I think most colleges admit to FYE or General Engg programs and then if the kid meets the specific GPA they can get into their major of their choice. i am trying to avoid that process and prefer a direct admit. I have narrowed down these colleges and would really appreciate if direct admit to CS is possible in these colleges so that my son can gear up from freshman year rather than another process to weed them out (especially when they know they want CS).
Again I am not talking about switching majors or admit to College of engineering or sciences but a direct major to CS in the college from Year 1. My son hates to be in another rat race for this. Any inputs greatly appreciated please
Michigan State University
NCSU
UNC Chapel Hill
UMD maryland
UT Austin
UW Madison
UMN Twin Cities
USF Tampa
Rutgers New Brunswick
Temple
University of Pittsburg
Arizona State University
Cal Poly SLO and SJSU offers direct admits to CS I think. Purdue, TAMU and Penn State is FYE or General engg first year and i guess you need to get a min GPA which is high for CS
Of the above universities which colleges does not weed off and the kid with good (not extra ordinary) GPA can get thru CS with not too much competition. Thanks in advance.
My impression is that direct admit to CS is the norm if you get accepted into a university, and the ones where you have to compete to get into CS even after admittance to the university are the exceptions. I haven’t looked at the specific schools mentioned above.
I don’t buy the idea that universities try to weed people out of CS programs. Some of the classes are difficult and many people can’t get past them, but that’s because of the subject matter and/or poor teaching, not because they’re designed to weed anyone out.
This year, UMD made CS one of the Limited Enrollment Programs. This means that they get more applications than they can accommodate. It is a direct admit program, but not every one requesting that major gets in.
The high GPA or other “weed out” requirements appear mainly to exist to keep the number of CS majors within the CS department’s capacity to teach them. This appears to be mostly an issue at popular state flagship level universities, where the number of students who are academically strong enough to handle the CS major can exceed the number that a budget-limited CS department can teach. It is less likely to happen at the richly endowed super-selective private universities (with money to have oversized CS departments), less selective universities (where the number of students academically strong enough to handle CS is small), or very small universities or LACs (where the minimum size for an effective CS department means that even a high percentage of the small number students choosing CS will not overflow it).
You can apply direct admit to CS in the College of Science at Purdue. If you want to do CS/EE, then that’s the FYE program with the transition to major in the College of Engineering.
@momofsenior1 i had applied for CS but in College of engg at Purdue so have to go thru FYE unfortunately. I am looking at Penn state , Upitt and MSU if its a direct admit or not
Just to reiterate what was stated above. You do NOT go through FYE for Computer Science at Purdue. CS is in the College of Science, NOT engineering. It is totally different. Computer Engineering IS in the College of Engineering at Purdue, so one would need to go through FYE.
You might want to check out a few small to medium sized, selective private universities such as the University of Rochester, Case Western, or RPI. Run their online net price calculators to compare costs.