Hey I was accepted into A&M engineering at College Station back in November and I was looking at TAMU engineering honors program and thought it was pretty interesting.
So I was wondering if anyone knew how competitive TAMU engineering honors is to get in. Given that my class rank is right outside of top 10%(12%) and my SAT is at a 1440(650R, 790M).
And if anyone can provide some feedback on what are some advantages and disadvantages of the program, that would be great too.
Thanks!
My son was admitted OOS to engineering honors. 35 act, top 6% of class, IB program, grades 3.6. I have read on another thread that TAMU engineering is often a regular class with more assignments. I am wondering if anyone else has more or accurate info as well.
There’s more info in this thread: http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/texas-m-university/2167634-engineering-honors-decision-came-today.html#latest
About 10% are accepted into the program. It seems like they weigh certain things more than numbers. The biggest advantages imo are early registration, people around you (you have the option to stay together at dorm), and some smaller sized classes. I think you also get the recognition at graduation as well.
Thanks! That is helpful!!
My son is a jr bmen in engineering honors. Most of his honors classes have been in the regular class with an extra assignment attached. The only exception has been freshman year for engineering 101 and 102, which have been renamed so don’t know the numbers. There was a huge advantage for honors at this level. He got the better prof and good groups to work with. Bmen is a small major, bigger majors might have more separate honors sections. But I don’t know if that would have made a difference to my son. He was fine with it being a part of the regular section.
We spoke to honors students at Aggieland Saturday this past weekend. They said that you do have extra work, but it is not hard… just more in-depth. They said that a lot of the extra work counts as extra credit… so for example if you get a 7 out of 10 on the extra project they will add an additional 7% to your grade. So if you have an 85 in the class, it could be the difference between a B and an A.
TexasMTDad, just want to say my son has never encountered the extra work for honors being counted as extra credit. It has always just been a part of the grade distribution. One class there were 3 major projects instead of 2, so each counted as 1/2 rather than 1/2. One class he had a major paper to write, it counted for 5% of his grade. So the amount the honors portion counts varies greatly but has never been extra credit.
Interesting. We spoke to a senior yesterday (and a junior), but I think they were both university honors and not specifically engineering honors, so maybe their experience was different.
@texasmtdad @wlufmom I agree with @rosegeo my son, who is a junior meen major, has never got extra credit in an honor’s course for the extra honor’s work. You explained it when you said the students were university honors, most of those kids are liberal arts majors and have a completely different program than engineering. My son had dedicated honors engineering classes his freshman year that were an advantage with small class sizes, better teachers, and groupmates that were also honor’s students. After that his honor’s classes have been “stacked” with normal classes which in MEEN means fairly big classes 50-80 range, although he is in a 90ish one now. In all the stacked classes the honor’s kids get a different syllabus with typically one extra thing to do. That extra assignment can be just a bit more depth in something they are already doing as part of the class or something completely extra. My son studies the syllabus now before taking an honor’s class because he feels some are fair but some are extra work that can affect the overall grade. For MEEN he only has to take a total of 18 credits of honors engineering classes and his freshman year there were already 5 of those credits completed; so that is not many more to get over 3 more years.
Another advantage to engineering honors is the easy access to honor’s engineering research. My son has been doing that for 3 semesters now and has an additional 5 of the honor’s credit hours just for that.
@pbleigh well… they were university honors… but Engineering majors.
@TexasMTDad The arbiter of what is acceptable for honor’s credit is your honor’s advisor. In the case of honor’s engineering I have never heard of extra credit for honor’s work but perhaps they do allow that in university honors. My guess is that the student works out the syllabus with their teacher and then gets it approved by their university honor’s advisor if they are engineering kids.
Excellent stats! Gig 'em!
I’m going to share a little honesty here that may burst some bubbles, but I didn’t see it coming nor did my kid. Auto admit and accepted into engineering honors. Freshman year was a bit rough with online labs and quarantining protocols, etc. Kid came in just under 3.5 and got holistic review for ETAM. We weren’t worried at all - National Merit Scholar, confident in his application and essays. Would have been happy with any of his 3 chosen engineering majors. He did not get an offer from any of the 3. He did get offers from ones that are not headed in the direction he wants.
He is suddenly realizing that, despite wanting the same career path for a long time and researching to ensure he knows what it entails, decisions have been made that could keep him from doing what he’s always wanted to do.
I have never before heard of someone not getting any of their 3 choices at all, but here we are.
Hopefully it never happens to your child. I am almost happy he had never heard of this happening before because last year was hard enough with Covid restrictions and glitchy wifi. He never missed a class or an assignment and didn’t fail any tests but just ended up with more B’s than would allow for an auto admit. Now that they are raising that to 3.75, the pressure will increase even more.
It’s great to get all of these wonderful things coming in, but it feels quite different when your options are suddenly limited and someone else decides your path, and none of the options are what you want.
3.75 GPA threshold to get into an engineering major after first year? Is that for all engineering majors or the most popular? If I’m reading that right, that is a super high bar for to cross. IMO, that would be a huge detraction.
My D has two close friends that are TAMU and we always speak highly of their program to friends with younger students, but that would give me great pause going forward.
That’s crazy. I’m so sorry to hear this. He sounds like he did really well and being in honors. Jeez. 80% get their first choice so I’m really surprised.
And @ the other reply… 3.75 is auto admit for all majors going forward in engineering. Otherwise you are holistic review for your top 3 choices but list 5.
It’s very competitive and many choose not to do engineering at Tamu for this reason. They’d rather be in control of what discipline they choose in engineering.
What were his choices? Getting shut out is certainly possible if his choices were the most competitive ones.
See TAMU ETAM statistics - #172 by pbleigh and the following posts.
That is a really high auto admit threshold! Thanks for clarifying. I’ll definitely share that with potential students going forward.
@AeroEngMom I’m sorry. Unfortunately I have heard this story many times since my eldest son started in 2017. If you look at the data, the auto admits were greatly expanded during Covid because of the allowed Pass/Fails of some of the required classes. This means departments which have to take anyone who selects them that met the auto admit GPA ended up with more students then they wanted. If you look at the following semester they then could take very little if any students in those same departments. What that means for a holistic student during that time frame is that there was very little available to them. Remember the college station students are competing for these holistic spots with all the academy students as well. My suggestion would be for your son to go to the departments he is interested in and talk to them about his situation, I have heard of this working in the past. Also talk with the Engineering Honors advisor as well; he may have some insight into the department your son wants to get into and could advise him. What were his 3 choices? He could turn down all the offers and try again; with the 3.75 requirement going forward and no more Covid Pass/Fails more holistic seats will likely be available. The problem with turning down all the choices is making a decent Fall schedule since many classes will be off limits outside a major. However, I do know that advisors within the departments can elect to let you take the class (this happened with my son), if you talk to them and they think your chances are good to get into their particular department at the next ETAM.
@AeroEngMom my heart hurts with you. I spoke to a friend last night, whose uber bright student didn’t get his top 3 choices either; it definitely happens, I just think many don’t post about it.
I always cringe when I see incoming freshman parents comment “My daughter/son is Aero, Biomedical, Chemical, etc”. All freshman enter as General. The competition is fierce at A&M, and it can be a very rude awakening to many students, especially those who coasted thru high school.
My friend said her son is actually loving his new Eng major, it’s been a blessing in disguise. I hope your student will be able to say this down the road.
Nephew is attending an academy and didn’t get the required math test placement score so has to start with precalc instead of Calc I. Parents think it’ll take an extra semester now before trying to transfer to CS.