Elec Engg or Comp Engg or Comp Science?

My S is senior and applying for Engineering In GT, Purdue, UIUC, Texas A&M, UT Austin, Virginia Tech etc
he is interested in ELec Engg, Comp Engg, Comp Science

  1. Can he select any one as first choice and change during the first year
  2. From employment perspective, which major has more potential ? Can he Include double Major/Minor ? If so, what are the options in these colleges
  3. Each of those colleges offer flag ship Engg program and their rank vary for different Engg, does it matter?

Thanks in advance for your posts

  • Best

Your best bet to get details on each of those programs is to post your questions in that school’s forum. You’ll get a lot more details on how each school “works” from the folks in those forums.

On question #3, the rankings difference between those schools do NOT matter. Those are all EXCELLENT engineering programs! They do have differences in how they handle first year engineering students, admissions to their major, which minors are offered, etc, so it’s worth your effort to do the research.

Good Luck!

CS and EE are very different. You couldn’t pay my son enough money to sit in front of a screen and code all day no matter how hot the job market. As a ME he codes, but only as much as he need to. Your son needs to know if he can stomach that. On the other hand some people live for coding. I just met a young man who transferred out of BME to CS because the ME and EE classes were too hard for him. He’s absolutely at home in front of a screen coding. Otherwise, @Gator88NE hit it on the head. The answers you seek are on the school forum pages and the web pages of the respective schools.

Purdue, Texas A&M, and VT have a first year engineering (FYE) program, after which students choose their specific engineering majors. However, at all three of these schools, admission to major at that time requires a high college GPA or competitive admission. Some other schools with FYE programs are non-competitive to choose major (e.g. Michigan, Pittsburgh). Also note that CS is separate from engineering at Purdue and has its own admission process. A student can apply for direct admission to CS, though then changing to an engineering major would be a two step process (first to FYE, then to the major).

UIUC and UT Austin do direct admission to majors, but engineering and CS majors are “full”, so changing majors is difficult and requires a competitive admission process. GT does direct admission to majors, but allows one free change of major (but after that, changing is not automatic).

Basically, different schools have different policies, so you need to dig around their web sites to figure this out.

Never apply to a school based on rankings, especially in computers. That’s where big expensive mistakes happen. Prestige is virtually meaningless in the world of tech. If you want to go into tech, you’re better off going to a practical in-state university.

@florida789 Answers are below:
Can he select any one as first choice and change during the first year
Yes, the college that you listed would let you change majors. I don’t see why not.

Each of those colleges offer flag ship Engg program and their rank vary for different Engg, does it matter?

To be honest with you, the engineering majors that you listed above are all the same ELec Engg and Comp Engg. If both those programs are EAC ABET accredited I guaranteed you that in the first two years you will be taking the same math, science and engineering classes. Only in the Junior year you will be taking your concentration course within your major. At your senior year the EAC ABET accreditation program would make you take two senior design or capstone classes in order to graduate.

Thank you everyone for your answers it helped us learn much better