class rank at application was in the low-30’s percentile. He knew he could not be accepted through any avenue to a higher ranked or even similarly ranked engineering school, and he seems to be making the very best of his chance to get his Aggie Rang in the near future. Not everyone matures as early as others and thank goodness TAMU has many options for those ready to do well.

The TAMU-Galveston campus was first established in the 1960’s on Pelican Island, very close to Galveston Island and connected to it by a short causeway. The campus was established to support sea grant majors, for example, marine biology, maritime administration and transportation, marine engineering technology and ocean engineering, among others. These majors, some of them offering extremely high paying jobs after graduation, are four-year programs entirely in residence there at this campus. However, to increase engineering enrollment, especially in the face of historical attrition from engineering majors by early year students, TAMU decided to establish the Engineering at Galveston program a few years ago. Early year engineering, math, physics, and chemistry courses as listed on TAMU engineering major degree plans are now taught at Galveston. The curricula for these classes are the same as for those taught in College Station. Because the campus also supports all four years of some majors, courses that satisfy the state core curricula, courses in English, history and government, creative and performing arts, and social sciences, are also offered there.

My son will be spending his first 3 semesters in Galveston. He is currently taking the same pre-Entry to a Major courses as the engineering students in College Station and at all the TAMU Engineering Academies. Many students can transition to College Station after two semesters, but only if they are able to start their freshman year with Math 151, which means passing the math placement exam given during their summer New Student Conference. My son and many of his fellow freshmen students at College Station and Galveston underestimated the difficulty of and didn’t prepare as well as they should have for the MPE and were obliged to start with Math 150. Students are not allowed even to take AP credit for Math 151 if they do not pass the MPE. Study for the MPE.

I have written a little about my son’s experience in the TAMU Engineering Admissions thread. I am educated both as an engineer and an educator, and I am satisfied with what he has been learning so far in Galveston and with the engineering peer group and other fellow students there at the Galveston campus. It will be interesting to see which campus he eventually loves more, but right now, he is focusing on getting a 3.5 GPA to assure his getting the engineering major he wants.

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My daughter got her acceptance letter today for the engineering program at Galveston. Since we are unfamiliar with this campus, we are making a trip there this weekend. What are the best parts to drive around and see!

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The Galveston campus is small enough to walk without pausing in about 30 min. She should take a look at Main, one of their two large new buildings. The other new building is right next door. See a dorm room in Atlantic or Pacific. Go to the bookstore and the gym. Look in the cafeteria. Go out to their ship dock. Their big training ship may be there. Go out to the beach somewhere off Seawall Blvd. My son has a very wide scope, and yet he is good with the campus. He went back early after Christmas. The students see each other a lot. It’s 4 months each semester. Please don’t turn your back lightly on the opportunity.

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My son was not offered a choice last year, as his rank of record at time of application was either 33 or 35% (I’ve forgotten which), a rank we expected to be borderline for any slot at all in spite of essentially lifelong engineering credibility. He sent in every shred of possible support for himself.

We all admire our students, and there are a lot of other good students out there. The most important thing is for us to provide support, no matter what. This really can help them realize their potential! We made the mistake with our older son, a National Merit student, of letting him go under at UT because we thought we should just turn him loose. He has had to struggle ever since to regain as many good grades as possible and still will probably graduate with around a 2.5 gpa. It took three long semesters for him to get back out of academic probation. Don’t make the mistake of thinking they won’t need you when they leave. Let them know you will be there for them anytime, day or night. Both of my sons had roommate, illness, girlfriend, logistical, and classmate problems to try to work through, right off the bat. It’s that time of life.

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@MomHopesNxtGenAg do you feel Galveston is the better option over Blinn/Bryan Engineering academy?

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@DaughterEngineer I sure cannot fully evaluate which choice would be better for your daughter. It depends on what is most important, for sure. If she has a friend going to CS and planned to room with her, for example, I would say CS would be 100% better! There are lots of examples like that, and the comparison would have to be done on a lot of points to be “complete”. I haven’t heard any complaints myself about the quality of the Blinn teaching that would happen at the RELLIS campus, and you can tell that many students have been very happy about taking the Blinn option. On the other hand, I believe strongly that GV is a perfectly viable option, absolutely. I see highly rated professors there, and a chance to see a completely different area with completely different majors. My son was able to get the classes he needed pretty easily, and the atmosphere is definitely LESS STRESSFUL. It is its own quite different place. I would say that your daughter would be in the majority given the choice to take the Blinn TEAB option. These young people find a way to be happy and do well no matter where. Either way, follow up!

