<p>What are the best engineering programs within colleges that do not require application to the engineering-specific program? For example, if a highly qualified student is interested in engineering, but is not positive that he or she will pursue it as a major, what are some excellent programs that a student can opt into after acceptance? This could include an application process in college. Suggestions?</p>
<p>I have no idea. It seems kinda dumb to me that any of them require you to apply for a specific program at 17 or 18. They know you are likely to change your mind. It doesn’t matter if it is from one engineering to another. Or into or out of from a science. Go to the engineering board where there are mulitple lists of top colleges. We were recently discussing a school in Washington where they don’t have enough room in the computer science department to let in all their qualified students who were already at that university. I would avoid a school like that. There are other schools that don’t even let you pick an engineering major until you have completed your freshman year. Obviously if you change your mind and decide not to do engineering but would rather go for something else you still have your core courses done. Engineering is one of those things you are better off assuming you will go for and then change out than getting a slow start and taking 5 years. I will be interested to see which schools make it easier to change you major.</p>
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<p>However, it is the reality at most universities for popular majors, since most universities cannot afford to maintain spare capacity to accommodate changes in student interest in each major. They enroll the popular major to capacity, so there is little or no space to accommodate those changing major, who have to go through a competitive admissions process to change major to a popular major.</p>
<p>Take a look at the list of ASEE-approved schools [url=<a href=“http://profiles.asee.org/]here[/url”>http://profiles.asee.org/]here[/url</a>]. Two obvious choices would be MIT and Dartmouth. Swarthmore is another option, if the student might be interested in a strong LAC with an engineering program. Smith also, for women only. And I’d guess that Brown, Harvard and Stanford (and perhaps Cooper Union - not sure about that one) would also satisfy your requirements. Union College is another, not quite so rigorous, option. Just go through the ASEE list looking for schools not designated as “tech” schools and see what you come up with.</p>
<p>Another option is to pursue one of the many joint degree programs offered through Columbia, Dartmouth, Caltech, WashU, and RPI in conjunction with a variety of LAC’s. In 5 years, the student can obtain both a BA degree from the LAC and a BS or BE degree from the engineering school. For some of the programs, such as Columbia’s, admission is guaranteed if the student completes all prerequisites while at the LAC and maintains a certain GPA. For others, such as Dartmouth, admission is competitive (with only 1 of 2 applicants being admitted), so there’s no assurance of getting the engineering degree even if all prerequisites are satisfied. If you go to the websites of the engineering schools and do a search for “3-2” or “dual degree,” you should be able to find lists of the participating LAC’s.</p>
<p>The 3-2 programs have a reputation of being difficult to complete only because students often find themselves unwilling to leave their LAC at the end of their 3rd year to go off and do their two years at the engineering school. The Dartmouth program offers a different option: 2 years at the LAC, followed by junior year at Dartmouth, and then senior year back at the LAC, followed by the 5th year at Dartmouth. Allows participating students to complete their senior year at their LAC - no differently than if they had spent their junior year abroad.</p>
<p>For any of the joint programs, all the student has to do is gain admission to the LAC, complete the prerequisites for the joint program, and then apply to the program. So the decision whether or not to pursue engineering does not have to be made immediately.</p>
<p>If you plan to get an ABET accredited Sc.B in engineering in four years, these are the tippy top schools and Ivies that offer it AND don’t require that you apply to a separate school of engineering or do a 3-2 program: Stanford, MIT, Brown, Princeton, Harvard and Yale. Not sure about Caltech. I am going to respectfully disagree with dodgersmon about Dartmouth, as it does not offer a four year Sc.B in Engineering. This issue was a HUGE factor in my daughter’s ultimate college decision.</p>
<p>There are probably more of course.</p>
<p>I asked this too.</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/engineering-majors/1295004-schools-where-you-do-not-apply-directly-college-engineering.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/engineering-majors/1295004-schools-where-you-do-not-apply-directly-college-engineering.html</a></p>
<p>Would love to know more schools.</p>
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<p>If the student is willing risk a competitive admission process to declare the major, then most universities will work. Of course, the risk is that the student will not be admitted to the major and have to find some other major (or transfer).</p>
<p>Note, however, that engineering majors must take prerequisites like math and physics from the start to avoid delaying graduation. So a somewhat wavering freshman may want to start as an engineering major because s/he needs to follow the engineering major course plan anyway to keep the option open. If s/he chooses to go into some other major, the prerequisite courses are less likely to be a problem in most other majors (math and physics have the same math and physics prerequisite courses as engineering, while humanities and social studies usually have short prerequisite sequences that can be started late without delaying graduation).</p>
