Hi everyone, (first time posting!)
I’m currently in my second semester of a pretty well-ranked university. I senior year and last semester not really knowing what to major in, thinking I’d eventually figure it out. I’d always known I’d be doing something science-y, and after taking some STEM classes here I realized that I’d be interested in doing engineering, as opposed to just a science major. However, I’m in the sort of “general” college within my school that has most of the “easier” liberal arts majors, and if I wanted to major in engineering, I’d have to switch to the engineering school. As soon as I realized this, I looked into the transfer process, but since our engineering school is pretty good and hard to get into even as a high schooler, transferring from within the university is almost impossible.
I’ve spent most of this semester angsting about this, and considering my options. I don’t think transferring as a junior to an engineering program at another school is possible either, because I’d still have to complete all the pre-requisites at my current school, and it’d be really hard for me to get into the impacted engineering classes here.
I’m not considering this seriously yet, but I want to know if it’s a feasible option to drop out completely and reapply to another university as an engineering major. I’m currently indifferent to my school; I’m okay with it now, but I wouldn’t miss it too much if I left. My high school grades were good and my college grades are alright, and I think that if I had applied last year to engineering programs at some lower tier public universities in my state, I’d get into at least one of them. I’ve heard a lot that in the job market, the prestige of the university you went to doesn’t really matter, which means going to a “worse” school wouldn’t matter too much in the long run.
The problem is, I heard that if you take more than a certain amount of college units, you can’t apply to a school as a freshman anymore. In that case then, I’m not really sure what other options are left. What does a person in this scenario do? (I know someone might suggest that I just stay with my school and do a normal science major, but I’ve been extremely unhappy this past semester, feeling like I’m wasting my time on a path that I don’t want to be on, and I sure don’t want to spend a few more years feeling this way.) Feel free to correct me on any misconceptions that I have too!
Thank you 