<p>Regarding the toaster, she's a she, and girls are subtly discouraged from tinkering like that - maybe not by you, her parents, but by society. It doesn't preclude eventually becoming an engineering major. And ending up with Cs doesn't either.</p>
<p>originaloog, what is your opinion of the 'tech' 4 year degrees that some schools offer? Becoming a technician instead of an engineer is certainly an alternative. I wonder what engineering profs think?</p>
<p>I have a similar situation with our daughter in that she is good in math but she doesn't love it the way that our son does. I had hoped that she would have some interest in a CS major but I think that she would have a very rough time with freshman physics. I talked to her last night about the CIS major and she showed a fair amount of interest in it. She has expressed an interest in psychology, sociology, literature, etc. but has asked the question: why does the stuff that I'm interested in not pay well?</p>
<p>Neonzeus
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IntheBiz- We have a driver for the 4-yr goal, since her parent will be in a nursing home for 2-3 years before dying.
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<p>I'm so sorry about your spouse and the financial issues related to your children's education. I wish your family all the best.</p>
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<blockquote> <p>Here is a link to a nice website, Sloan Career Cornerstone, which contains lots of info relating to careers in engineering, technology, medicine, math, computer, and science.<<</p> </blockquote>
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<p>Just perused the website and I must agree--THIS IS A GREAT WEBSITE for anyone interested in a math/science career.</p>
<p>I admit that I only looked at the physics subsection in detail, but what I saw comported well with the experience of my D, a just graduated physics major.</p>
<p>Regarding 529 and medical dependency care: The rules and conditions for 529 is fairly straight forward. I'd seek other legal and tax advice.</p>
<p>NeonZeus - I (and the dozen other engineers in our extended family) would like to second the many opinions expressed by previous posters. Engineering Majors are HARD. My niece is in Engineering at UIChampaign, and it's starting to look like she'll spend seven years, including one year of study abroad and one half-year internship. Women engineers are in great demand for sure, but your D might find Accounting/Auditing, Statistics, Actuarial, Pharmacy, etc. more to her liking. Regardless of what she eventually decides, it does seem that Calc makes more sense than Trig for your D. Good luck to both of you!</p>
<p>I do want to reiterate that not every girl who goes into engineering is a tinkerer. My niece has always been good at math and science and is quite a good artist. She got interested in engineering specifically when my sister-in-law bought some land and decided to develop it. My niece went to all the meetings about making roads, and dealing with waste water and run-off and she is now completely hooked. </p>
<p>I don't think it will hurt for your daughter to start off in engineering if she thinks it might be interesting, but there are many, many other career possibilities for the math and science minded. And I agree with others, protest that Trig placement - an A student belongs in pre-Calc.</p>
<p>NewHope33 -- She, of course, thinks she can handle it. That's the problem. I should probably start a new thread for parents who suspect their kid is going down a path that is not a good fit. With the info I've rec'd here, I will be able to gently raise some concerns that she might actually consider.</p>
<p>LongPrime -- Unfortunately, I did get 2nd and then 3rd opinions from elder lawyers. I hold the accounts, and our kids are beneficiaries. The fact that I am the owner of the accounts is sufficient control to make them reachable assets. It was explained to me that the regs were intended to prevent individuals from hiding assets from Medicare in revocable trust accounts for family members. If I were to transfer ownership of the accounts, I'd fall into our state's look-back period. With the caveat that I am not providing legal or accounting advice to anyone else (I do practice law but not in this field), I was informed that my 529 accounts are revocable trusts since it is cancelable by the owner. It may be possible to set up 529 accounts so that they are not at risk but we never contemplated finding ourselves in such unusual circumstances -- and it's too late now.</p>
<p>Personally I think engineering is one major where the University name on the undergrad degree does not mean that much. Engineering hiring is very regional so I would choose a school near where I might want to live. Universities build relationships with local companies and work together with internships.</p>
<p>^ Very true. My husband is an engineer and his company hires primarily from our hometown college. </p>
<p>By the way, would she consider at all Computer Science? That is my carrier and I love it. There is no math reguirement for it at all beyond general education, and it is not academically demanding like Engineering or Nursing. Math was my favorite and strongest subject, I look at it now as a primary tool to develop logical analytical thinking which is the most important skill in my profession, but I do not need to use it at all.</p>
<p>CS programs do vary widely but a traditional program typically includes:</p>
<p>Calc I, II, III
Discrete Structures (sometimes one semester, sometimes two)
Mathematical Statistics</p>
<p>For science/hardware:</p>