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@MomHopesNxtGenAg she will not know anyone on campus. We live in Tennesse. I am from Houston/Katy. I have family that lives in League City, Cypress so she would have someone who is not to far away.

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I am super, super fanatically big on family support wherever they can find it. I believe Houston is about two hours from CS, right?, and you know how far Galveston is from downtown Houston–maybe an hour in reasonable traffic.
In the past, when I ultimately asked my kids what part-time job they wanted to take, for example, they picked the one that was right for them somehow. Would you be able to just talk with her and let her choose? I bet she will make the right choice for her. She would be in the far majority given the choice to take the Blinn TEAB option, because most students have their vision set on CS. But if she’s a beach person, different story!

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Do you happen to know the cost of attendance at Galveston? Is it the same as College Station?

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The cost is roughly comparable. Parking is cheaper and very close in. Every dorm across the system will have a different cost, but basically the cost is on par.
A young relative of mine specifically preferred a small campus when she chose her school, but most people like the big campus feel. We all wish your daughter well. Whatever makes her feel most special might be the right choice, especially if she is confident in her abilities.

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All right, please show the thread or comments about Just enrolling into Blinn then transferring, someone was talking about this earlier but there is A LOT of info here and BTW…I cannot thank you enough, this has been so incredibly helpful!!! Thank you for you time!!

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My son is a current freshman in the Marine Transportation at TAMUG. I realize it is not the engineering program, but I can give feedback on tuition. Overall the tuition is similar but a lot of the fees are actually higher than CS. He does love the campus. It’s been great for him.

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How involved are they with the cstat location? ie, football and sporting games?

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I would like to hear @kkskkw 's take on your question. I have not heard of any organized bus transportation to football games and am planning a letter campaign on this. My son’s car aficionado group would think nothing of making the drive to CS and back, but it means they get back late or have to stay overnight with friends in CStat.

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I guess it’s a good time for me to describe where TAMUG is located and my impressions of the campus. I have only been there about four times so far, maybe a total of 5 or 6 days.

TAMUG is on the southeast corner of Pelican Island, a mostly vacant island close and to the northwest of Galveston Island. Pelican Island is a couple miles long and wide. The islands are connected by a relatively short causeway over water between them. TAMUG is a quiet place, isolated enough to feel and be safe, from all accounts. There is nothing nearby for the students on Pelican Island except a convenience store and the campus itself, but it is easy to bike/walk/drive/take the twice daily (as I recall) bus to Galveston Island. The western part of Galveston, the part that is near Pelican Island, isn’t the nice beach side that faces the Gulf on the eastern side of the island. But, again, the distance across Galveston from the campus side to Galveston beach and all the amenities along very long Seawall Blvd is just a few miles. Driving the entire length of Galveston takes a while, so it’s not a small place. Galveston has a water park, a small airport, Moody Gardens, historic homes on the northern end and a nice state park and beach residences toward the middle and southern end, a lot of nice hotels and restaurants along the beach, all the usual shopping (WalMart, Target, Walgreens, …). Galveston is definitely far enough from Houston to not be at all like Houston–maybe 1-1.5 hrs away. But NASA, Battleship Texas, Houston Science Museum, car shows, etc. are within pretty easy driving distance. Of course, you could drive south along the exceedingly long Texas coast south of there to Padre Island and beyond.

My son has far fewer distractions at TAMUG than during his high school years. He has friends in College Station and a friend at Rice in nearby Houston, but he has made new friends at TAMUG. If he has to resort to doing schoolwork rather than going out to find the kind of activity that CS has, it’s far better in my opinion. He’s exactly the kind of person who needed a lot less distraction this year.

