engineering peeps. What math are they looking at for engineering? Is precal as highest level ok?
@BingeWatcher If pre cal is the highest math your school has, then that is more favorable than if your school as AP Calculus BC and you couldnât or didnât take it.
Looking back at past posts, she has a high SAT. What was her math score?
Engineering Calculus is hard so high school pre cal wonât be a great foundation for it. Calculus II is even harder some say. It may be that she gets on campus admissions and based on Math placement test, starts in math 150 or eng 289. Here is more on that.
https://engineering.tamu.edu/academics/math-placement-exam/faq.html
@Thelma2 I was actually asking for my friend. Her daughter is in 12th grade taking Precal and applied to TAMU and wants to major in Areo engineering. My 11th grader is Calc BC. now. Yes, I agree with you for sure about precal not being the great foundation. My friendsâ D goes to a all girls school (public) and in top 10%. But not many choices at that school.
@BingeWatcher
with pre cal being her highest math course, they will also look to see if she what physics she has taken. Her math sub score will be important too. With only pre cal and if she doesnât have strong test scores, an academy decision would be generous and PSA likely.
That said, a good back up, if TAMU is the end goal, she should apply to one of the A&M affliated engineering academies directly, that are not admission decisions. Such as Blinn Brenham. At Brenham, 45 minutes away, they can still buy a sports pass for games. The curriculum is the same and they apply to a major through ETAM and finish their degree in college station. It might be a better transition also with smaller classes, live on the Brenham campus, acclimation in small setting, easier to meet and make friends in your same major etc. There are academies in Austin, San Antonio, Dallas, McAllen , Houston. https://engineering.tamu.edu/academics/academies/index.html
Thank You so much @Thelma2 , I will show the mom the link today. The academies sound like a much better place for her to build her foundation.
@AggieMomhelp, I am not sure your comment about rankings being based on test scores is correct. My son goes to an extremely rigorous college prep. They donât rank because there are only 88 in his class and the kids are ALL really, really smart. My sonâs ACT score was a 35 scoring 35 in ALL subjects. He also scored a 1510 on the SAT. A&M assigned him a rank of top quarter. In the 1500s on the SAT and a 35 on the ACT does not sound like top quarter. We really needed his rank for a scholarship for another school and it turns out he is actually 9 out of 88. Again all brilliant kids. So, he was actually .227% away from Top 10%. A&M assigned him top quarter. His school counselor assured us the assignment from A&M was based on years and years of the school data and they usually are within 1 person of the actual rank. In my sonâs case, they did not assess him in his favor. However, it did not matter because he was an Academic Acceptance anyway. Top 10% would have been more fun but either way it worked out for him.
Parents, please, stop stressing over your childrenâs acceptance. God has a plan and your child will go exactly where they are supposed to go. My husband and I are Aggies. We raised our oldest to be an Aggie but UT in Austin went OUT OF THEIR WAY to recruit her and assure her nursing school. She even ended up being a D1 Athlete at UT. Yes, we would have loved to have seen her at A&M but in the long run, UT was the better fit! Each child goes where they are meant to go. It is about the child, not us!
You know, I couldnât agree less, there is no god handling college apps and a kid that has UT as an actual viable option can afford to be sanguine. That does NOT apply to almost any posters in the TAMU subforums.
My advice would be to stress enough about it to get yourselves as informed as you can be (this forum helps a lot!), to take the best actions you can take in order to help your kid, to find out all your options, etc.
The more you find out about the admissions process, the more you will realize that there are thousands of very well-deserving students, there are hundreds of professionals who take their admissions jobs seriously, and that the admission decisions are not just random and arbitrary, but the result of a lot of well-meaning and qualified people doing the best job they can, a lot of processes evolved through the years, plus the results of your kidâs (and yours) best efforts.
@Momtoanurse First and foremost⊠HOLY nuggets⊠a 35 is exceptional. Love that! Secondly, what you and I wrote are the same⊠If you go to school that doesnât rank, itâs based on GPA and school demographics as you stated was what you heard. The test scores are for home schoolers only based on what I read and copied from the admissions site. If Iâm misunderstanding, which is easy to do on text, let me know! = )
Applied July 2019
GPA 4.25
25.6%
30 ACT (35 Math, 28 English, 29 Science, 28)
Mays Business
Large 6A high school in Texas
Football
Choir
Mu Alpha Theta
AP Bio, AP Calc (AB), AP Chem, AP stats
Summer volunteer work after hurricane
Not an auto admit.
Any idea when he will find out? I think it will probably be in the Spring? Thanks!
@woodlandsmom I think your son has a great chance at full admit based on being so close to academic admit. ssooooooo close. However, Mays will most likely be full by the time they get to the application. Last year though we did see some holistic review kiddos get Mays in October. Not sure how or why, they were all great candidates but not like they stood out that much compared to their peers. So there is a chance based on last year, but not a huge percentage. Whatâs his second choice major?
@AggieMomhelp I am so confused after reading some of these comments about math readiness. My son is currently taking Honors Pre-Calc (senior). He did not have a strong enough algebra teacher in the 8th grade for him to feel that he learned enough to skip it and move forward in high school. So he took it again in 9th grade and then did geometry and trigonometry. Then he did Algebra II (all have been honors math) his junior year. He also took AP physics (though he only scored a 2 on the exam- he had a B in the classâŠthe teacher did not prepare them well for that exam). Should we be concerned??? His SAT sub-score was 680. I am fearful of his acceptance at this point. He was accepted as an Academic Admit, but now is waiting for engineering.
