@ucbalumnus You just answered my questions above about UCSD, UCB and UCLA - I was unsure, since son had different admission results at each, but he did apply directly into majors for those schools.
@crazymamaB I agree that these nuances between engineering schools are worth knowing about, especially for risk-averse folks like me.
From what I understand, applicants to UCB* or UCLA engineering majors apply to the specific major, and are admitted to the major or rejected entirely. At UCB*, there is the option to apply to engineering undeclared, which allows the student free choice to select an engineering major after enrolling, but that “major” is probably one of the most selective to apply to for frosh admission.
*At UCB, chemical engineering is in the College of Chemistry rather than the College of Engineering, so changing between it and other engineering majors requires applying to change division, which is more competitive than changing within the division (and engineering undeclared students do not have free choice to choose chemical engineering). In addition, the EECS and IEOR departments have similar majors in the College of Letters and Science (L&S CS and ORMS respectively), so that students in that division can choose those majors, although both of those majors require high GPAs to declare (3.3 and 3.2 respectively at this time, though this is generally less difficult than changing into EECS or IEOR).
3.5 college GPA is the automatic-admit threshold for pre-engineering students to get into their first choice major at Texas A&M. Those with lower GPAs have to apply into a competitive admission process. https://engineering.tamu.edu/academics/advisors-procedures/entry-to-a-major (links at lower right corner) shows some stats for admission to majors. Note that the Texas A&M admission process also includes essays.
Some other schools with this system also have automatic-admit thresholds, below which students may be admitted (competing by GPA) if there is space available: Minnesota 3.2, Virginia Tech 3.0.
The organizations that accredit university programs in engineering require that the student:faculty ratio cannot exceed a certain number (which could be different for different types of engineering). Most universities will expand their engineering faculty to accommodate increased student interest. However, I don’t think that adjuncts or temporary faculty count toward the faculty number in the student:faculty ratio. (Someone else may know specifically.) Even if they do count, it can be quite expensive to hire a temporary faculty member in engineering, compared to hiring a temporary faculty member to teach a course in the humanities. Student interest in engineering is high currently, but it has varied over time, so the universities are reluctant to tie up a faculty position for 30+ years based on current interest levels.
In universities that admit directly to majors, the level of competition to be admitted into engineering is often higher than the level of competition to be admitted into other majors. And (as already noted on this thread) some require a threshold GPA afterwards, to stay in engineering. A number of the universities that do not admit directly to the major have required GPA levels to be admitted to an engineering major.
It’s not really a “weed out” philosophy, any more than admissions decisions should be regarded as “weeding out,” if students are admitted directly to the major. The driving issue is accreditation and faculty costs.
Certainly well worth investigating, before finalizing a choice of university. Also, it is important to bear in mind that university grading in STEM courses has little resemblance to high school grading. So a requirement for a 3.25 which sounds like “Pfff, not worth worrying about” can turn out to be a barrier.
Re: #22
That can also be why this appears to be a bigger issue at large schools that have relatively high admission selectivity (e.g. popular state flagships).
Smaller schools still need to have a minimum department sizes to offer worthwhile engineering majors, so the department capacities are large enough that the number of interested students at a smaller school does not exceed department capacities. Less selective schools may not have that many students capable of handling the rigor and workload of an engineering major.
UCSB, UCD, and Cal Poly all directly admit into specific engineering majors. I think UCI does too. Cal Poly has a General Engineering major, but it’s an actual major - not like Berkeley’s Engineering Undeclared. I don’t really have any knowledge of how easy it is to transfer from one engineering major to another within each of those schools. My impression is that it might be a little easier at Cal Poly to do that than the UCs, but that’s just a guess. UCSB has CS in the CoE and it also has a newly renamed Computing major in the College of Creative Studies.
Our first son chose between 2 schools with a different engineering major at each. When factoring where to go we did not count on the ability to switch to a different engineering major without some difficulty.
I like the way VA Tech does it where they admit a student into engineering and then give everyone the first year to figure out which discipline. The GPAs they have seem reasonable to get into each discipline, certainly easier than going to Cal and trying to get into L&S CS.
Most, if not all, of Penn State’s engineering majors are under enrollment control, but the GPA requirements are fairly doable (between 2.0 and 3.2, last I checked) and you don’t apply until the end of your sophomore year, so if you stumble when adjusting to college you have time to work hard and bring it up.
At Cal Poly SLO, it is easier to switch majors in Engineering, if you are already accepted into the Engineering School. It is difficult to switch from another School such as Liberal Arts/Business etc… to Engineering since your HS record is taken into consideration and checked to see if you would have qualified for that Engineering major in the first place. I guess it keeps many applicants from using the “back door” method and apply to a less selective major to get into SLO.