When you drive toward the campus across the causeway from Galveston, you see the new large buildings (maybe 60,000-80,000 sq ft total) that are effectively the new main entrance. They haven’t finished landscaping and setting them off and away from the front parking because all of this is new, but it will have a different look someday. Not too far down and to the left is the very large Maritime Academy building that houses the TAMUG corps of cadets. Students in most majors there are required to be corps members. It’s a fairly new and sprawling 4- or 5-story building. The older (not old) and newer dorms come into view and continue as you continue and then round the first corner of the campus. As you turn the second corner, you are headed back toward the water. TAMUG has a large dock with a number of ships, including the large Gen. Rudder. When we were there for the NSC, the maritime students gave boat rides into the channel. Even though the water clarity is poor, we saw several dolphins riding the boat wake, and there are indeed a lot of pelicans in the area. There is a pleasant waterside pavilion area at the campus. In the distance, you can see container and cruise ships coming into Houston. When we were at the NSC, we had sessions in a lot of the buildings. The campus has a number of buildings–maybe 25-30 (?), and most of them are multistory and fairly new. There is a very large gym, their outdoor pool, and two places where the students can get food. The engineering students are just short-timers there, but there is dorm space for everyone. I believe the students are required to live on campus unless older or married.

TAMUG is much smaller than TAMU, obviously: 140 acres vs. more than 5000 acres, one of the largest campuses in the country. TAMUG has palm trees rather than all the live oaks. It’s windy and often rainy. Except for one of my visits, however, it was mercifully sunny and beautiful. The two campuses are just so different. I haven’t seen TAMUG seem noisy and bustling. It has a quite opposite feel to me. But perhaps I just haven’t seen it on a busy class day. There is a lot of adjacent vacant land on Pelican Island. I’m sure TAMUG has room to expand if it were ever warranted.

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Thank You @MomHopesNxtGenAg I mentally was driving into campus with you, thanks to your description.

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@angsmi First off, I beg your pardon for confusing your son with another student here. I see that your son is 1Q, not 2Q, and it sounds as though he probably attends a large and high performing high school. Being 1Q there is a good accomplishment!
I know you feel uncertain for your son. If he will need advanced math and physical science credits later, and there is any chance that he would want to go into any type of engineering, then he should plan to start out in engineering. The first engineering class is programming in Python, one of the most popular and job-worthy programming languages currently. If the math classes turn out to be more advanced than he needs for another major, then he might be able to petition them for credit in another major. Chemistry and physics are requirements in a lot of majors. Your son could potentially also be taking some core curriculum classes also at TAMUG, which would be applicable in any major.
TAMU wants its engineering transfer students to have TAMU’s freshman engineering classes. That’s why they have their professors in every distant program that could feed into the CoE, for example, their Engineering Academies. Your son won’t be able to transfer into CStat CoE without taking TAMU’s engineering classes. Worst case, if your son knows he doesn’t want engineering, he could take classes at TAMUG that might work for CStat majors and try to transfer. Maybe he should contact someone about transfer early from TAMUG. This might be straightforward for majors that are not highly impacted.
A lot of us with students who are not sure of their major yet, and there are a lot, try to crystal ball gaze to see how the courses their students could be taking might fit into the degree plan for other majors that we think they might eventually choose. Sometimes we know our youngsters better than they know themselves yet, sometimes we don’t.

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@MomHopesNxtGenAg, Thank you so much!! Your information and knowledge has been so incredibly helpful to all of us, “first timers”. I think he is just stressed about the whole thing. Today, he feels he is more prepared for engineering because we had him take the “You Science” aptitude test and several engineering professions came up for him so he is more confident. I think he should be very proud of his accomplishments. He put engineering as major then business as minor on his TAMU application and I feel that was a HUGE mistake. (NOT to mention, ALL THINGS WORK OUT AS THEY SHOULD) I’m actually thankful for the TAMUG offer and just need to help him make the decision that is right for him. You are soooo right, can’t hurt most majors to take engineering classes even if he changes to a different major. He took pre-cal last year and ACED it. He is in AP Calculus and doing fine. He isn’t stressing about making an A any longer so that helps his anxiety… He took AP Physics last year and got a B. I told him he needed to take the MPE very serious if he intended to be in college station in a year. Also, is it possible to apply to leave TAMUG after one semester? He mentioned the greek life. Is that an option when you get to college station as a sophomore (I am hoping this is a fleeting desire anyway but thought I would ask “the know” people. Thank you again!!!

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They cannot do entry to a major in Engineering without satisfying the two math, two science, two Engineering that are specified in the ETAM policy. That takes at least two semesters even provided he passes the MPE. Therefore, he could not move to CS after one semester without a successful major change. He sounds like a good student, and technical careers can be very high paying. The demand for engineers is projected to continue to be good.

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Other folks can help you with the sophomore Greek life question. I am not knowledgeable in that area