<p>“Slacking off” is his fault. Maybe he isn’t cut out for college. A lot of people don’t do well with all the freedom that comes with leaving home for the first time. He should leave, get a job, go to a CC and maybe try again in a few years.</p>
<p>Thank you to all of you who have offered ideas for next steps. For those of you who are concerned that I am trying to solve his problems for him, rest assured that I have no intention of doing so. (And thank you, astromom, for understanding this!) He is on his own and is scheduling an appointment on his own to see what he can do.</p>
<p>He is willing to retake courses, etc. if it will allow him to get back on track and be admitted to the program.</p>
<p>My purpose in posting this thread was for my own information. If he asks me for advice, I’d like to be able to suggest something concrete that HE can try. I can’t fix his problems for him, and he wouldn’t learn anything if I tried to do so.</p>
<p>His overall gpa is 2.9, so that isn’t the problem. His tracking course gpa is 2.45. If he retakes two classes, he can bring up his tracking gpa. However, he dosn’t know if they’ll let him back into the program even if he does that. He’ll be talking to his advisor next week to find out.</p>
<p>And Halie, he is absolutely cut out for college. If you go back to the beginning of the thread I believe you will see that we have already established that this was his own fault. The point is not to rub it in. He is already beating himself up about it. We don’t need help in that department. This situation is an anomaly, not the norm for him.</p>
<p>He doesn’t sound to me like a person who isn’t cut out for college, but he may not be cut out to be an engineer if he’s not willing to do the very hard work in demanding courses that being an engineering major requires.</p>
<p>There may be related majors and fields that are better fits for him. Has he explored those possibilities yet?</p>
<p>The engineering program very likely has a written policy as to when students are dropped from the program and if and how they can be reinstated. If the policy is that once you’re out, you’re out, your S’s approach might have to be very different (and with less possibility of success) than if there is a clear path for reentry. If there is no chance to reenter, then transfer might be his only real alternative if he wants to graduate as an engineering major. But if there is a clearly articulated method to re-enter the program – which the departmental secretary or a person in the department’s admissions dept might be able to direct him to – it would be great if he could take a look and make sure he is prepared to take the necessary steps before he has his meetings with profs. etc.</p>
<p>Good luck!</p>
<p>The program isn’t going to re-admit him (if their policy is to allow re-admission at all) until they have concrete proof that he can handle the engineering and related classes. They won’t know that until he retakes those early classes and does ALOT better in them. I hope that they will allow him to do so. It will drag out college for an extra year, but if that’s what he wants, he may have to be willing to take an extra year. </p>
<p>It will definitely require your son to meet face to face with someone with some power and convince him or her that he can do better and what he is going to change to make things better. Someone has to go to bat for him. </p>
<p>Otherwise, transferring to another school which doesn’t have such an impacted engineering program, retaking classes and getting his GPA up is the way to go. Count it as a lesson learned.</p>
<p>I can see why engineering programs do what they do. Engineering classes only get harder after the first two years and if they think that you don’t have the tools to finish up a degree, it’s only right that they tell you now so that you can move on and finish up your degree in something else. </p>
<p>Has he looked at other “quasi-engineering” fields? I know people who majored in “industrial or manufacturing engineering.” Not as tough as engineering itself…they are happy in their jobs.</p>
<p>Two examples of engineering schools that do not try to “weed kids out” are Michigan Tech and the Missouri University of Science and Technology. There are more out there. Michigan Tech and MUST students graduate well prepared, and employers are eager to hire them. If your son finds out that he can’t get back into engineering at his current college and he doesn’t want to switch to, say, a physics major, he really might want to investigate transfer possibilities.</p>
<p>Yikes! Mumistheword, i would cross post this under engineering majors. You have received some constructive advice but the criticism is very unhelpful. Engineering is an extremely difficult major - a 2.45 is not unthinkable even for a student who never gets off track. I believe you will get some help from the engineers.</p>
<p>My S is an engineering major, doing well, but many friends - bright and motivated - could not keep the grades up. This is not an uncommon scenario.</p>