Although the Cal states reputation/prestige (whatever you want to call it) cannot compare to many of the schools noted on this thread, they all admit by major and many will place you in a Pre-Major where you do have to meet a minimum GPA before you are allowed to continue with your upper division major courses.
@Gumbymom I’d guess at Cal Poly that switching engineering majors is easier in some directions than others. For example, ME is a pretty tough admit so switching to most other engineering majors would be relatively likely. But switching from Materials Eng to MechE would be much tougher since it seems to admit almost as many as apply based on their published projections. So even within the CoE, there is possibly checks for the “back door” method.
Re: #26
For CSUs, it is likely that currently enrolled students changing majors may find GPA barriers at those majors (not just engineering majors) which are designated as impacted for frosh and transfer applicants on the given campus. These are listed at http://www.calstate.edu/sas/impactionsearch/ , although most campuses other than SJSU and CPSLO do not list anything on their web sites indicating how impacted they are. Note that some less selective CSUs (e.g. CSULA, CSUSac, CSUN) are not impacted for engineering majors.
Here is CPSLO’s change of major policies for those already in engineering:
https://eadvise.calpoly.edu/majors/changing-majors-within-ceng/
From outside engineering to an engineering major:
https://eadvise.calpoly.edu/majors/changing-majors-from-outside-of-ceng/
SJSU’s engineering change of major policy is here:
https://engineering.sjsu.edu/student-resources/success-center/change-major-policy
How impacted each major is at SJSU can be looked at here:
http://info.sjsu.edu/static/admission/impaction.html
Re: #27
At CPSLO, within engineering, switching to ME needs a 2.75 GPA, while switching to MATE needs only a 2.0 GPA, according to the links above.
Good info on the CPSLO GPA requirements for switching majors within the CoE. I don’t remember seeing anything that specific in the Spring of 2015 and I see this became effective the Fall of 2015.
My youngest son was directly admitted into the Aerospace Engineering department at the University of Maryland and started taking AE-specific classes (in addition to the general engineering courses) right away in his first semester. I don’t think you could graduate in 4 years with an AE major (at least at UMD) if you didn’t start taking AE-specific classes until sophomore year. (At least, the printed curriculum plan that the engineering school distributes seems to indicate that.) I think the biomedical engineering majors at UMD have a similar situation. As for switching majors within engineering – as long as the student is in good academic standing, I believe it’s easy to change departments. I don’t know how many switch INTO AE or BME after the first year (again, those program plans that begin with major-specific courses in the first semester), but a fair number switched OUT of AE throughout that first year, according to my son.
Since Lehigh was referred to in the earlier thread and my D is a graduate of their engineering school, I thought I would comment. 
She was directly admitted to the college of engineering. They have a first year program where all engineering majors take the same classes and pick their major at the end of freshman year. But you could pick any of the majors they offered. They were so flexible and so many choices of majors and minors. You could combine engineering with the liberal arts, or minor in business or anything you wanted. The other plus for me was that Lehigh seemed committed to graduating their engineers in 4 years. The only kids I knew (other than one) who took 5 years were the IBE majors which was a 5 year program.
This is not about engineering but I have a niece and nephew at university of Michigan. Neither are in engineering and I have no knowledge of that school. But I have noticed that there seemed to be various programs there where you had to apply for certain majors. My niece applied for a program called organizational studies which seemed to be very competitive. And we know how hard it is to get into the business school. I know there are other majors.
I’ll chime in on Virginia Tech. VT has been doing admission to General Engineering and then having students choose which discipline they want after the first year for at least 30 years (since I went there). So that is not new. However, whereas 30 years ago all engineers truly did the exact same first year, now there begins to be differentiation in the spring semester of the sophomore year … before you’ve had a chance to request and be accepted to your major of choice. So right now they have an awkward in-between system, and in my opinion they need to choose to either admit students directly, or go back to the first year being the same across the board. I will also say that 30 years ago there was not nearly the prevalence of significant AP credit getting students out of significant portions of the first year curriculum. I know that they’re playing with tweaking the credentials required for guaranteeing a spot in your major of choice … because some people were placing out of chemistry, calc, etc., and not taking nearly the technical load that they otherwise would be that first year, skating to the required 3.0, and then getting into sophomore year classes and crashing. I will also say that I am glad I’m not going to school there now, because I’m quite sure my GPA would not be what it was, due to the across-the-board use of common time, multiple choice tests and finals in the first year calc, chemistry, and physics classes. I graduated with a 3.89 in EE; my grades my first two years ranged from A to B- … after that, all A’s. But I can assure you that if I’d had to take multiple choice tests in calc, chem, physics, statics, dynamics, and mechanics, my grades in those classes would have easily been an entire letter grade lower. Small mistakes on a few questions can be an A or high B on a free response test … or a D on a multiple choice test.
