My kid had no problem switching into engineering in the middle of her sophomore year. She had taken the physics, calculus, chem courses that all the engineering majors were required to take at Santa Clara. She had the GPA to make the choice as a major…and poof…she was in.
And as an FYI…there is NO WAY she would have been directly admitted into engineering at Santa Clara.
@ucbalumnus, transferring in to the CS major at CMU is well-nigh impossible. Not sure about non-majors taking CS classes there. However, Dietrich (CMU’s SS & Humanities college) has some majors that have a few CS classes: IS (DB design, data structures, some computing classes), Stats & Machine Learning (programming, statistical computing, some other computing classes), Logic & Computation (some programming and computing class + philosophy & math). Don’t know about non-majors taking those classes, however.
BTW, UW-Seattle also has some CS-related majors if someone doesn’t get in to CS there: Applied & Computational Mathematical Sciences and Informatics + some others here: https://www.cs.washington.edu/prospective_students/undergrad/academics/related_majors
I know of students who have transferred into the CS major and I believe they offer enough sections of the the beginning CS courses that there is room for non-majors to take them. Some of them have posted here: https://www.quora.com/Should-I-double-major-in-math-and-CS-at-CMU
@mathmom, yes, some transfer in to CS at CMU. Very few. So it’s almost impossible. I certainly wouldn’t encourage someone who wanted to major in CS (and wouldn’t be satisfied with a CS-related major) to enter CMU (or UIUC; even UW-Seattle) as a non-CS major.
Anyway, for CS:
At UIUC, you apply in to a major and you could list CS or a CS+X major as a second choice. Trying to transfer in as a non-CS major is tough (3.67 GPA in a few CS classes or something like that). Getting in to CS in engineering is tough. I believe that the median ACT for CS in engineering admits was 34 or something absurd like that.
Ar Northwestern, there are no restrictions on CS (or any engineering, I believe). A handful of majors have competitive admissions (theatre, MMSS, the writing program, and American Studies, I believe). Obviously, getting in to NU in general is tough.
Last I checked, UW-Madison still had an absurdly low hurdle for declaring for CS. You just needed C’s or better in a few CS classes, I believe.
Northwestern - Absolutely no restriction. You can even double and triple major if you want.
@sevmom Average GPAs are just a barometer. Yes, most kids in engineering are like yours - capable, self-motivated and likely to succeed. But, understanding the potential GPA thresholds for declaring majors at a given school in advance is not such a bad idea to help kids plan and try to meet their goals.
Re: Virginia Tech
It looks like a 2.0 GPA is the minimum to apply to declare an engineering major, but it is not assured that the student will be admitted unless s/he has a 3.0 or higher GPA. A “full” department may not admit any student under 3.0 GPA, but a department with lots of space and not much student interest may admit all the way down to 2.0 GPA.
https://www.cs.wisc.edu/academics/undergraduate-programs/how-prepare-cs-major indicates that the student needs to complete a CS course (2 credits or more) with a grade of C or higher to declare the CS major at Wisconsin.
@thumper1 I have heard so many good things about Santa Clara just recently from friends in CA, including that they think it’s the most beautiful campus on the west coast. From what you say, it sounds like a great, flexible engineering school too. Good one for people’s lists - especially for those engineers who want sunshine, like my oldest did.
The main problem with Santa Clara is that it does not have good financial aid. Putting in a hypothetical student from a low income ($20,000) family into its net price calculator gives an estimated net price of $12,307 – $36,307. Presumably, the lower end of the range reflects the possibility of large merit scholarships, but higher end of the range without merit scholarships is quite far out of affordability range.
@ucbalumnus Wow. You are amazing in finding data. Santa Clara then still sounds nice for kids who want engineering, like sunshine and pretty architecture, and have parents or grandparents with money!
Many private universities are very expensive. And many private universities don’t guarantee to meet full need for all. So Santa Clara is not alone in that category.
And yes…it’s expensive. But I didn’t think that was the purpose of this thread.
@PurpleTitan I would ever recommend it either. If there’s a fallback major you are happy with and love CMU for other reasons - sure, but otherwise it would be a very risky plan. My son applied only to SCS when he applied to CMU because he wasn’t willing to major in anything else.
Both informatics and ACMS are competitive majors as well. ACMS, in particular, has admit rates of about thirty percent with many of the slots rumored to go to people also admitted as CS double-majors.
There is this thread claiming that changing into CS at UCSD is extremely competitive. Note also that it mentions that math is now a restricted major there, presumably due to all of the CS rejects looking at it as a backup major.
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-california-san-diego/1881773-this-quarter-you-needed-a-4-0-to-transfer-into-cs-at-ucsd.html
Washington also offers about a dozen non-major CSE courses and advises students who take these courses to indicate a “concentration in computer science” on their resumes. http://www.cs.washington.edu/prospective_students/undergrad/admissions/nonmajor/
The “admit into major” makes a lot of the naviance data useless. DD is interested in CS - and so if you look at naviance data (or most other sources) for RIT, Cal Poly SLO, CMU, etc, the data you see just isn’t relevant. You have to do per-individual-school research just to maybe get a general idea of how competitive it is.
@thshadow Yup. That’s why talking to people who have been through the process before, asking lots of questions on campuses, and reading CC threads from people like you is useful. I was not aware of these nuances after just reading books, websites, and rankings. In fact, I am learning a lot of new details (after the fact) from this thread. I would not necessarily have thought to even ask about the difficulty of getting a certain major during our first time through the college process. I was focused on just getting the kid into college and an engineering school overall. I felt a little more aware of questions to ask with my second son. This is obvious to some, but I had to learn from experience that college admissions statistics can be deceiving. Schools that looked like definite targets on the surface were not when son’s computer engineering and computer science interests were factored in.
Re: #77
Yes, where colleges have different levels of selectivity by major or division, overall school stats are not very useful.
UC has some very helpful admission stats for transfer admission by major at http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/infocenter/transfers-major , but apparently does not publicly post any such thing for frosh admission. (This is in contrast to the usual case where transfer admission is less transparent than frosh admission.)