I will be attending college Fall of 2017 and through my college search of competitive engineering schools, I often read about the drop out rates, the “weed out classes”, and students who were just not ready for college and engineering. In high school I’ve managed to take college level calculus, physics, chemistry, english, and writing courses through a community college and I find it incredibly easy. I know that this won’t be the case once I’m in an engineering program at a competitive school. What can I do to prepare myself?
I really want to do well in college and have a decent GPA. I worry about having that culture shock once I hit college so I really just want to enter as prepared for the difficulties I will face the best I can.
The simple fact that you are worried about it tells me that you will be OK. I’n not saying it will be easy. If you don’t have a fair amount of apprehension and feel like you already know everything - that’s a recipe for disaster. Just plan to work for it.
The best advice my son ever got was from @ucbalumnus and that was to get the syllabi and tests from the classes you will test out of and make sure you fully understand the material. You will be building on top of that and passing an AP exam, even with a 5, is not a guarantee that you know the material sufficiently enough to make it foundational. If you get it and do well on the tests, awesome. If you’re a little rusty, study up on the topics you’re soft on. If it’s way over your head, repeat it.
The next best advice was, believe it or not, from me. I helped him find strategies to become more efficient. Many smart students can brute force their way through HS. That means waiting until the end to do projects, staying up late and studying haphazardly, skipping problem sets all together, because they’re easy, etc. That won’t work in an engineering curriculum, especially if you want a life beyond your academics. It’s college…you do.
As for “weed out classes” there really aren’t such beasts by design. You find these primarily in state schools where they are mandated by their charter to admit lots of in state students, some of whom may not have the background to succeed with the rigors of engineering. No school starts students with the intention of failing any of them.
Experience with actual college courses (community college is college) will give you a head start on how college academics work and how much more you have to manage your class work on your own.
When choosing a university to matriculate to, be sure to consider whether you have been admitted directly to your major. If not, consider how difficult it will be to enter your desired major. Some universities (e.g. Texas A&M, Virginia Tech, Purdue, Minnesota, and probably others) admit to a pre-engineering status; students must later apply to their majors, which may require GPAs higher than 2.0. Some others (e.g. Washington, UIUC) admit some students to their majors, but give general admission to others; the latter must later apply into a competitive admission process to get into their majors.
The weed out classes deal is very true. In my experience, it happens all throughout your undergrad experience. Those courses don’t necessarily intend to give a certain number of failing grades, but they do have the intention of discouraging a certain number of people from continuing onto subsequent courses. Many engineering courses have the following intended grade distribution: 20-30% A, 30-40% B, rest C’s and below. For example, if you get a C in a course, you still pass, but you will likely fear that you would fail if you were to take the next level course. I have seen people being forced to switch majors their second semester of junior year, therefore delaying their major.
At umich, you just apply to the College of Engineering and every freshman comes in undeclared. You can only declare your major after completing certain coursework while in college and being in good academic standing. Those core courses that you take during your freshman year help you determine whether or not you belong in CoE. A good number of freshman will transfer to another unit within umich after their freshman year. Those students didn’t necessarily fail their core classes, but received grades low enough to discourage them from continuing in engineering. Your sophomore year is when you start taking courses that determine whether or not you are capable of succeeding in your intended major. Your upper level courses don’t get much better. They determine whether or not you would be capable of succeeding in specialty areas within your major.
The only exception is BME. That is the only engineering major that actually doesn’t try to weed out their students, provided that they are able to get through their CoE core classes. They know that the majority of them intend to go to medical school, so they are supporting their goals by helping them get a good GPA.
I’m going to respectfully disagree here, and the grounds are subtle, but they revolve around intent.
Many state schools, by state mandate, let anyone into their major of choice. There is a minimum competency one must obtain to be an engineer though. If a student does not have the horsepower to rise to that level, they don’t make it. In schools like that there’s a petty high attrition rate for engineering.
Contrast that to direct admit schools. I’ll use my son’s school Cal Poly because I know it the best, but most top private schools and some state schools follow this model. Students apply to a specific major at Poly (or college at other schools) and are ranked only against other students who apply to that major. The only students who get into ME have very high GPAs, test scores, and have almost certainly taken at least one if not two years of Calculus plus Calculus based Physics in high school.
It isn’t that the curricula are much different between the schools. It’s a matter of the Poly students having already been pre-sorted where as the Michigan students weren’t.
Weeding out implies that schools don’t want some students. The better way to think about it us that they want everyone to succeed, but can’t move you on if you don’t.
After all, engineering isn’t called pre-business for no reason at all.
No, no, no, no, and more no. This is so incorrect an multiple levels.
Schools are not trying to discourage a certain number of people from finishing their degree. In fact, there are usually negative consequences if a university or department have too much attrition. Universities and departments would generally be thrilled if every single student succeeded. Unfortunately, that is unrealistic. Students who don’t have the level of preparation or maturity for their courses often end up failing. This is especially prevalent at large state schools where they are essentially made to admit more borderline students than most private schools would. It is not because the schools want to cull a certain percentage of their students for some sadistic reason.
“Weeding” is typically not intentional. However, it can happen because:
a. Some students find engineering course work to be too difficult or less interesting than they initially thought and change out. Note that this can occur with other majors as well.
b. Some majors may not have sufficient capacity for all interested students. Schools that admit to first-year pre-engineering may have enough space in the engineering division for all students, but the amount of space in each major may not match the distribution of student first choices, so some students trying for more popular majors may have to settle for majors not their first choices. Non-engineering majors may also be at capacity and have selective admission as well.
Note that neither of the above necessarily mean lots of D or F grades in courses. C grades indicate passing the course well enough to take subsequent courses, but may pull down the GPA to the point that the student may not get into a selective or restricted major, and may discourage students who were used to getting A grades in high school.
Instead of weeding, certain major at CoE of UMich actually has a higher GPA requirement for declaring it. Other than that, if one’s GPA goes below 2.0, one would be out of CoE.
My advice to do well in engineering school is to work on and make sure your study skills are top notch.
Many students breeze thru high school, getting top grades, without having to really study much. I was one of those. Boy was college a shock. You need to stay on top of your classes. Getting the most out of lecture means understanding the previous lecture.
You also need to understand the basic principles behind the problems you work. Understanding the principles is necessary as one subject builds on another. Learning to do problems by rote just doesn’t cut it. It is the body of the engineering principles and understanding them is what engineering is all about.
Now I’ve got no idea what how your community college courses were taught, but if you made it through calc 2 and calculus based physics at a decent rigor, you’ll get through the weedouts just fine.
The best advice I can give is to really understand the material - not just how to do the problems, but the theory behind it and how it applies to other topics you’ve learned. I’ve always been a big time cookbook student - do steps X, Y, then Z to get your answer. It got me through high school no sweat, and it worked through the freshman weedouts, but as the difficulty in my major is ramping up and the work is becoming a lot more abstract I’m now getting my ass kicked. There just isn’t an easy step by step process to do things past a certain point. Now part of it’s that I’m a very concrete thinker with a pretty limited talent for the really theoretical parts of physics and math, but a lot of it’s just a crutch that’s been built up over the last five or six years. If you’re in a similar boat, work on breaking that right now.
I helped him find strategies to become more efficient. Many smart students can brute force their way through HS. That means waiting until the end to do projects, staying up late and studying haphazardly, skipping problem sets all together, because they’re easy, etc. That won’t work in an engineering curriculum, especially if you want a life beyond your academics. It’s college…you do.