I think @stencils has a couple of kids at Temple in engineering, but he isn’t on CC too much. Maybe he will see this and be able to answer your questions?
You might just reach out to the engineering school and ask or ask for an advisor - so you can get real info on interdepartmental transfers to ensure it’s feasible vs. ensuring you have a safety where you can study what you want.
You’ll get a quicker and more accurate answer by doing so.
@vadmom I have one Temple Engineering grad, and a senior and freshman at Temple.
My oldest started off as a Bioengineering major and transferred to Electrical, and still graduated in 4 years. I’d say you’d want to transfer after one or two semesters at the latest to still graduate on time, just because all of the engineering curricula are pretty full. There’s a lot of overlap in the various engineering program schedules in Year 1, (Physics, Calc, Intro to Engineering, Engineering Freshman seminar etc), which helps. It’s also easier to stay on schedule if your student is coming in with some AP credits, as that creates some wiggle room.
Research is generally pretty easy to do across majors, and most research projects need some multi-disciplinary skills. For example my EE major did research with a math professor doing statistical computer programming.
My daughter had MechE friends that found interships, and she had internships in EE as well for multiple years. It takes work to find a good internship, but all of her friends had internships and solid jobs on graduation.
All of my kids are honors, and the honors department is outstanding. If your son qualifies, he definitely wants to be in honors. Great dedicated honors housing, special advising, priority class registration are all huge benefits. I’d call the honors department and tell them the situation and ask if he can submit the honors application essay even though he’s already been accepted. If you have problems connecting with someone, send me a direct message and I might be able to help connect you.
Temple campus is very social. There’s a very large number of students that live in on-campus dorms, but there’s also a ton of private apartment complexes that are barely off campus that are also 100% students. I’d consider these students as being technically on-campus even though they are not in Temple-owned housing. It’s really common after one or two years in the dorms for students to move into one of these complexes, or into a Philly row house rental within a few blocks from campus.
Please also feel free to send me a direct message with any other questions!