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.
It completely depends on a few factors:
-Your financial situation: Purdue would be about 15k more a year assuming no financial aid from either school.
-Your son’s motivation to succeed: He would need to work hard to prove to Purdue that he should be in their engineering program, whereas he is already guaranteed to study it at UC Irvine.
-Which school your son likes better and will be happier at. Purdue is far from CA. Is distance something he wants?
As far as rankings go, Purdue is probably ranked a lot higher in engineering, but UC Irvine is a top public school. I think he would find success at either school. I would take the above points into consideration over ranking–especially the school he would be happier at. If he is happy, success is bound to follow.
As far as transferring at Purdue: I have visited multiple times, and I heard multiple times that engineering is the most difficult to transfer into. Purdue requires every engineering student to take First Year Engineering, so my guess is that your son would graduate in 5 years if he were to transfer into engineering because he would need to complete FYE before he can even think about taking ME classes. This is what I gathered, but if you want to be certain, you should email or call the engineering undergraduate admissions guy. My experiences with communicating with Purdue have been great. They definitely had the students’ best interest.
Thanks you so much for taking the time and providing such a thoughtful response and good advice.