<p>Just went over to the Williams site as an example, they state 4 years at Williams followed by a master’s or doctorate at an engineering school is most common though the 3/2 option is available [Pre-Engineering</a> Program](<a href=“http://www.williams.edu/physics/programs/eng.html]Pre-Engineering”>http://www.williams.edu/physics/programs/eng.html)</p>
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While this may well have gotten you to consider engineering, I would advise making a wholesale career-goal change until you’ve looked into this some more. Do you understand what the career path of an engineer looks like? The courses you take in college to get the degree? I would suggest taking some time looking into these; if you know anyone who has a parent working in engineering, for example, it might be a good idea to sit down with them for a while and understand what the day-to-day life is like, maybe even shadow them on the job for a morning. </p>
<p>Nation-wide, between 1/2 and 2/3rds of the students that start as engineering majors end up switching to something else! I think this is due not just to the rigor of the program (and its hard), but a growing realization that the career they’re training for isn’t really a good fit for what they want to do. It may be engineering is a great match for you and that you can count yourself fortunate that you found out in time, but maybe not…</p>
<p>That is an excellent point.</p>
<p>My son is an engineering major in a not particularly highly ranked program and his schedule which is clearly set out for him for four years leaves little room for anything but engineering/science/math classes as well as a minimal number of liberal arts requirements (like freshman english and maybe 3 other humanities courses). I would say if your goal is to graduate in four years with an engineering degree, you had better go to a school with a full-fledged engineering program.</p>
<p>My son’s a senior at Olin and has loved every minute of it. He wants to pursue Physics in grad school, not engineering, but Olin allowed him to take non-engineering courses (i.e. Chinese at Wellesley and Physics at Brandeis, along with a semester in Beijing) so he stayed there. He also loved Harvey Mudd, because it had the strong math/science college within lots of liberal arts options. Have you checked that one out? He was accepted and would have gone there if he hadn’t gotten into Olin.</p>
<p>Another option might be Union College in Schenectady, NY. I’m a HS guidance counselor and toured there a couple of weeks ago and was quite impressed. It’s definitely a small liberal arts college but has a solid engineering program, so perhaps the best of both worlds. Tufts also has that feel (although a bigger campus). Good luck!</p>
<p>Vassar has a 3/2 program with Dartmouth.</p>
<p>After reading all of this I really feel a 3-2 program wouldn’t be for me. I would want to stay with my friends and the school I loved. It does also seem like perhaps a poor use of money. Yeah, gloworm my EFC is 0. I’m planning on applying to Purdue (in-state) and I believe that’s a good safety for me (financially and admissions-wise). I have a 2090 SAT. Its a little low for top schools but a little high for less selective state schools. It seems what would be best is if I go to a great school for engineering but also one where I can easily switch majors if I later feel I made the wrong choice?</p>
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<p>I can think of two reasons why they might bother with 3/2 programs. Firstly, there is clearly no guarantee that you will get into a 1-year engineering master’s program, especially at a school such as Berkeley or Stanford. I know many who did not. This is especially true if you didn’t even major in engineering at an undergrad, as while a science/math degree obviously doesn’t bar you from an engineering grad program, it does place you at an admissions disadvantage. A 3/2 program may therefore be easier to get into and complete. </p>
<p>Secondly, let’s face it, many, sometimes most, undergrad engineering students take 5 years (or sometimes more) to complete their degrees anyway. The 4-year schedule of an engineering undergrad degree presumes that everything goes right, and that you have an sterling work ethic from the very beginning. Not everybody is so fortunate. A 3-2 program therefore may not entail any more of a loss of time than would have happened anyway.</p>
<p>“Secondly, let’s face it, many, sometimes most, undergrad engineering students take 5 years (or sometimes more) to complete their degrees anyway.”</p>
<p>If an individual would need more than 4 years to complete the straight 4-year engineering BS program, then perhaps that same individual might need more than 5 years to complete it as part of a “3-2”. To actually complete the “2” in 2, the engineering program is quite (undesirably, IMO) compressed as is, for anyone. IMO, the risk of a 3-2 taking longer than 5 years ought to be greater than the risk of a 4 year BS engineering taking more than 4 years. Just too much stuff in too compressed a time schedule to be optimal.</p>
