Hello all,
I am in the process of choosing my junior year courses and I have the option to take Intro to Engineering Design (IED) through the PLTW engineering program next year as a junior. Generally students at my school enter this program as freshmen and there are only a few sophomores in IED. If I recall correctly, only one student that I know of has taken IED as a junior (he’s a senior in POE - the second year course - now). BUT it is possible and so my questions pertain more to whether or not it would be worth it to take IED as a junior and POE as a senior, or even to take just IED as a senior, which would mean I’d only taken one PLTW engineering course in high school.
Would having 1-2 PLTW engineering courses on my transcript matter in college admissions processes? Or would it be irrelevant in the admissions process considering that most PLTW engineering students take 3+ classes?
Would taking IED (and possibly POE) be helpful in determining if I want to be an engineering major in college/help me figure out if I have a passion for engineering?
For any of you who has actually gone through the program, do you recommend the PLTW engineering program?
As a side note, would it be necessary for me to take AP/ACP physics to get into a good engineering program? I will take honors physics next year and AP Bio as a senior, so I wouldn't have space for a year 2 physics course unless I manipulated my senior year schedule a bit.
My junior daughter has taken 3 PLTW classes. She took IED as a freshman and enjoyed it. She took computer integrated manufacturing as a sophomore and thought it was fine. She is taking POE currently. At her school, there are 5 courses to take to get a PLTW sticker on your diploma, but she won’t be taking the other two because she has no interest in digital engineering and you need that to take the capstone course. She is considering taking another computer based PLTW class next year.
Since she is still in high school, we won’t know the impact on admissions for awhile but she feels that the classes have clarified for her that she has engineering interest, even though they focus more on other fields of engineering than she is primarily interested in (she wants chemical engineering).
Additionally, we have heard people describing required freshmen engineering courses at different colleges and they sound very similar to IED/POE. She likes that she will go into them with some experience (figuring it will be a bit of a confidence boost in a difficult major).
We also figure that taking the courses shows her interest (passion) in engineering in some way, so it can’t hurt.
Also, at least at her school, it’s been easy A’s with little homework. That’s another plus in an otherwise very tough courseload.
The PLTW program sounded attractive but my son didn’t like it. If you’re looking at engineering, why take AP bio rather than AP physics in your senior year?
@user4321 I’m interested specifically in biomedical engineering and I’ve always liked biology. On the other hand, I’ve never taken a formal physics course (besides 7th grade “advanced science”, which did not get very deep into physics), so I thought it’d be better to take honors physics, the prerequisite to AP.
The most relevant high school courses for future engineering students would be math, physics, chemistry, though getting a good well rounded base including humanities and social studies is important. Biology would mainly be of relevance for those in biomedical or biological/agricultural engineering (sometimes chemical engineering), though it would be part of the good well rounded base high school curriculum.