Hi all,
So this is quite a story so listen up. So I’m going into my sophomore year at Rowan and I applied to the school undecided. The reason I did was because I was interested in Civil Engineering and my couselor recommended I apply undecided to have a better chance of being accepted into the school and just switch into the Civil Engineering major. Unknown to me and not told by my advisor was that Engineering is a closed major and I would have to take certain courses to get accepted. In the end I had a very stressful year academically and ultimately did not get accepted. So now my options are to retake basically all the courses from last year and re-apply for Civil Engineering and potentially risk both not doing perfect in those classes, and not being accepted, as well as another year of school; or switch into Physics (because I do haves slight interest in that as well); or into this major they recommended to me called ‘Planning’. With Planning I looked into it but I’m not sure if I’ll both enjoy it and find success with it later in life. So I need some advise: should I retry for Engineering again and take the risk of not getting accepted again and wasting another year. Or go for physics or planning and graduate on time and not spend as much more money? What do you all think how I should go about this?
Thank you all.
Oh, my goodness. Either your counselor is a clown, or you’re a bad listener.
The engineering students I know, and I know many, weren’t undecided. They knew that they wanted to be engineers and got the grades and coursework and SATs to get there before applying. And then, they did their homework on their college search. Because being an engineer was a Need and they didn’t know what else they would do.
If you weren’t in the top of your HS class and you didn’t get 1300+ combined on the reading & math (higher in math) on your SATs, you were not a good candidate to get into the engineering college. You didn’t provide that info, but I’m guessing that if a counselor told you to mark “undecided” just to get into the college, that tells me that you weren’t close. And, if you had a “stressful year academically” while taking freshman general ed classes, you are further away now than you were then. It’s probably unattainable at this point, especially considering that the competition is getting tougher as word about Rowan Engineering has gotten around. In addition, the coursework is pretty well set from the start, with general ed requirements built-in to the engineering curriculum.
Sophomore engineering (especially 2nd semester) is a test. Profs really lay down the work to weed out the ones who aren’t that serious about it. They intentionally stress you out. Gets the class size more manageable and makes room for the next group.
Your faculty advisor presented better alternatives, in a less harsh way than I did. You are ultimately the decision maker. Take control of your life and your own future. Find a passion and bet on yourself to win. But remember the Hand Formula: The Precautions (and Effort) you take must be equal to or greater than the Chance of Failure times the Gravity of that Failure, or else it is reckless.
Good luck.