<p>What happens to financial aid after 4 years? My kids have some merit money which ends after 8 semesters so we’d sure like them to be done as close to 4 years as possible. I would think this would be a big factor for someone with an EFC of 0.</p>
<p>“I am not sure why LACs bother with 3/2 programs.”</p>
<p>Such programs attract students who want this option. But at the end of three, for some it’s hard to leave your friends and the LAC you’ve come to love, just before the fun senior year begins.</p>
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Lafayette College, a LAC with ~2400 undergrads (~25% engineering majors) offers 4 ABET accredited engineering majors: chemical, civil, electrical/computer, and mechanical: <a href=“http://engineering.lafayette.edu/[/url]”>http://engineering.lafayette.edu/</a></p>
<p>If you are not sure about engineering, LC offers a total of 47 majors across 4 academic divisions: humanities, social sciences, natural sciences and engineering: <a href=“http://www.lafayette.edu/academics/departments-and-programs/[/url]”>http://www.lafayette.edu/academics/departments-and-programs/</a> </p>
<p>It is not difficult to change your major from engineering to another major. It is more difficult to go the other way, only because of the rigid requirements of the engineering curriculum (it may require an additional semester, depending on the courses already taken). A transfer from one “school” to another is not required, as may be required for a university.</p>
<p>"If an individual would need more than 4 years to complete the straight 4-year engineering BS program, then perhaps that same individual might need more than 5 years to complete it as part of a “3-2”. To actually complete the “2” in 2, the engineering program is quite (undesirably, IMO) compressed as is, for anyone. IMO, the risk of a 3-2 taking longer than 5 years ought to be greater than the risk of a 4 year BS engineering taking more than 4 years. Just too much stuff in too compressed a time schedule to be optimal. "</p>
<p>This was not the experience of my uncle or 3 undergrad classmates who did the 3-2 program. Since the planned academic program fulfilling engineering requirements must be created with and signed off by the first college’s 3-2 adviser, the engineering department at the second school already accounted for this, and the work is spread out over 5 years instead of 4, there has never been an issue of a student exceeding 5 years in completing the program. If anything, every one of them has raved about how this “eased the pressure” by spreading the requirements/load over a slightly longer period of time and gave them a greater exposure to a liberal arts education they may not have had otherwise.</p>
<p>With one college classmate who did his last two years at Columbia Engineering, he said the 3 years at Oberlin was a great way to fulfill the engineering requirements in a smaller liberal arts setting first so he could adjust and prepare himself for larger engineering classes at a research university. By the time he arrived at Columbia, he was already well-prepared for the workload and finished strongly and on-time. </p>
<p>His strong academic performance at both highly respected schools was a major factor in his landing an analyst position at some big NYC bank. </p>
<p>My uncle had a similar experience of having the pressure eased when he did his 3-2 program at Beloit college and Columbia Engineering graduating with a Physics BA and a BS in CivE. This program allowed him an easier pathway to starting a decades-long career as a professional engineer.</p>
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Not exactly…</p>
<p>Stanford for years has offered something called “Honors Coop” which is a part-time Masters program in Engineering offered by Stanford for students supported by local hi-tech firms. If your company offers this (and many in Silicon Valley do) you take 1 or 2 courses a quarter and all the units count towards your degree. While you have to qualify to pursue the actual MS degree, anyone who wants and is sponsored by their company can start take classes. These are the actual courses being taught to the full-time MS students, BTW, not a dumbed-down version taught by part-timers or whatever. You have the option of attending in-person or watching on a special closed-circuit TV setup.</p>
<p>What many people do is enroll in the program, get as many units as they can (there is a cap) while their employer is paying, then take off 6 months to finish the MS and then look for a higher-paying job or go back to their old employer with a promotion now that they have an MS. Like I said, you have to get accepted into the actual MS program – but if you can’t build a good enough track record at the actual school to be accepted for their MS program then you probably didn’t belong in it anyway. So while there is no “guarantee” of admission, this is about as close as you can come to letting everyone who can show they are capable of the work (regardless of their previous academic record) get a MS from Stanford Engineering.</p>