<p>Physics I, II, Logic Design, Computer Organization/Assembler, other general science courses.</p>
<p>If you're going into graphics, Linear Algebra I/II might be a requirement.</p>
<p>If you're going into security, you might want to take Number Theory and Abstract Algebra.</p>
<p>I have seen CS programs with much lower requirements in math, and that have more of a tools focus. Or programs that don't have the physics and logic design requirements focusing more on software aspects of computer science. My personal opinion is that these majors should go by other names. But CS has a certain familiarity to employers and maybe that's why it's used.</p>
<p>neonzeus:</p>
<p>'Engineering' is a broad term and generally includes diverse areas such as ME, EE, ChemE, BioE, Computer Science and CSE, StructuralE, CivilE, etc. I think your D needs to think about what she could see herself doing. Does she see herself designing bridges, designing electronic circuits, working at the chemical engineering level, doing bio engineering, or perhaps designing software applications/solutions and writing programs?</p>
<p>Both of my Ds went the route of computer science which is in the school of engineering at their respective universities. I have one D who just graduated with a CS degree and another in the middle of a CS degree. They like the CS field but neither one would even consider ME, EE, etc. but that's just them.</p>
<p>I can tell you that the CS major at their respective universities is indeed rigorous and difficult and requires a lot of work. On top of the usual classes which includes computer science, higher math, physics, humanities, etc. they can typically have homework in the CS class that could require 25-35 hours per week and more of writing programs including sometimes in the CS lab (sometimes on their laptop or remote access).</p>
<p>Some engineering majors have to come to terms with working these huge hours on their academics while their humanities roommates are doing what they can to fill up all the extra time they have on their hands.</p>
<p>At their colleges there's a roughly 40% attrition rate of people who start out in various engineering fields and end up switching out to a non-engineering major for a variety of reasons.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, despite the work required, neither D wanted to switch majors and have been presented with some great opportunities.</p>
<p>I don't like the idea of over-analyzing this. It sounds as if your D might do fine depending on how motivated she is to achieve the engineering degree (in a particular discipline), how much she's willing to work at it, and the difficulty/competetiveness of the college she attends. As a previous poster suggested, if she decides she still wants to pursue a facet of engineering, then she should go ahead and do it and realize that she's somewhat 'testing the waters' and might switch to a non-engineering major if she finds it's not for her. With this in mind, she might want to make certain to select a college that offers plenty of other major choices besides engineering so it'll be easier for her to find what she likes should she choose to switch.</p>
<p>My step-grandson is about to graduate from his state flagship -- 6 months early! - in Civil Engineering.</p>
<p>He was a B student at a decidely mediocre high school. His SATs were just around 1000/1600 (I've forgotten the exact scores). He had not had the type of math needed to prepare him for the typical math curriculum in Engineering. The U had a math sequence for students like him.</p>
<p>We really wondered how he would fare. In fact, we wondered if he'd be accepted because his scores were low. But he had taken a gap year (not planned; fell through the cracks) and maybe the school saw something in him beyond the scores and lackluster hs record.</p>
<p>He was on Dean's List his very first term. Although we haven't asked about his grades since then, he is thriving.</p>
<p>I can't report on his career outcome, as he is not there yet. His school (UNH) is highly respected regionally in Engineering.</p>
<p>I'm not disagreeing at all with other posters. In fact, based on my own S's experience at a top U in Engineering (yes! I have an S and a step-grandS in college simultaneously!), I'd lean toward endorsing all of what has been said above about how difficult it might be for the OP's D, and how Engineering might not be a match.</p>
<p>Just showing that there is another world out there. I don't see why she couldn't try Engineering - if she wants - just so long as she chooses a school that has other majors of interest to her (which any state U would, I'm sure). And maybe thinks in advance about what else might interest her, so she doesn't find a mid-course correction wrenching... if she does decide to try the Engineering.</p>
<p>I'm all for her giving engineering a go. One thing I would mention when she gets to college...she may want to start at Calc 1 at college, even if she takes AP Calc in high school. It could give her a little confidence to start with something she knows a little. </p>
<p>And don't worry, the college math class will zip along and will be challenging.</p>
<p>treetopleaf, I am not sure what you mean by a 4 year tech degree. I know some colleges offer a general engineering degree which is not something I am too fond of but then I am a bit of an old foggy. All areas of engineering have many specialties for student to choose to concentrate on. I was a civil engineering major and I could have chosen a concentration in sturctural, transprotation, traffic, soils, construction management, construction materials, fluid mechanics, hydrology, engineering economics, groundwater pollution, geodetics, or environmental engineering.</p>