<p>However, applying to an engineering major may mean facing a higher level of selectivity as a freshman applicant.</p>
<p>If the intended “engineering” major is computer science, there may be some universities where a computer science major in the non-engineering division does not require competitive admission to declare. An example is the computer science major in Berkeley’s College of Letters and Science (it used to be popular enough before the tech bubble crash to require competitive admission to declare, although it no longer does).</p>
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It seems to be generally fairly easy to transfer from the ‘School of Engineering’ to other majors rather than vice-versa at a lot of colleges so even if they start out in engineering and then decide it’s not for them they usually don’t have an issue transferring out of it to other majors. One issue with a lot of engineering/computer science is that in order to complete the program in 4 years one must start right on the track of major courses due to the number of major courses and the sequential nature of many of them and some universities have higher qualification standards for the school of engineering as well hence requiring the person to apply up front.</p>
<p>In other words - I wouldn’t exclude colleges just because you have to apply to the School of Engineering up front if you think you might want engineering but are concerned you might change your mind since you can still switch out.</p>
<p>Edit - cross posted with UCBAlumnus but it looks like we’re saying about the same thing.</p>
<p>My son is struggling with this issue. The LACs seem easiest to move into the program once at the school. </p>
<p>Trinity U in San Antonio, TX is a school my son found that makes it easier.</p>
<p>USC in CA urges to apply to Engineering, but makes it easier than most to take courses outside of Engineering. We found the same with Tufts.</p>
<p>The biggest issue is the pace of Engineering requires freshmen take certain courses immediately to stay on track for graduation.</p>
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<p>Huh? Most freshmen in engineering majors take most of the courses from non-engineering departments – math, physics, possibly chemistry or other science, English composition, and breadth courses in humanities and social studies.</p>
<p>Gladgraddad: Agree about it USUALLY being easier to switch out of engineering school rather than switching in. But there are exceptions. Columbia is one exception where it is considered MORE difficult to transfer out of the engineering school than it is to transfer in. Not the only reason, but this was one of the reasons that my daughter turned down Columbia.</p>
<p>^^ Yes - ‘usually’ and ‘generally’ are key words when it comes to this and many other things about colleges. It’s best to check the details of the particular college to be certain if one is highly concerned.</p>
<p>Camathmom is correct about Dartmouth. Although a Dartmouth student can get a combined A.B./B.E. degree, it takes five years to complete the program, rather than four. Contrast with MIT, where a motivated student can complete both an engineering and another major, as well as a minor or two (or three), in only four years!</p>
<p>I really doubt “it is the reality at most schools.” Most implies more than 50%. Many schools have hugh lecture halls for freshman classes where they don’t care if there are 60 students or 150. Just because HYP like to control their “supply and demand” doesn’t mean the big state U’s follow suit.
Depending on where this student is I would recommend Ga Tech, Colorado School of Mines, Missouri S&T, VA Tech, UIUC and others where they have the size and flexiblity to roll with enrollment and meet customer (student) need. Like I said I think it is dumb not to. It shows very poor administration skills on the part of a large state university to not be able to add faculty as need where demand has been demonstrated. My goodness are they saying they don’t even consider their own PhD’s good enough to teach? That is pretty sad. If a student is capable of doing the work the university should make room for them.
Small schools and LAC with small engineering departments may not be able to manage, but I would never consider them the standard in engineering education.</p>
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<p>Capacity related controls are actually more common at the state universities. For example, all campuses in the California State University (CSU) system admit freshmen by major, other than the least popular campuses with no impacted majors. It is the wealthy well endowed private universities that can maintain extra unused capacity to accommodate those who change their major after enrolling.</p>
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<p>In engineering, universities have to compete with private industry to hire faculty members. Also, universities that grant tenure to faculty members may be reluctant to hire tenure track or tenured faculty in response to a short term increase in demand, because they won’t be able to shrink the department if demand declines. Then there is the fact that state universities keep getting their budgets cut, so that they are unlikely to have as much money to hire additional faculty even if they want to.</p>
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It’s not just a problem of getting profs to teach it, although that can be a problem in engineering where people qualified to teach can usually get high paying jobs in their field in private industry (as opposed to a prof of ancient dead languages or something) but they also would need facilities - classrooms, computer labs, etc. I don’t think they can ramp up and down significantly from one semester to the next.</p>