In terms of liberal arts courses, ABET-accredited engineering bachelor’s degree programs will have about 25% of the curriculum in math and natural sciences, plus a humanities and social studies general education requirement. The latter varies by school, ranging from about 13% at Brown to about 25% at MIT.
For less competitive engineering, avoid schools where you start in a pre-engineering program and have to complete by college GPA to get into your major, or those where you must earn a college GPA significantly higher than 2.0 to stay in your major. Also, biomedical engineering tends to have more pre-meds competing for grades in it.
But it is one where frosh have to compete by college GPA to get into their majors. The risk may still be worth putting up with if other alternatives are much more expensive, though.
I know - it’s stupid & false advertising. They weight with a multiple of 0.2 & then added to the unweighted. But they don’t report the unweighted. Pretty much everything has been honors or AP except for math & music. The math is a factor of quality teachers & we decided she needs to know the math vs the honors star.
To give you an idea
Geometry - honors - B & B+
Alg 2- regular - A & B+
Pre Calc - regular - A-
It’s easy to find a study abroad program, but it’s much harder finding a decent engineering related program.
In general, most engineering programs are rigorous but not competitive. Earning the average GPA in the program (which is usually a bit better than a 3.0), is usually good enough to be competitive in the job market. Engineering students like to form study groups and in fact, that’s an important key to academic success. Whatever school she selects, make sure she builds up a circle of friends, by joining student groups, clubs, etc. She’ll have more fun, less stress and it will help with her academics.
You make no mention of desired distance from home. Check out Valparaiso University. It checks all your boxes. It was one of the few engineering programs we found that offered study abroad in engineering courses rather than just electives. Good shot at merit with that 32. Great environment for women engineers. Strong liberal arts. PM me if you have specific questions.
WPI is cooperative and offers liberal arts courses. All students receive a $5000 global scholarship to complete a project abroad. It’s in the northeast though. Your daughter may be eligible for merit.
Check out University of Dayton. Everyone we know who goes their just loves the school. Very supportive of women in engineering. Your daughter will definitely qualify for good merit with a 32 ACT. They are very upfront about merit awards. Strictly based on test scores.
Thanks Farmermom. We visited there this weekend. We liked it a lot. She is in their top merit category & would be invited for honors. The top merit is still only $22k/year. Do you know if they offer additional merit money?
I don’t know where you got the idea that engineering programs are difficult because the students are competitive with one another. Engineering programs are tough because so much challenging material has to be learned and the pace is unrelenting. Talk to engineering students at any place you visit and they will tell you they all work together to learn the material, cooperation is never an issue.
Because the 4 year program is strongly structured in engineering finding a study abroad option may be difficult except schools that operate their own overseas program and can make sure the classes integrate so it doesn’t take an extra year to graduate. Even then it will likely need to be done sophomore year before they enter the real stretch of engineering classes.
It may be difficult to find a program where if she can indulge her interest in taking language or a variety of liberal arts courses. There just isn’t room in the schedule at many/most colleges due to the ABET requirements. Here is a sample program for mechanical engineering. Take a look and try and see where those other classes would fit in. http://www.seasoasa.ucla.edu/curric-14-15/32curmech-14.html. The people I knew in engineering felt like they had almost no free classes to choose but of course that is just a data point from one college
Many LACs include liberal arts &/or EC opportunities for music, language, etc. Most catholic/jesuit/marianist require it as part of their curriculum. A lot of these colleges also offer service learning in other countries as well as study &/or work abroad. We are only considering LACs with true engineering, with ABET, no 3+2 programs.
I am not opposed to a 5 year plan - that’s a given if she co-ops as well.
So far our list is Santa Clara, Dayton, Purdue, Valpo, WPI. Looking for other suggestions along these lines anywhere in the country. I hope this board can help us with ideas outside of the midwest.
Exactly what I was going to post! We had to pull together to get through classes like dynamics, thermodynamics, and even physics. I was happy when my classmates made good grades!