Hello everyone,
I have a question that’s been troubling me for a while: a lot of my friends, as well as a UT Admission counselor at a prospective students presentation stated that for those interested in Cockrell School of Engineering, both their listed majors on ApplyTexas should be engineering majors, and for Natural Sciences, both majors should be Natural Sciences. This is proving to be a conflict for me, however, because after electrical/computer engineering, I’m most interested in computer science, yet all advice I’ve heard says to either choose another engineering major or another science major.
Does anyone know to what extent this advice is true, or were in the same situation? If I apply for engineering as well as computer science, will that put me at a disadvantage because both schools will think I don’t have a full passion for their respective majors? I truly am interested in working with computers, but the two majors fall into such different schools…
In addition, I’m not auto admit (top 9%), so because both majors are along similar lines of interest, which school do you think I have a better chance at?
Any advice is appreciated - thanks!
Last year, the admittance process for engineering/CS did not consider a secondary major. If you did not get into your primary major, you were placed in a general pool. Between the 2 majors, I believe CE has the less competition. Make sure you apply to other schools as a safety.
@GTAustin Thanks for the reply! Could you clarify what you mean when you say they did not consider a secondary major? What is the general pool? I’ve tried looking on their website but no luck. Also, did you mean that Electrical and Computer Engineering has less competition, or did you mean to type CS?
Last year if you were admitted to UT and you did not get your first major, at least for engineering and CS, they did not consider a second major. You just got notice that you did not get into your engineering/cs major and could pick an open major on a certain day at a certain time. Within 5 minutes all openings to math/physics and anything related to engineering and CS were full. Another friend of my DD got notice that he did not get into Chemical Engineering but could enroll in education, child development or some other totally nonrelated major.
This is in response to your question about applying to 2 majors in different colleges, it did not matter, they only considered your top choice. I don’t know if this is policy with UT but I think that all slots for engineering and CS were filled with students requesting them as their first choice leaving no spots for second choice candidates.
First, I think it is easier to get into ECE versus CS. That is only based on my reading of who was accepted or rejected last year. Many students with high scores/GPA did not make it into CS but I did not read the same stories for ECE. I will say I have known good students that have made it into both programs.
I have 2 DDs, one in CS and one in ECE, neither at UT. They are different majors and you need to decide which one you want to pursue. My oldest daughter who is an ECE major is taking all her electives in CS and has done both types of work. I don’t know if that is possible at UT because of CS being overcrowded.
My advice is to apply to the major that you actually want to do and go for it. As far as a second major, if you apply for CS you could apply for math as the second major and possibly get it but do you want to be a math major. So, my second piece of advice is to apply to other schools that you would like to go to and are a safety.
@GTAustin I understand now, thank you for the clarification! I never realized this was their process. And yes, I’m applying to other matches and safeties too. Thanks for the input!
That may not be their official process but that was the way it worked last year. Good luck to you!
Oh alright, thanks so much for clarifying!