I am the parent of a student who has accepted admission to Purdue’s Exploratory program, Honor’s college, after applying to Mechanical Engineering at Purdue. My son objective is to study ME. The dilemma is, should my son attend Purdue and take his chance on being able to secure acceptance as a sophomore to ME, or should he attend UC Irvine (in-state) where he was accepted to ME? Any thoughts on how to compare the two programs, as well as insights or experience in transferring/changing major to engineering at Purdue, would be greatly appreciated.
I can say a lot of great things about Purdue, however, I would take the bird in the hand and go UCI. It would be cheaper and he would definitely be able to study engineering. Purdue Engineering is very competitive and being a year behind is risky. They have a FIrst Year Enginnering program that must be completed and passed to be considered for their chosen major. Unless they can describe it differently to you I think he wouldn’t start in his major until his 3rd year and would take 5 years to complete it. Good luck.
For schools that have a specific number of students in a department, you generally have to wait until spme one leaves and then the department will pick the best candidate of those that have applied. Very risky for a lot of colleges. Not sure how Purdue is, but I’d go with the sure thing St UC Irvine.
Thanks for the thoughtful comments and good advice
Agree that there is a risk of not being accepted into the ME program. Why take that risk?
Looks like in-state UCI is less expensive and he is assured of his desired major there.
At Purdue, a student not in the engineering division must earn a 3.2 GPA in specified courses (but is not guaranteed to be able to get into those courses, since students already in the engineering division have priority) to get into the First Year Engineering program. Then, the student needs to finish more prerequisites and compete by GPA to get into his/her desired major. It says that many programs admit all students with >= 2.0, but some programs may be over critical capacity and have a GPA threshold higher than 3.2.
https://engineering.purdue.edu/ENE/Academics/FirstYear/CODO
https://engineering.purdue.edu/ENE/Academics/FirstYear/T2M