This trend is not just a Virginia Tech thing, though … sadly most large engineering schools are going this route … to their detriment and the detriment of their students, I believe. Get beyond the first year to year and a half, and the testing protocol changes to free response and/or take-home tests. So that does start to smack of the first year classes being designed to “weed out”. And in my opinion, that is unfortunate. It is quite possible to know material well and bomb a multiple choice test. These methods of assessment are not necessarily weeding out less capable students. We are doing students a huge disservice by encouraging more of them to go into STEM majors, and then viciously weeding them out on the basis of multiple choice assessments.
@ailinsh1 How do you get partial credit on a Physics problem with a multiple choice test? I was not an engineer, but I got through several of my required math, science, and econ courses by showing my work and praying for some partial credit, when I didn’t know what I was doing. Multiple choice on every test would have killed my GPA!
I am guessing that the use of multiple choice is just to help TAs grade and record the tests more easily for the “masses” in those intro level required courses? They might even use computer scanners to do the grading? What would these TAs have done in the old days when there were no computers and everyone wrote long scribbled answers with scratchouts in those old-fashioned blue books?
Like you, I am not sure it is a wise idea to skip out of so many intro eng courses with AP credits. Some kids get placed in higher classes as freshmen, where they are competing for curved grades against upperclassmen who are both older and have already adjusted to that first and second semester of socializing, fraternity rush, etc. I know a National Merit Scholar freshman who failed out of an engineering honors program and lost his full-ride scholarship because of this issue. He should have just taken more of the basic required classes with his freshman peers to get used to college and maintain a decent GPA.
Virginia Tech General Engineering students still pretty much take the same classes as freshmen before moving to a major for their sophomore year. There is a First -Year Engineering Curriculum. http://www.admiss.vt.edu/majors/index.php/majors/college/coe
Re skipping classes because of AP credit: Among the UC engineering programs there is quite a bit of difference in what the schools give credit for.
Berkeley: Looks like a Calculus, Physics, and Chemistry could reasonably be skipped the freshman year with AP credit.
UCLA: 1 quarter of Calculus can be skipped, 1 quarter of Physics can be skipped by petitioning.
UCSB: Calculus can, no Physics or Chemistry classes appear to be able to be skipped for engineering majors.
UCSD: I couldn’t really tell for sure, probably similar to UCLA or UCSB
Cal Poly (not a UC): As I remember, it was a little more liberal with AP credit than most of the UCs for engineering
Re: #35
http://engineering.berkeley.edu/academics/undergraduate-guide/exams-ap-ib-level-and-transfer-credit-information
https://www.admission.ucla.edu/Prospect/APCreditEN.htm
https://my.sa.ucsb.edu/catalog/Current/UndergraduateEducation/APCreditandChart.aspx
https://www.ucsd.edu/catalog/pdf/APC-chart.pdf
http://registrar.calpoly.edu/content/Degree_Progress/other_ac_credit
In general, students who have AP credit that allows going to a more advanced course in the subject may want to try the college’s old final exam for the course to be skipped, so that they can check their knowledge of the material by the college’s standards. If the student does not need to take any more advanced courses that require the course to be skipped as a prerequisite, then AP credit for that course can be used to gain space for another free elective.
A related question for us at schools that interest S17 is how easy it is for a physics major (College of L&S) to take computer science classes and perhaps minor or double major in CS. Because CS is often in the College of Engineering and CS is usually oversubscribed, access to CS classes for physical sciences majors is often limited.
I believe that UCSB has no minors offered by any of the departments in the College of Engineering.
Berkeley does have a CS minor through engineering that is available to L&S students. However, “At this time, minors do not receive priority for getting into classes. That being said, many minors do get into classes, they just have to be flexible, patient, or enroll in summer session.” http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/csugrad/minorfaq.html
@sevmom – But if you dig into the details for each individual major, you’ll find that some specialization starts to occur in the 2nd semester of first year, depending on where you intend to end up, particularly for EE and Computer Engineering.
@MOMANDBOYSTWO – Exactly my point re: no partial credit on multiple choice tests. There is none. It is a horrendous practice, in my opinion.
Sorry, I just realized my previous post (#32) above indicates differentiation of classes in the spring of sophomore year; I meant freshman year. That’s the issue.