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<p>If you want to graduate in engineering in 4 years it’s best to give yourself a full 4 years to do it, and apply for freshman admission to the College of Engineering. This isn’t just a question of declaring a major, it’s a question of which school or college within the university you’re admitted to and enrolled in. Michigan does admissions by school or college–you apply to LSA, or to the College of Engineering, or . . . Ross (business) is different because it’s a 3-year program, so many Ross BBA students start out in LSA or Engineering; but Ross also does a “pre-admission” program during the normal freshman admission cycle where they’ll “pre-admit” a certain number of entering freshmen, guaranteeing them a spot in the BBA class in their sophomore year provided they have a sufficiently strong freshman academic record.</p>
<p>It’s not just Michigan that does it this way. Many universities admit by school or college within the university. And because engineering is a demanding course of study with lots of prerequisites for more advanced courses, it’s hard to complete it in 4 years unless you get an early jump on it in your freshman year. You could also do this by taking all the engineering pre-reqs as an LSA freshman, but then you’d need to apply for an internal transfer to the College of Engineering. If you’re not sure, it seems to me it’s easier to start in engineering and transfer out if you later decide that it’s not for you, than to start in LSA and later transfer into engineering. The downside is that admission to Michigan engineering is highly competitive, more so than for LSA, so there’s a higher risk that by applying for admission to engineering, you won’t be admitted at all.</p>