<p>If I had chosen a course in general engineering it would not have been possible to acquire a concentration in fluid mechanics which involved several grad level courses my senior year. I believe that it was this concentration which gave me an advantage in my admission into Cornell U's graduate program.</p>
<p>In applying to engineering colleges do check to see that they are ABET certified in her area of interest. Most federal and many state job opening specify this as a requirement. Almost all engineering college do have this certification but it never hurts to check.</p>
<p>[url=<a href="http://www.abet.org/ABETWebsite.asp#state%5DABET%5B/url">http://www.abet.org/ABETWebsite.asp#state]ABET[/url</a>]</p>
<p>Here are three links to tech programs in Illinois:</p>
<p>Department</a> of Technology: Illinois State University
Undergraduate</a> Programs - NIU - Department of Technology
SIUC</a> | College of Engineering | Department of Technology</p>
<p>I have a cousin who became a construction management worker via Air Force training, and he confirmed that today you'd typically need a Construction Management degree to gain entry into his field.</p>
<p>I know that not so long ago technicians either trained within a company or got a tech school 2 year degree before becoming technicians. I wonder if these offerings are an upgrade from the 2 year programs? For someone with technical aptitude but not heavy duty math aptitude, these might be alternative to a full engineering degree. I just wondered what engineering professors think about them (or do they think about them?).</p>
<p>You all are being way too discouraging!
She can be an engineer if she wants to. Don't point her to engineering tech.</p>
<p>My rising HS freshman son says he wants to be an engineer and I was chatting with a friend and her husband about "It seems odd that he wants to be an engineer - he never played with Legos" and the husband, a Ph.D. ChemE, said he never played with Legos either. My son did spend hours on an assignment about roller coasters and wrote pages on acceleration systems, braking options, forces, so I guess he does have an engineering bent to him. </p>
<p>The two pieces of advice I would offer are make sure she does not go to a "weed'em out" school where many of the kids who start out in engineering do not continue. The second is to make sure that the college offers some other options that she is interested in, outside of engineering.</p>
<p>A number of us parents have commented on the entertaining nature of the summer "Explosives Camp" for kids between junior and senior year at the University of Missouri at Rolla, which has changed its name to Missouri Institute of Technology... What I am leading into is</p>
<p>1) See if she would like to go to a weekend or week long summer program next summer, a place where you learn about engineering. Since she is a woman, there are many, and many of them are free or subsidized. </p>
<p>2) Look into schools that are not too selective but have good track records in enginnering. BAsed on what I have read, I think Missouri Institute of Technology is one of them. I think she would do fine as an engineering student there. When I was in HS, I spent a (free) week at a Women in Engineering workshop at Michigan Technologic University (MTU) in Houghton/Hancock Michigan. (It was great, but I wanted to major in biology as an undergrad.) I think she would do fine as an engineering student there. She probably shouldn't go to a school where her stats are in the bottom half of the stats for the engineering students. CC folks tend to be heavily oriented toward the top schools. You don't want her to happen to get into a school that was a reach for her and then get eaten alive once she is there.</p>
<p>My two cents worth.</p>
<p>^ I agree that she should try engineering, and that people are being a little too discouraging, including the school people that placed her into trig. I should have made that more clear before asking about the tech programs.</p>
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The second is to make sure that the college offers some other options that she is interested in, outside of engineering.
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<p>This is why I'm asking about tech programs. Usually people offer up business as an alternative, but if someone has tech ability, why not pursue it?</p>
<p>My nephew is succeeding at SIUC in CE, but I doubt that he'd be doing as well at UIUC or a similarly competitive school. So in answer to the OP's original question - would going to a somewhat less competitive school make engineering possible for the less-than-perfect student, the answer is yes. IMO.</p>
<p>U Missouri at Rolla has had a top ranked program in engineering, particularly Mechanical, for several decades. In no way would I describe their program as "not too selective"; they are a powerhouse in both applied and theoretical research, and although I haven't looked at the admissions stats (for engineering, not the general U) the quality of their grads is superb.</p>
<p>For a kid who is confident in their interests in science and math (whether they end up in engineering or not) and is not discouraged but a super heavy duty workload, a school like this would be a phenomenal challenge. And if she ended up a chem major or statistics major or whatever-- many career options. For a kid who is either ambivalent about science and math, or not looking for a chock-a-block tough curriculum (at least according to the parents assessment) I think Rolla would be a poor choice. </p>
<p>Agree that one of the summer exploration type programs is a great idea.</p>