<p>If he really, really wants to be an engineer he must find a way to remedy the situation himself. As suggested, he should call the dean and/or any professor he related to and try to find out how to proceed. As you said, have him think like an engineer and plan a multiple option plan to solve this. If during this process he realizes he would prefer an engineering related field - well then, that’s good too. Better sooner than later. </p>
<p>Best of luck, you have my total sympathy and I’m sure it will work out - some lessons have a higher price than others but a lesson learned has tremendous value throughout life.</p>
<p>Following MidwestMom2kids advice, I believe Iowa State University would be the same. It is a beautiful campus, good engineering program, and I didn’t get the idea that there is the same weeding out as in more competitive engineering programs.</p>
<p>Mum, I’m so glad you posted this. As a parent of an aspiring engineering major, I am keeping a close eye on this thread. As mentioned above, engineering is a very tough major. I can totally see someone geting discouraged and leaving it because of not being able to keep up the grades.</p>
<p>Midwestmom’s post is worth noting. I know many adults who were mediocre students in high school, but went into engineering at a noncompetitive school, like a local small state college, and fluorished. They are out there now making very good salaries, and thumbing their noses at their former math teachers who told them they could never do it. </p>
<p>Give your son a big hug and a big pat on the back. Tell him how much you believe in him and that he can do it and that you are behind him all the way. Don’t put a timeline on this. If he needs to transfer and lose credits, but still, in the end, be able to obtain that engineering degree, twenty years from now, he’ll be glad he spent that extra year or two in school.</p>
<p>These are the two options that immediately come to mind:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Transfer to another college that doesn’t have special admission and retention requirements for engineering programs.</p></li>
<li><p>Major in one of the sciences that is closely related to engineering, then get his engineering degree in grad school. (I didn’t decide on engineering as a career until I had already enrolled at a college that doesn’t have an engineering program. I stacked my schedule with engineering-related courses, got my BS in math, then got a master’s in engineering two years later.)</p></li>
</ol>
<p>My S flunked out of his major. Actually, the college asked him to withdraw. He got the lowest grades (B-) in his major and was on track to get an F in the next course in the sequence.</p>
<p>He was completely shaken and wanted to quit college.</p>
<p>He’s at a very competitive school, and I thought he could easily transfer (especially since he’d withdrawn from the course he had difficulty with) to an easier school and still maintain the major (music) that he wanted.</p>
<p>Instead, he chose to change majors, and chose something he had never received less than a B+ in. That wasn’t the reason for the choice, but it did show he had greater aptitude.</p>
<p>He is very happy, and quite pleased things worked out this way. Nothing but the actual boot would have had him give up on a music major. He had to face that Music Theory was just too technical or sound based or whatever for his hardwiring.</p>
<p>He is now a Classics major doing well in history, lit and languages (Latin and Greek.)</p>
<p>So, make sure there isn’t anything else your son might like to do. They’re young. They don’t always know themselves.</p>
<p>His 2.9 indicates there are some things he is doing very well in.</p>
<p>If he does want to be an engineer, others have already given good advice.</p>
<p>BTW: I am not in the group who thinks this indicates anything about his overall character or college readiness.</p>
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<p>this. For anyone saying that he’s not ready for college or that he has no discipline, remember that a 2.45 is roughly half B’s and half C’s, a B-/C+ average. Sure that’s not exactly good, but remember in most engineering, math and science classes at *most *engineering schools (luckily not mine hehe) the average grade will be curved to a B-, a B if you’re lucky. So we are talking about someone slightly below the curve…not exactly a delinquent.
That being said, it may be advisable that your son reconsiders engineering. Engineering isn’t for everyone who likes it or is bright. Although I do not know your son’s school’s engineering department well, I’m guessing the logic behind the 2.5 barrier is that kids who do worse than that in the early courses almost always cannot compete at an acceptable level in the higher level courses. Even if he is able to retake those courses and get back into the major-it’s not like it’s going to become any easier and he likely will end up spending an extra year retaking the courses. Frankly, he would most likely be better off pursuing engineering for a masters degree and get a science, math, or even less engineering related undergraduate degree if he really wants to practice as an engineer. I know it’s harsh, but your son will probably save his time and your money if he comes to this realization quicker.
