These are generally mutually exclusive unless they switch early. Just because they can switch, doesn’t mean that they are going to get out in 4 years.
It depends on what the “other fields” are. If the “other fields” are those with substantial overlap in frosh/soph courses (e.g. physics, math, chemistry, maybe computer science), then following a course plan for an engineering major and those “other fields” can be done fairly easily.
If the “other fields” are those with non-overlapping courses (e.g. most social science, humanities, and arts subjects, biology to some extent, and some other pre-professional fields in business, agriculture, health professions, etc.), then it can depend on the volume of such non-overlapping courses. For those with relatively few frosh/soph courses (particularly without strict prerequisite sequencing, like history), and/or whose courses can fulfill humanities or social science general education for engineering majors, it may not be difficult. But for those with higher volumes of non-overlapping courses, like arts and other pre-professional fields, it may be more difficult.
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Ouch that’s tough, hard for hs kids to map out their courses in prep for what college might look like. They’re understandably just trying to get through hs; those who have it together are planning courses to help them get into college. Tough to imagine they should also plan their hs courses to help them get through college.
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I think kids (especially California kids) might appreciate a college rating system based solely on the quality of nearby boba tea.
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There are two issues:
- Is the desired engineering major “full”?
- Has the student been following the prerequisite sequencing up to the point of changing into the engineering major?
These are actually two mostly-separate issues. Often, it is public universities at the selectivity level of popular state flagships that have more students interested in engineering majors than they have capacity for. They also often enroll to maximum capacity so as not to “waste” capacity. Hence #1. Note that wealthier private universities can afford to maintain reserve capacity to allow easy changing of majors (though not all private universities are wealthy). Also, smaller schools may be limited enough in overall enrollment so that any individual department is unlikely to go over capacity. In addition, less selective universities tend not to have as many students interested in and capable of handling the rigor of engineering majors (examples would be some less selective CSUs, like CSUC, CSUN, and SFSU, where engineering majors are not designated as “impacted”).
For #2, that is mainly on the student to choose frosh/soph course work to allow entrance to any major of interest without being behind. This is not specific to engineering majors, but can be more of an issue for engineering majors due to the higher volume of required courses and longer prerequisite sequences. However, some other majors like arts, sciences, and other pre-professional majors, may also have these characteristics.
The two issues are only really connected if a non-engineering student wants to take an engineering-specific course but cannot get into it because it is full of engineering majors who need that course.
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In general, it should be possible to get through most BA/BS majors at most colleges in 8 semesters (or 12 quarters) without any AP or college credit going in (but also requiring not being in remedial courses, meaning ready for regular level English composition, single variable calculus, and college science courses as needed for engineering majors). However, engineering majors at some colleges may require slight overload schedules (e.g. 17-18 credits instead of 15-16 credits in a semester or quarter).
If the student has a good high school level English background, math through precalculus, and high school physics and chemistry, the student should be ready for studying engineering in college. AP or college credit in English and calculus (and sometimes physics with calculus and/or chemistry) can be helpful for advanced placement, which can free up schedule space for additional free electives later.
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And if you aren’t sure, are you going to apply to a super competitive school that makes you declare in your app, and take the risk of not being accepted, or apply to a regular stem major and give up the chance?
I guess you apply to a school that doesn’t require you to declare, but then many of those are expensive privates.
I think of Olin - which looks like an awesome school, but you have to be all in on engineering.
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Then you must check out 6 places to get your boba tea fix near ASU 
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Thank you both. It’s definitely sinking in what you’ve been saying all along – in addition to strategically selecting intended majors when applying to UC/CSU’s, D will want to start in a major, or at least a courseload, that has a lot of overlap with any other more prerequisite heavy majors she’s interested in for whatever school she attends. That may be a good thing for a kid who is so undecided, giving her some outside structure to get her started.
I noticed WPI gives guidance for undecided first years aligned with what you’re saying, which is great to see: https://fye.wpi.edu/course-registration/a-and-b-term-course-registration/undecided/
Thanks again!
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Do you (or anyone else here) know if other state schools have the same issues with impacted majors that we have with UC/CSUs?
These are some of the schools recommended for D that she’s considering, but we have no idea if students face the same issues with applying to or getting classes in impacted majors. We’re looking them up individually, but if folks have knowledge of these schools would appreciate the info:
University of Washington, Seattle
University of Arizona
University of Colorado, Boulder
University of Utah
Yup, that’s my D’s dilemma. At least we’re aware of it now, so do appreciate the education we’re getting on CC. 
Yes that would be ideal. I see WPI not only has those Intro to X classes, but also a “Discovering Majors and Careers” class for first-years.
But yes, even if these kinds of classes are offered at universities with separate Engineering schools, not sure if they’d be available to non-Engineering students. 
