I am currently at a community college in California, and am sure I will get into UC Davis for Electrical Engineering. After that, I will apply to A&M for graduate school.
How competitive is A&M’s engineering graduate program? For undergrad students, I do hear that A&M’s acceptance rate is much higher than a school of comparable ranking in California; it seems like getting into Texas schools (except maybe Rice) is easier than California. But what about for grad school? Is getting into grad school at A&M harder/easier than, say, UC Irvine/Davis/San Diego/Davis’ grad schools?
Thus another question arises: Would it be easier to be accepted as a undergrad community college transfer to A&M or as a graduate from UC Davis looking to get into A&M’s grad school? I want to desparately get out of overpriced California; which should I do?
@HoustonOrBust - I will try to respond generally to your two posts. For several reasons, I am not sure that you can meaningful compare admission rates to TAMU and California engineering schools. First, these statistics are for freshman admissions, not for transfer students. I am not aware of any comparable statistics for transfer students. Second, transferring from a community college to an in-state university is typically much easier than transferring to an out-of-state university. Third, TAMU’s engineering admission process has been significantly changed. Until the current class, any graduate of a Texas University in the top 10% of his/her class could be direct admitted into engineering, even with moderate test scores. Starting with admissions for this class, the process has changed. Top 10% graduation still guarantees (per State law) TAMU admission, but there is a separate admission review for engineering. We do not have seen data yet, but I expect that average test scores will rise significantly for this and future TAMU engineering classes.
My son will be a junior this year (OOS Arizona), majoring in aerospace engineering, so I have been reading this board for three years now. The focus is almost exclusively on freshman admissions. Typically, there is very little response to posts concerning transfers and even less concerning graduate schools, so I don’t know how much specific information you will receive.
It’s also hard for me to believe you will save any money going to college in Texas and paying OOS tution, versus staying in California and paying in-state tuition. In addition to UC Davis, have you looked at Cal Poly San Louis Obispo? That’s a very good engineering school.
I have known guys who have transferred from community colleges to TAMU engineering, and they all had 4.0 GPA. They told me many of their friends who had high GPAs got rejected, so it is highly competitive for CC transfers especially. I also know you need at least a 3.5 to even be considered for transfer admission. I say if you’re already accepted to UC Davis, then save money by paying in state, then come over to TAMU, I think you’ll have a very good chance coming in as a grad with your undergraduate from UC Davis. TAMU engineering program is higher ranked than any of the UCs (with the exception of Berkeley) according to US News and World Report, so I would assume it is actually harder to get into for grad school than the other UCs (except Berkeley). However, I have talked to an ECEN departmental director, and he told me that there is a shortage of US grad students as most of their grad students are international, and some grants to students in the grad school require US citizenship. I hope this information helps. I read in your other post that you are in the Cruz crew, as am I buddy haha, make sure to come over here for grad school!
KievanRus,
Thanks for letting me know how competitive it is. I’ve heard the same for UCLA, UCSB, and CalPoly SLO over in California, too.
What draws me to Texas (Houston, esp,) is their frugal, practical, down-to-earth atmosphere (even compared to Dallas). California’s perfectionism (I grew up in Irvine, CA–it’s like Los Angeles’ version of Sugar Land) makes everything harder than it needs to be.
For example, at UC Davis, you get NO course credit for scoring a ‘5’ on the AP C Electricity and Magnetism exam. You only get credit for AP C’s Mechanics. Contrast this to A&M, where even a ‘3’ on the Electricity and Magnetism exam will get you credit.
Also, I can see that TAMU could be competitive, but I really doubt if it’s as competitive as most UCs. Case in Point: my friend applied to UCSB (undeclared) and UT Austin (for CompSci) straight out of high school, and was rejected in UCSB but accepted to UT Austin. UT Austin already has a much lower acceptance rate than A&M.
Furthermore, IF A&M is actually harder to get into grad school than UC Davis, do I really have a good chance?
Beaudreau,
Sure, out of state tuition will be expensive. But I’m applying to see if they give me a $1000 or more scholarship, in which case I heard I can apply for a out-of-state tuition waiver.
Assuming you do get the $1000 or more scholarship, how hard is it to get the waiver?
Yes, I do know A&M’s in College Station. But it’s only an hour from Cypress. Close enough.