Her SAT score was 1240 (sheâs a smart girl but a terrible timed test taker). She wants engineering. Sheâs taken every AP and PAP class available. I honestly donât like the academic admit that A&M uses because IMO it rewards those students that are better test takers but didnât give it their all in class, over those students that gave it their all in class. And I can say that our HS is very competitive in a class of 600 students. I canât believe students that are at the 25th % are being admitted before a child who was at the 11th % (if they had the high test scores of course). Itâs gonna be a long fall! Oh wellâŠ
I believe engineering students have to have calculus AB or BC equivalent.
@Boogie818 Iâm not the engineering expert on here, but what Iâve gathered, if those higher maths are offered at the school and not taken, it doesnât look favorably as far as math readiness. How about his sciences? That could help. And his SAT math score is good, so thereâs a strong chance he gets full admit to cstat campus. BUT he may struggle in the first eng. math.
@YankeeTexan33 I hear you and feel you, but that is too generalized of a statement. There are many that feel their schools are competitive as well and that by giving them a fighting chance to prove they are test smart, they are given the acceptance ahead of those that have higher rankings and lower scores. Top quarter is nothing to sneeze at when you also have the test scores to round it out. Doesnât mean they took it easy in HS. This is coming from a mom whose children suck at standardized test but are both kicking or have kicked butt at TAMU. It all works out. The cream will rise regardless of where they start.
@AggieMomhelp His sciences are strong. He has had Hon.Biology, Hon. Chemistry, AP Physics, and is in the second year of a Dual Credit Engineering course through UT that is offered at his high school. He has maintained a high A in that one.
I have no specific knowledge of engineering but had my daughter been accepted into Visualization she would have been required to take Math 151 and 152 (engineering math) so Math readiness was a concern of mine.
We moved during 8th grade after the school year started and due to totally different curriculum she struggled during her first grading period here in Algebra 1. We made the decision to bust her down to 8th grade math. So she was all 'Aâs 9th - Algebra 1 , 10th Geometry, Then 11 grade she moved herself into Pre-Ap Algebra 2 and in 12th she did Pre-Ap Pre-Cal. Her sub scores in Math were ACT 29 and SAT 670. I think Math 151 at that point would have been a bit of struggle.
As it is the school she is going to requires College Algebra or College Algebra for non-scientist for her degree. She instead enrolled in Trigonometry, the math one class below Math 151. This was done to keep her math skills up in case she hated her school and wanted to try and transfer into TAMU. This spring she could take Math 151 and Phys 201 and have a shot at transfer.
Her school does the math entrance exam online. You can take it something like 4 times and there is online help modules to improve your score. I think you needed a 50 for the class she is in, a 30 for College Algebra and a 70 or 80 for equivalent of Math 151. My daughter took it once - and did not really put in much effort. She got a 60. Instead of practicing to get a score to be allowed in the equivalent of 151, she opted for the trig class. She would rather be in a class where she is slightly challenged, keeping her math skills up, but not being pushed too hard her first semester in college. But she did not want to take the âeasyâ college algebra option either.
I know you think your sonâs physics AP score is related to teacher prep (and Iâm sure that is part of it), but if he took it junior year - part of if probably had to do to not having the math found in pre-calculus yet. My daughter took regular physics as a junior and she felt her math knowledge could have been better.
@BlueBayouAZ Thanks for that. I actually had to have a sit down conference with that physics teachers along with the academic dean and the principal. My son had very valid concerns that he had never experienced in any of his classes prior to this. Turns out that his concerns were very real and that teacher is no longer there. I hate that the year was wasted as far as AP credit goes, but I am happy that he had a decent start in physics and knows that if he can get a high quality teacher, he knows it will be something he enjoys. He is no stranger to hard work. His school is not an easy one and he has been in the advanced classes all the way through. He is in the top 15% of 133 students in a private, college prep school.
@Sybylla and @Momtoanurse I absolutely believe it is in Godâs hands. That doesnât stop me from stressing (as I do about so many things in life).
My son is also interested in UT. He has applied but is not in the top 6% so we wait to see what happens. There doesnât seem to be as much insight and info out there for us as to their engineering acceptances only speculation that it is comparable.
They have totally different community vibes and ultimately its our kids that have to be the most comfortable there, not us.
That said, any student that has the high GPAs and the SAT scores that most of the kids on this forum seem to have certainly deserve to have their college dreams come true. My hope and prayer is that it happens that way. I can sit here and worry myself sick second guess every thing we have done up tot his point, regret not pushing my son to over extend himself as a 14 year old freshman into taking two math classes or I could just take a breath and realize that he has worked very hard and given his very best effort. He is also way more than just his math classes⊠he is student body president, president of the robotics club, a member of NHS, a lead actor in all of the school plays and musicals (3 per year ) since the 10th grade. With all of that he also has held a part time job for over 13 months where he has received two raises.
We all have amazing, talented, smart kids that all deserve the very best!
My son got his A&M acceptance packet in the mail today!! We are still waiting for the engineering review decision.