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Many majors at Washington are limited access or competitive admission (either more competitive than admission to the university, and/or requiring a secondary admission process later). Computer science and all engineering majors are well known examples.
http://www.washington.edu/uaa/advising/degree-overview/majors/list-of-undergraduate-majors/
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Utah limits admission to some majors by requiring a certain GPA in pre-requisite courses (though that isn’t too hard to achieve). They also give registration priority based on standing (number of credits) so a student with plenty of APs will have sophomore or perhaps even junior standing as a freshman and get an earlier registration date. It’s a good reason to take and do well in the AP exams even if you don’t ultimate use the AP credit to graduate.
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(Please help Undecided STEM (and Undecided about STEM) Girl’s college list - #216 by mtmind)
“This puts kids who might be interested in engineering in a difficult spot. Start in engineering and they won’t have the time/flexibility to explore other fields. Start in anything else, and they will be way behind in engineering.”
This has always been in the case, even in the good old days of the early to mid 80s when I was in engineering. It is a very structured curriculum and sequential, at least in the first three years. You may get some flexibility senior year with technical electives or projects or thesis, but that’s only senior year. You can explore other fields in engineering, you just have to do it as a minor or a double minor, which is very common.
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That’s what we were afraid of, looks similar to UC issues. All the majors D would be interested in are capacity constrained which is a bummer as it’s the most appealing OOS public for D. Thanks!
Wow that’s great they can do that. Thanks!
I don’t know if this has changed, but our son was offered direct admit to ME. Not everyone is. Maybe there’s an application GPA threshold for certain majors.
Although majors are all impacted at Cal Poly. That doesn’t inhibit movement once admitted. What does is meeting GPA benchmarks and how the student would have fared getting into the destination major right out of HS. It prevents backdooring.
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My daughter is similar to yours in many ways. She was a STEM kid in high school, 4.0 unweighted GPA with many IB courses, including two years of chemistry, physics, and calculus. 1500 SAT. Band kid, LGBTQ+, into D&D. She has some chronic health issues that meant she needed to be within a few hours drive of home (in Oregon) so she didn’t really have a lot of choice in where to apply.
She is now a sophomore in the honors college at Oregon State, majoring in mechanical engineering. While she surely could have gotten into more competitive programs, she’s been happy there, and I think it might be a good safety for your daughter. Similar to what’s been said about Utah, OSU offers significant credit for IB and AP classes, so my daughter was able to register early based on her advanced standing, and skip ahead to more challenging classes right from the start. Honors college students also get early registration.
The honors college there is different than many–and better in my opinion–because it offers honors versions of many regular classes in all majors. (A lot of honors colleges just seem to be offer honors versions of the common core classes.) This term, 3 out of 4 of my daughter’s classes are honors versions of her regular classes: physics, statics, and intro to electrical engineering. The honors classes are small, 20 students in the engineering classes and 45 in physics, and the professors have been good. There seems to be lots of cooperation among the students in her classes rather than competition which has also been great.
First year students all start in general engineering and take an intro to engineering sequence the first year, so your daughter could experience that while exploring many other classes. She would have lots of freedom to choose given how much credit she would already have from her high school classes. And it’s easy to switch majors if she changes her mind.
OSU is a WUE school, and it also gives quite a bit of automatic merit based on grades and GPA. My daughter is getting $8000/year in merit aid that she received just based on her initial application, no special application required.
My only hesitation is that I wouldn’t necessarily consider OSU a “rigorous academic environment.” Some of my daughter’s (non-honors) math classes last year were pretty easy for her. But she still learned a lot in them, and she’s looking forward to taking some 300 level math classes next quarter that will probably be more of a challenge. She’s also really good at math–I know that most people in her class found them plenty challenging. And I’m sure her upper division mechanical engineering classes will be challenging.
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There’s no doubt that OSU has, by a long margin, the best Honors College for Engineers that we visited (we’re also from Oregon, and we visited a LOT of schools).
There are some kids, my son was one, where math just comes to them. That doesn’t mean it’s easy or not rigorous. He went to Cal Poly, a school notorious for difficult math, and sailed through it all through Tensor Calculus, full proofs, 10% Fs in the department, As all the way through for him. Easy As for some kids does not mean there’s a lack of rigor.
Speaking of Cal Poly, every student’s experience for the most part is like the Honors College at OSU. Classes are small and all professor taught at CP. The biggest difference is that for better or worse depending on perspective, students do not start in major at OSU and, and this is a BIG AND, the professors have to compete to teach in the honors college at OSU. They are all solid!
One of my son’s HS friends stayed in OR for ME and is at MIT now for his MS. They are a big Boeing feeder school, and MECOOP is a great COOP program. Lots to like about OSU. The only reason I’d choose it over Cal Poly though if you’re instate in CA, is being able to start undecided (which also comes with the negative of having to compete, although not that hard, for major of choice.
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