Though, I don’t know how capable your son is, so this is just what I would advise for most engineers who find themselves in this situation-so take it with a grain of salt.</p>
<p>While retaking classes and getting a higher GPA might help to get reinstated, I kind of think that mythmom’s post just above is worth thinking about. I was at my college reunion recently, and the Dean (of Arts and Sciences, who is a physicist I believe) was talking about how some people don’t do well in their chosen majors and how he thinks that they probably were majoring in the wrong thing. I wish someone would have talked like that to me way back when. I would have done great as a language major, and still gone to law school, instead of being a non stellar government major, which was frustrating. I still went on to law school, but the GPA wasn’t as good as it could have been in something else.</p>
<p>I realize that engineering is not the same as liberal arts, but the point the Dean made could still be applicable.</p>
<p>Mum, I think there are three possible outcomes here.
1- S pushes the magic button or says or does the right thing and gets reinstated to engineering at his current college.
2- S decides there are many things he loves and is good at and decides to major in one of them (biostatistics, applied math, physics, or whatever).
3- S takes time off, or transfers, or re-takes the troublesome classes, or whatever deal he can craft at his college and then a year from now gets evaluated by the department as to whether he can re-enter the original engineering program, stays where he is as a transfer, or has to eventually do number 2 as the default option.</p>
<p>You are asking us to help you with a strategy for number one. Without knowing which college your S is at, and without knowing the specifics of which courses he didn’t do well in and why, a lot of posters are trying to be helpful in thinking through options 2 and 3. I realize you are frustrated reading our responses… but since none of us have the magic, “presto chango, you’re back in engineering even though we told you that you were out” wand… unless your son knows what the magic is, maybe it’s worth thinking about numbers 2 and 3???</p>
<p>And bear in mind that number 3 has all sorts of incremental costs associated with it-- so if you can afford to spend another year or semester of tuition on engineering, then great. If not, have your son deal with that now- it won’t be cheaper to go back to his original college a year from now having done the makeup work someplace else.</p>
<p>And OP- I know you were being dramatic, but in conversations with your son, try to tamp down on the “nothing else fits him so well” kind of language re: engineering. That’s the kind of talk from parents that gets kids into all sorts of trouble. Maybe linguistics fits him even better? Maybe econometrics? Perhaps he’d find kindred spirits and even more challenging work in quantitative finance?</p>
<p>My point is… don’t continue to reinforce that it’s engineering or bust, especially if there are two semesters worth of facts on the ground that suggest that he could benefit from some exploration of other disciplines.</p>
<p>Sort of like reminding him that “she’s the only girl in the world for you” after his GF dumps him the day before the prom. Not really helpful, ya know?</p>
<p>Something to show your son. I played tennis and ping pong with this guy many years ago.</p>
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<p>A relative of mine just got straight As in Civil Eng. He was at a weeder eng. school, and never got the grades to enter the eng. school there. He transferred to a slightly less competitive eng. school that makes an effort at retention. He’ll be a CE soon. He’s working for the DOT this summer.</p>
<p>If engineering is your kid’s goal, then perhaps a new school is the best option. They may not differ by much, but that difference in schools can be critical. And frankly, some of the better eng. schools are more theoretical vrs. more practical, applied ‘lesser’ schools. Some employers prefer more practical hires. Good luck!</p>
<p>Is it possible that the “pre-req” courses are giving him trouble, not the engineering courses themselves? My dad did engineering as a non-traditional student (going to school part-time, working full-time in the field, married with two young children), so there are some differences, but this might apply somewhat. He struggled some in the pre-reqs (withdrew from and then retook trig and physics) but did extremely well in his engineering classes (something like a 3.7+ average), including traditionally difficult courses like differential equations. He said the engineering curriculum (or the way it was presented, I don’t know) just made a lot more sense and worked well with his innately mechanical nature.</p>
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<p>Great idea if engineering is still his desired major!</p>
<p>As an engineer I can tell you most engineering schools deliberately try to weed kids out those first two years. Engineering is a very rigorous major. You son’s experience is not unusual. I would be surprised if they let him back in the program. </p>
<p>That said, I would have him revisit exactly what about engineering he likes. Perhaps majoring in math or science will get him where he needs to go. And keep in mind that he can always go back after he gets another degree and get a masters in engineering. Yes he will have to take some ungrad courses before he can start on the grad courses, but it can be done and there are many schools that offer such a program. I had an undergrad in chemistry and went on to get my masters in eng later.</p>