Hello, its my first post here. I want to go to Georgia Tech, preferably for Mechanical engineering or computer science. I’m also out of state. On the GT website it says,
“in our review of your application we expect to see that your course selection and activities demonstrate interest in the major/college that you list on your application”.
My extracurriculars are very humanities related(speech debate, model UN, student council, etc), I only have 2 STEM ECs to 6-7 social studies ECs. This is partly because I was planning to major in Economics or Business until the middle of junior year. Another thing is that my SAT english scores are 60 pts higher than my math score(1500, 780E & R - 720M). However I’ve taken more STEM credits(and AP classes) than humanities and done well in both of them.
Would it be a good idea for me to apply to GT’s liberal arts college for a humanities major and change my major freshman year? I don’t know if this is true but I’ve heard Georgia Tech gives you a free major change freshman year.
http://admission.gatech.edu/change-major. There are restrictions for changing to Mechanical Engineering, so look into that. Personally, I think it is unethical to declare a major in something you’re not interested in with the hopes of improving your chances of admission, but I understand why some people seem to want to take this route.
The big takeaway that I had from the admissions information session I attended was that GT wants to see concrete examples of intellectual curiosity. I don’t think you need to have every EC focusing on directly on STEM, but rather show in your essays how your EC’s demonstrate your intellectual curiosity. What problems or challenges did you identify with your EC’s? How did you define the problem and the desired end-state? How did you gather information and approach the problems? How did you measure the success/failure of your resolutions? What was the outcome? Don’t worry if you failed - check out Randy Pausch’s “Last Lecture” and his “First Penguin Award” to get a better understanding about the importance of failing. These are the behaviors that I think GT is interested in understanding about you.
ok thank you!
I wish I would have done more STEM ECs but my interests(until last year) differed
I definitely think you should apply to GT College of Liberal Arts if you are not competitive for engineering and have a decent portfolio in Liberal Arts. Then you can easily change after the first semester.
I did the same thing. I had absolutely no chance on earth on getting into GT Computer Science, however, I applied to GT College of Sciences(and got in) and changed my major to GT Computer Science. Easy!
I don’t think so, because Tech keeps the technical degrees and the liberal arts degrees separate. i.e., I was given conditional transfer to the liberal arts college (GUARANTEES a slot upon meeting certain requirements), but it explicitly states that even if you meet the transfer reqs, you can’t apply to their stem college.
If you really want to boost your acceptance chance overall, I suppose go for the arts college, but depending on the courses you start in you may be setting yourself back when you switch.