Daughter went for direct admit to BME but only got into pre-engineering and we’ve heard far too many horror stories about not being able to get into your desired major, even after two years. However she did get direct admit to the top ranked BME programs at Johns Hopkins and Georgia Tech, so I’m not sure what happened. Is it possible to appeal direct admit decisions? In state tuition would be half to 1/3 the cost of the other options. And, how does UW BME program truly stack up, despite the rankings?
Basic stats:
In-state
SAT 780M/750V/3.95 GPA, 9 APs
UW engineering appears to enroll a broad range of students (middle 50% range SAT 1170-1420; ACT 27-33). When considering the engineering admission process at UW and reading about the percentages of students who are admitted to their majors each year, keep in mind that your daughters, one with GPA 4.0 UW 4.4 W; SAT 1530, the other with GPA 3.95; SAT 780M/750V; 9 APs, would be among the top 5-10% of the entering class of engineering students academically.
Surely, some diligent students at the lower range of the academic statistics will get into their desired majors, and some students at the higher range will not, most likely due to non-academic difficulties with the transition to college life away from home. These issues can derail the successful completion of an engineering degree whether the student is at a school with direct admission or secondary admission to the engineering majors (and they may be heightened if the student also feels like it will be an impossible or stressful uphill climb to get into or stay in the specific program the student strongly desires). How likely that those types of issues will affect your daughter at each school under consideration is a personal assessment only you can make. However, at entry, your daughters would clearly be among the very best and brightest students in the UW College of Engineering, and I expect they would identify themselves as such to the College’s faculty and staff fairly quickly.
UW BME has a problem of very limited spots: only 12 to 15 students are offered direct admit as freshmen. Your daughter probably didn’t do anything wrong, it’s just the nature of the numbers.
To get into the major later, she would need to do as @UWfromCA says: identify herself as the star she is, shine her light by excelling in class, getting to know faculty, looking for research opportunities, etc. If she thinks she can do that, her chances sound good, but if she’d be more comfortable with a guaranteed spot she has other options which is nice.
The other concern is she’s not sure she wants to do biomedical, and perhaps a school like Northwestern, Case, Purdue, UoM, etc which have great first year engineering programs might fit better? Northwestern looks amazing too, with their design focus and flexibility, but they’re also almost 3x more expensive.
All great choices. For a student at the UW with your daughter’s academic profile who is not sure which engineering major to pursue, the ability to delay that decision to the end of freshmen year (for early admission) or to the middle or end of sophomore year may be beneficial.