Looks like Ohio State will be direct admit this fall for certain majors as well.
" Direct-Enrolled Majors
Freshmen admitted to the Ohio State Columbus campus interested in the below programs will be directly enrolled in their major.
- Aviation*
- Chemical Engineering
- Civil Engineering
- Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Engineering Physics
- Environmental Engineering
- Food, Agricultural and Biological Engineering
- Industrial & Systems Engineering
- Materials Science and Engineering
- Welding Engineering
*Direct enrollment into the Aviation Engineering major is available. However, the Professional Pilot Certification (PPC) continues to have limited space and students will need to request joining the specialization separately from enrolling in the Aviation Engineering Major.
100% Direct Enrolled to Major
admission to major not required"
https://engineering.osu.edu/undergraduate/future-students/admissions
Page also listed “80% Pre-Majors Admitted to 1st Choice Major during admission-to-major process” for majors that require application to major; Aerospace Engineering,
Biomedical Engineering, Computer Science and Engineering (ENG) / Computer and Information Science (ASC) and Mechanical Engineering.
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I dug into the list on this thread earlier in the week at work and many links go to the transfer pages on the colleges sites, so it may be intended for a different use than we are applying.
I could not find a better list of direct admit programs. If anyone comes across one please post it. It is not comprehensive.
Some schools have a first year engineering program, but admission to major isn’t competitive, just declared. Even a few years ago when Ohio State had minimum gpas to meet for guaranteed admission to major, the ECE department had one of the lowest gpas to meet (a reflection of low demand compared to the CSE program whose gpa minimum kept rising as did demand) despite the overlap in curriculums.
Gatekeeping for OSU’s CSE and CS department has now moved to the incoming freshman admissions phase which requires CS or CSE majors to be listed on the initial application in order to pursue. However, ECE remains one of the majors that current engineering students can transfer into.
Nevertheless, all students will continue to take the same first year engineering classes. ECE students won’t have the task of applying to major.
CSE, CS students will need to submit an application to major form, usually spring of their freshman year after completing required courses. But since now only those who had been accepted as CS/CSE pre-majors will be able to apply I expect that nearly all will be moved into their major since students that would have put the department over capacity would have been denied admission into the pre-major as incoming freshman.
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Probably most colleges have easy declaration or changing into engineering majors with C grades and 2.0 GPA with needed prerequisites completed. Rich privates like MIT and moderately selective publics like UC Merced tend to fall into this category.
However, the exceptions tend to be the more popular and selective public flagship universities that are often the most targeted by engineering majors (though some other schools are in this category as well). Because of their large size with many students with enough academic strength to succeed in engineering majors (as opposed to deciding that engineering is too hard for them), they need to ration space in their engineering majors, either by direct admission (that can be more competitive than general admission to the school) or by secondary admission (when undeclared students apply to declare majors).
Here are some known methods:
- Easy declaration if admitted to engineering division:
- University of Michigan
- University of Pittsburgh
- University of Virginia
- Direct admission to major:
- Arizona State University
- California public universities (UCs and CSUs)
- UCSC requires keeping a college GPA > 2.0 (e.g. 2.8) to stay in major
- Georgia Institute of Technology
- University of Illinois - Urbana Champaign
- The Ohio State University – aerospace, biomedical, computer, and mechanical are admitted as pre-majors and must go through secondary admission later
- University of Texas - Austin
- University of Wisconsin - Madison – requires keeping a college GPA > 2.0 (varies by major) to stay in major
- Secondary admission if admitted to engineering division
- Cornell University – by college GPA, depends on major (generally in the 2.x range but > 2.0)
- University of Minnesota - Twin Cities – 3.2 college GPA automatic
- North Carolina State University
- Pennsylvania State University – by college GPA, depends on major
- Purdue University – 3.2 college GPA automatic
- Texas A&M University – 3.75 college GPA automatic
- Virginia Polytechnic and State University – 3.0 college GPA automatic
- University of Washington
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