<p>I'm trying to help my junior-year son with some of his research.</p>
<p>He's interested in engineering. But, he is not fully committed and would like some of the liberal arts flexibility to explore other math related areas. Still, SO many of the colleges offering engineering programs lock kids away so that is all they study.</p>
<p>Can anyone here tell me:</p>
<ul>
<li>How to tell if a school has a more open program (like Wash U or Stanford) or not (like Berkeley)? I briefly tried to decipher how much flexibility Stanford students have by looking at their Engineering dept's requirements page. But, I couldn't tell.</li>
<li>Colleges they think may have multidisciplinary flexibility.</li>
</ul>
<p>Engineering degree programs typically have the following requirements:</p>
<p>About 25% math and science
About 20-25% humanities and social studies breadth
About 40-55% engineering courses, mostly varying by major</p>
<p>This tends to leave relatively little room for free electives, regardless of what university one is at. However, some engineering majors have fewer requirements than others, and students who come in with usable AP credit may be able to gain free electives in place of required courses that they skipped with AP credit (however, students with AP credit should check the university’s final exams in the courses that may be skipped to check their knowledge of the university courses that may be skipped).</p>
<p>What types of engineering?</p>
<p>Be sure to discuss with him the limit of what you can contribute to his university costs, and provide him with enough information to run the net price calculators on university web sites to get financial aid estimates. This should be done early, so that an appropriate application list can be made to ensure having affordable choices in April of senior year.</p>
<p>You’re not really going to find a very open program in terms of what you need to take in order to graduate with an engineering degree. That’s because engineering degrees are acredited by ABET, and it sets the minimum requirements in a way that pretty much soaks up the 4 years of college. </p>
<p>If he wants flexibility to take other classes all along while studying engineering then he’ll have to plan on spending 5 years in college. Which, in itself, presents a problem because many of the UCs have set up minimum progress requirements and unit caps that pretty much force you to finish in 4 years or so. Or presents a problem because not many people can afford an extra year at a private, and furthermore they may have policies that discourage this.</p>
<p>If he’s not sure engineering is right for him and wants time to decide, then he’ll need to apply to colleges that make it relatively easy to switch into engineering at a later date, or start as an engineer and switch out if it isn’t right (relatively easy at most colleges). Note that even in an engineering curriculum the first 2 years doesn’t involve that many engineering classes; its loaded on math and the hard sciences, along with taking breadth requirements. So even at Berkeley he’d have essentially 2 years to decide before the engineering classes predominate. </p>
<p>Someone is bound to come along and suggest the 3:2 programs. They work on paper, but from what I’ve heard students that start in one seldom actually end up transferring to complete their engineering degree, instead finishing up at the LAC whey they started.</p>
<p>Rochester might be a good fit as they have a tuition free take 5 program where students spend a fifth year studying something unrelated to their undergraduate major </p>
<ul>
<li>Students have to apply for the extra tuition-free semester(s); acceptance is not guaranteed.</li>
<li>Non-tuition expenses must be paid, and on-campus housing is unlikely to be available.</li>
</ul>
<p>How are Stanford’s and WashU’s engineering programs more open? Wouldn’t they both be like other eng’g programs that not only have little space for non-STEM courses, but require more credits than other majors?</p>
<p>I’m just asking.</p>
<p>That said…If an eng’g major wants more flexibility to take LA courses, then perhaps look at some schools that give generous AP credits. Then in the spots that the student would normally be taking English, Calculus, Gen Chem and Physics, the student could take electives.</p>
<p>That might work when all of the following is true:</p>
<p>a. Student is focused on following through with transferring and completing the 3+2.
b. The 3-school allows majoring in the other subject when doing the 3+2 prep (some 3-schools restrict the choice of majors).
c. Student maintains the academic standards to be accepted for transfer to the 2-school (which may be known beforehand, or may be an unknown competitive admission process).
d. Cost of the extra year is acceptable, and worst-case financial aid and scholarships (often none can be assumed) at the 2-school are acceptable since those may not be known beforehand.</p>
<p>But there are a lot of big IFs here, which is apparently why most students starting 3+2 programs do not transfer to the 2-school.</p>
<p>Maybe he would like Industrial Engineering since it is more about math and people. It seems to be less science than the other engineering majors. He might also just plan to do summer school after freshman year to add some flexibility to his school year classes. Things may change too. Both my daughter loved to read and alway preferred English and History a little bit over Math. They both chose math heavy majors.</p>
<p>Take a look at Northwestern. Their “Engineering First” curriculum allows one to be exposed to real engineering early so he/she can make the decision whether engineering is the right field early (in most other schools, engineering students spend their freshmen year taking the same/simialr basic sciences/math courses as the premeds/science majors). Another good thing about Northwestern is the quarter system in which one gets to take more classes and more courses are available per year; it’s a great system for people that want to explore more areas, especially for liberal arts students.</p>
<p>I would not consider Stanford engineering is flexible. It really depends on whether it is a real engineering major (Chem, electrical, mechanical, Bio, Civil etc) or something like engineering science, engineering physics etc which are not ABET type programs.</p>
<p>I looked into some of the requirements for ABET type programs and unless one gets to the program with some AP credits and skips the low end science/math courses, one barely has any time to take more than the stanford graduation requirements (GERs, writing, language etc) and engineering major requirements.</p>
<p>Harvey Mudd is the place to go for engineering and liberal arts. The school requires that students explore other disciplines and since it is part of the Claremont Consortium your student can take classes at any of the other sister campuses. Those schools are the Pomona College, Pitzer, Claremont McKenna and Scripps. Here is some info from wiki: [Claremont</a> Colleges - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claremont_Consortium]Claremont”>Claremont Colleges - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>The only problem is selectivity. Harvey Mudd is one of the most selective schools in the country and accepts only about 200 (or fewer) new students a year. For Harvey Mudd you need to be a MIT or Cal Tech level candidate. Cost is a factor too. With no financial aid it will set you back $55K annually.</p>
<p>A student attending Mudd is presumably strongly committed to science, engineering or math. Entering students at Harvey Mudd all take the same course work their first year and a half. The student then declares a major at that point, so a student would not have to be committed to engineering at the start. Many entering students do change from engineering to one of the sciences, or vice versa after their initial coursework. Then, as mentioned above, the student must fulfill non-science liberal arts requirements, also.</p>