<p>Cobrat: they cannot spread sophomore year engineering courses into the “3” of the liberal arts college, because that college does not offer those engineering courses. Therefore all actual engineering courses, that generally would be spread over three years, at least, have to be compressed into 2 years. there are issues involved withe sequencing, changing your mind, etc that I find highly undesirable. I have addressed this more fully in a prior thread I linked, with detailed scenarios.</p>
<p>“they cannot spread sophomore year engineering courses into the “3” of the liberal arts college, because that college does not offer those engineering courses.”</p>
<p>My engineering school required courses in biology, chemistry, math and physics in the first two years before I got to the “meat” of engineering in the final two years. </p>
<p>“there are issues involved withe sequencing, changing your mind, etc that I find highly undesirable.”</p>
<p>Ok, what we need are statistics covering completion rates of these 3/2 programs. Anyone?</p>
<p>So your school didn’t have engineering distribution requirements taken sophomore year, chosen from among: intro electrical systems, intro chem e, statics, dynamics, engineering thermodynamics, several others? Mine sure did, and these courses were prerequisites for the major courses taken later. I would not want these all compressed into two years, if yours was I feel sorry. There were also a course or two freshman year attempting to serve as intro to the profession. People in 3-2 must have to jump right into an engineering specialty area with no prior directly applicable coursework, other than general sciences, and fewer intro experiences, no engineers on campus to even talk to about it, before choosing a major. My engineering school did not work that way, and I feel sorry if anyone else’s actually did. </p>
<p>To take a trivial example, my nephew entered Columbia intending to be a chem e, then took intro chem e courses soph year and bombed them. Still had time, at that point, to shift gears and fulfill a different major, at the depth of coursework he desired. If he was just finding out junior year that chem e was not for him, he would have had that much less room to swerve otherwise. Without taking more time, that is.</p>
<p>Probably many people just finish out, given the $$ implications, but have a less optimal exposure to engineering as the tradeoff.</p>
<p>I don;t know about your undergraduate college, but I’d been under the impression that the sequence I experienced was fairly typical, for ABET accredited engineering programs.</p>
<p>I just did a quick Google, first school I looked at was Purdue, here is their course sequence, note the # engineering courses taken years 1 & 2, sure looks similar to mine. I count eight (or nine) engineering department courses offered or required in the first two years, many of which are prerequisites for later courses, and which are not available at an LAC. This has obvious implications for the depth you can go into higher level courses, and the engineering electives and design courses you can take senior year.
<a href=“Undergraduate Program at Purdue ME - Mechanical Engineering - Purdue University”>Undergraduate Program at Purdue ME - Mechanical Engineering - Purdue University;
<p>You’re saying there is no penalty on the engineering side from cramming as much as you can of this into 2 years, when these courses are prereqs to what you have to, or may want to, subsequently take? I respectfully do not agree with that at all. Even best case, cramming five engineering courses at a time in a semester might slay many people, they are hard.</p>
<p>I’m just suggesting one of the possible reasons these 3/2 programs work.</p>
<p>I’m looking at the engineering curriculum that my son is taking. As a freshman, he is taking a 3 hour course called Engineering Problem Solving as well as a 1 hour Engineering Seminar and next semester he’ll take EPS II, 3 more hours. Every time I talk to him, he is working on his EPS homework. He says it’s not hard, it’s just a lot of work. First semester sophomore year are 3 courses totaling 8 hours which are fundamentals of engineering courses and the whole math sequence from Calc I through DiffEq as well as Statistics is through the math department but it’s specifically for engineering majors. I can’t imagine going through the first three years without any engineering classes. If my son decides engineering is not for him, he can easily switch into something else. His school is way into coops and internships so we figure he probably won’t graduate in 4 years but he definitely has the option if he stays on the schedule and doesn’t drop anything. I would just hate to have someone transfer into the engineering portion of their education and decide it’s not for them.</p>
<p>They can get close enough on the math, that part isn’t the problem. FWIW.</p>