Hey all,
I’m applying EA this year and just have a few questions about the process.
Thank you in advance!!
The two honors programs are the campus honors program and the James Scholars. There is no separate application for either and choices are made based on your application for admisison file. The campus honors program applies to all UIUC applicants and generally the highest applicants in GPA and test scores are the only ones considered for it and it is the much harder of the honors programs to be admitted to. It is not engineering specifc and if admitted you need to take honors courses in a number of non-engineering subjects. The campus honors program has a partial scholarship attached to it, e.g., for OOS it usually amounts to a sum close to the out-of-state portion of tuition.
Each college has a James Scholars honors program and each college determines what you need to qualify for it in the particular college. For engineering, it typically is designed to capture the top 10% to 12% of applicants to the engineering college with grades and test scores being key. Required course work includes honors courses in non-engineering subjects and engineering related subjects. If not admitted first year, you can be admitted later based on college grades. There is no scholarship attached to it, though some who are James Scholars may get some partial tuition scholarships simply because they do have high grades and test scores.
Be aware that priority consideration for the honors programs is given to those who apply to UIUC by November 1 early action deadline (and that includes submitting test scores that arrive by that date). Applying later does not prevent your being considered but gives you a somewhat lower chance of not getting it. The same rule now applies to scholarships.
There are many possible scholarships available, including for OOS students, usually in the form of some varying levels of partial tuition relief, and there is no separate application for scholarships provided by the university or the colleges; that is also true of many scholarships provided by outside organizations to UIUC students and administered through the university. However, there can sometimes be separate applications for some outside organization scholarships. You should review the abundance of scholarship information that is provided on UIUC’s site. Other than the particiular scholarship attached to the campus honors program, being in an honors program is not a factor used for determining entitlement to a scholarship.
Currently, transferring into computer science, even for UIUC engineering students, is not easy. It is considered an impacted major which means that, at the sophomore to senior level, it has more students than desired for the assets available to service them, including classrooms and number of professors, and it typically has far more UIUC students seeking to transfer into it than spaces available. The result is that transferring into CS, even as an enginnering student, needs high college GPA to have a real chance and even that is no guarantee.
@drusba Thanks so much! I am leaning towards mechanical engineering but I would like to be able to explore computer science in college. That’s why I’m a little on the fence about UIUC. It’s a great school, but I want to be certain that I would have to option to switch if I desired.
What about switching majors in engineering itself? For example, if I am accepted to MechE and decide to transfer to Electrical Engineering later, is that difficult as well? Thanks!
First be aware that you cannot switch until, at the earliest, after first year (although if trying for change beginning of second year, you apply during second semester first year).
A change in engineering majors from mechanical to electrical would be a departmental change and thus you would need the approval of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. Moreover, you need to have any required courses for the change. Tyically engineering students take the same courses first year and many of the same second year but each major usually has some particular course or courses during the first two years that you may need and that you would not usually take in your current major in freshman or sophomore year, e.g., for electrical engineering that would be ECE 110, intro to electronics,
When not dealing with an impacted major, which electrical engineering currently is not, it is usually fairly easy to change as long as grades are good, e.g., your GPA is in the same range as average GPA’s in the other department.
@drusba Awesome! Thanks for the info!