Yes, same for a new CHEM 120 in spring (all engineering and science required), 341 dropped out of 2562 students last Spring. Only 47 dropped a year before.
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When I went on the tour they said 80% were in first 3 choices and 90% were in first choice
Iâm not understanding that stat⊠if 90% get first choice, then 90% will also be in their top 3 choices. yes?
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The table in post #37 shows that 83% got their first choice.
But that includes all of the automatic entry (now 3.75 college GPA) students. For some majors (computer engineering, computer science, biomedical engineering), very few were admitted outside of automatic entry.
Also, some students whose first choices were originally highly competitive majors may not have listed them on their ETAM applications because they knew they would not get admitted (e.g. student with 3.0 college GPA who originally wanted computer science), so such âself-weedingâ would not be noticed in â83% got their first choice majorâ.
That table was 2020, perhaps @D_B2 meant 2021.
I think D_B2 meant 90% of those 80% (effectively 72%) got first choice in 2021, the rest (8%) get their second or third choice.
This year (2022), they let students pick up to 5 due to much higher competition.
Sorry yes to clarify @FriscoDad got it right! From the 2021 stats according to A&M during the tour last Friday 90% of eligible students were placed in top 2 engineering choices, 100% in top 3, and about 80% of eligible students were placed in their first choice major. Those were the data values from this past 2021 year.
@ucbalumnus it could be that they chose not to put the major that they wanted but we donât know how many chose to go that path so I canât speak on that but I agree that many of those majors are auto-admits which is why they have raised the threshold to 3.75 min for auto-admit. This allows for more students to be placed under holistic review which should hopefully help that. 
It does mean that more students will be trying to grade-grub their way to 3.75 (instead of 3.50), knowing that their chances to get into a popular major like computer engineering, computer science, or biomedical engineering in holistic review are slim. The implication of raising the auto-admit GPA to 3.75 is that 3.50 auto-admitted too many students to some majors (which admitted 0 in holistic review), so it will be even more difficult to get into those majors.
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It will be tougher but the difficulties will be growing slowly.
Raising the auto-admit GPA mainly is moving a lot of students from the âauto-entryâ column to âholisticâ column so the holistic column wonât look so ugly (that BMEN/CECN are 0 and CS is 9).
So this year a BMEN may still get in with a 3.6 (auto in 2020), but then of course it depends on which subject the student got a âBâ (holistic review). A âBâ in the elective class is not the same as a âBâ in Calculus.
TAMU has been cycling out (turnover) bottom quartile engineering students every year in the last decade, thatâs why McAllen/Galveston/TEAB/Academies are in place to replenish the seats.
I see it the opposite.
For example, the change means a student who got a 3.40 because they worked long hours as an undergraduate on a significant research team now has a shot at CS or BMEN. Before the change they were shut out without consideration.
This change will force students to work on being well rounded vs just grubbing for grades.
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If a student is sacrificing their GPA to be well-rounded, they might be hurting themselves. The main criteria for a student getting their first choice major, as it has been for years, is their GPA.
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I am not sure I understand where these numbers are coming from? I posted the Spring 2021 data above in I think post 33. It is possible these new numbers are from Fall 2021 or a combination of both. I do not have the Fall 2021 raw data but since the Fall is always a much smaller ETAM and usually worse numbers then Spring I really doubt that the numbers represent Fall. Spring 2021 ETAM shows that 57.6% of the kids got their first choice major in the Holistic first round, that is excluding auto entry kids. The combo of auto entry kids and the Holistic First round kids has 82.3% getting their first choice major. Also, students could always pick 5 majors for ETAM. Three are required but five has always been allowed. The disadvantage to that is any of the majors you selected you are required to accept. I think you are much better off choosing the minimum required of 3 and then looking at offers of other majors if you do not get one of the top 3, that way the choices given to you are optional. I would only select five if the student was equally happy with any of the five choices.
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I was responding to @D_B2 referring to what he was told in his late tour, which is likely 2021 dat and was not published yet.
For this spring, advisors requested students to try to fill out all 5 choices. There is a high chance that more auto choosing high demand majors such as CS than number of seats available (although this semester is not over yet).
@FriscoDad Those numbers just sound off to me, and they stopped publishing this data in 2017 when the data stopped looking very good.
I know at least as early as 2017 they were telling kids to pick 5 majors so they would have a better chance of getting into one but only required 3 and I do not think that has changed.
I am guessing that there will likely be a few holistic spots in even CS in the first round because 3.75 is a hard bar for the kids taking Calculus and Physics at TAMU in College Station, and no more pass fails for this ETAM class. If you look back at the data for 2018, 2019 in the computer science majors you will see that they took kids in the holistic first round but in 2020 with the advent of pass/fails the amount of kids accepted in those majors went from a total of 336 in Spring 2019 to 487 in Spring 2020. An additional 151 extra students would make for a huge issue making sure there was classroom space and teachers available. In 2021 there was 462 Auto Admits in the CS majors and that was with a 3.5 GPA auto admit threshold but that number when down a bit. I would expect with a 3.75 it will go down again.
Agree! And hope thatâs the case.
I think the worrisome (or good?) part is from the GDR data, this academic year (Fall 2021) there were a record breaking 468 Freshmen at 4.0 GPA, as compared to
Fall Freshmen - Number of 4.0 Engineering
2020 - 411
2019 - 321
2018 - 376
2017 - 286
2016 - 273
If ignoring the pandemic years, Fall 2021 the data is supposed to drop back to pre-pandemic since there was no more pass/fail. The results largely due to UT moving a lot of top students to TAMU. The rise of auto-admit GPA will likely stay.
As mentioned earlier it wonât be that dramatic, the process just move a lot of numbers from âautoâ to âholisticâ.
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It will be more difficult as more will go to auto admits but the number of spots are increasing for CS as they now offer that in Galveston as well if you want to take it there
@FriscoDad So that 2021 Fall GDR data is a little misleading in that it includes both Freshman who started TAMU in the fall of 2021 and students who started earlier and are still considered U1 because of credit hours achieved. The kids that are freshman that started in Fall of 2021 will only have one grading semester. In Fall of 2021 there were 468 kids who had a cumulative GPA of 4.0 out of a total of 2894 freshman that semester. But, there were 574 freshman kids who had a 4.0 for the semester of Fall 2021 out of 2894. This implies that there were a lot of kids included in that number who had grades from the previous pandemic semesters.
For Fall 2020 there was 411 out of 2412 with a cumulative GPA of 4.0, and 461/2412 term GPA Fall 2020 semester. So that means 17% of the freshman had a 4.0 cumulative GPA in 2020 and 16% of freshman had a 4.0 cumulative GPA in 2021, actually went down a percent. Similarly for the GPA term data, there were 19.1% in 2020 and 19.8% in 2021, almost the same percent here.
The data comes from tours that I took last week with both TAMU and TAMUG, the data was not on their website as far as I know.
@D_B2 Yes, they do not post this data anymore. The only way to get is to do freedom of information act requests. What they present now never seems to match the actual data as far as I have seen but there is all sorts of ways to present statistics to make them look better.
True! Iâm hopeful that raising the auto-admit to 3.75 will help more students get into their preferred major, however, I am an accepted student for class of 2026 so I donât have the years worth of experience as others do, just what has been put into these forums and tours. Regardless I think that everything will end up working out for the best
@D_B2 A 3.75 is very doable if you work hard; I am sure youâll do great!
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