Texas A&M Computer Science Chances?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Texas A&M University
1

Hello College Confidential,
I heard that A&M Computer Science has gotten harder in recent years. I just want to know what y’all think my chances will be. I am an in state student.Here are some of my stats.

Class rank: Top 8%
GPA 3.83 (unweighted)
AP classes taken:
AP Computer Science Principles
AP Chemistry
AP Physics 1
AP World History
AP Art History
AP Compuuter Science A
AP US History
AP English Language and Composition
AP Statistics
AP Calculus AB
AP Calculus BC
AP Literature
AP Gov
AP Econ
AP Biology
AP Physchology

Extracurriculars
1 year of band ( freshman year, made region and area band)
1 year of Robotics (freshman year, qualified to the state level)
3 years of DECA( qualified for nationals sophomore year and junior year)
Science fair( designed a water filter. Made it to the state level)
3 years of track( JV Sophomore year, Varsity afterwards. Was a district champion in sophomore year)
NHS
Went on a mission trip into west China during freshman year for a week to teach the kids there english and history.
Was part of a club in my school where we mentored the unprivileged students in the district. We met up with the kids every 2 weeks.

Sat score
1350
Math: 720,
Verbal: 630

What do you think my chances are? Be honest even if you think it will hurt me.

2

A&M admit rate for engineering is about 85%. CS is probably higher than 50% so you have a good chance.

http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/2155743-engineering-admission-statistics-2018-p1.html

3

@DaleWatson

Your chance to get into comp sci will not be known until April of your sophomore year. A&M does not admit directly to a specific engineering major.

@Greymeer may not realize that freshmen are admitted to general engineering and they remain there until they satisfactorily complete the general engineering requirements, up to 4 semesters, to go through the highly competitive process, competing against all of your peers through the Entry To A Major (ETAM) process. ETAM relies heavy on your overall GPA and your General Engineering curriculum GPA and other criteria. https://engineering.tamu.edu/academics/entry-to-a-major/index.html

Understand that A&M’s admissions to engineering stats include not only the main campus in College Station, but includes the freshman students who are offered general engineering at the Galveston branch campus (which is not a system school but a branch of Texas A&M, and therefore, considered full admissions to A&M). Students are in general engineering at Galveston until they go through ETAM and are admitted to a specific major. Once you go through the ETAM process, you transition, not transfer, to College Station for the remainder of your degree.

Also considered full admissions are their two engineering academies at Blinn Rellis (used to be Blinn Bryan) and McAllen. At Blinn Rellis, you take the 2 Engineering classes at A&M College Station and the rest of the general engineering curriculum at Blinn Rellis. At the McAllen campus engineering academy, you take all courses at that campus.

Still others will apply to directly to one of the other A&M engineering academies as a back up with Blinn Brenham being a popular one. Brenham is close to College Station and you can by a sports pass to go to the games. Students go through the ETAM process through engineering academies, same as they do in College Station or Galveston.
https://engineering.tamu.edu/academics/academies/index.html

Note that Blinn Rellis and McAllen are admission decisions from A&M admissions and the other academies are applied to directly.

Many review admits to the university are offered admissions to Galveston a seat at an engineering academy but that is not to say that review admits to the university don’t get into College Station, because they do. Qualified auto and academic admits are placed in a seat first in College Station and if there are still seats available, they begin placing review admits there. When those seats are filled, they begin offering Galveston and Academy seats. Some applicants may be offered only one pathway to College Station, such as Galveston, and other applicants can be offered all three pathway options, as we saw for the first time last year. It is impossible to say which applicants will be offered one pathway vs multiple pathways.

For engineering academy admission decisions (Blinn Rellis and McAllen) There are only X number of seats and A&M will offer those seats to more applicants than they will yield. Learn about this pathway in the event you are offered it. Though you have until May 1 to accept your admission decision, the engineering academy seats will fill up with those that accepted the admissions decision well before that date. Usually within a matter of weeks, they are full.
So if an academy decision is something you would accept, don’t procrastinate to learn about it. Too often, wait to research it and by the time they decide they will accept, the spots are full.

There are threads on engineering academies and Galveston on CC, as well as the web sites.
Engineering Academies http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/texas-m-university/2062343-engineering-academies-p1.html

Engineering at Galveston started by a friend of mine whose son began fall 2023
http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/texas-m-university/2123914-class-of-2023-tamu-engineering-at-galveston-p1.html

An older thread on General Engineering at Galveston

http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/texas-m-university/2057244-a-m-engineering-galveston-p1.html

1 Like
4

Dale Watson, You will have no problem being admitted to A&M or the College of Engineering. BUT and it is a big BUT, none of the stats you posted matters a lick about actually getting into CS major. By selecting TAMU, you are agreeing to compete in a lottery for an actual seat in the CS major. As described in great detail above, it is multifaceted and difficult to understand. You attend TAMU on main campus or one of the feeder schools and during the Spring Semester your freshman year (or possibly later), your TAMU gpa and record meets a board (none of the HS stuff is relevant at this point), only the the very tip top will actual get into CS major. Remember your competition is ALOT more extreme than in HS. If you don’t make it, the university will offer random choices of many times some very unrelated majors (electrical engineering, industrial distribution, basically anything they can’t get filled), you either accept one of the majors that is open and decided you want to do it for a living, or you pack up and leave tamu and hope another university will admit you into their CS program as a sophomore. To state it simply, admission to tamu or the college of engineering means nothing. Good Luck.

5

The secondary admission to major process (entry-to-a-major or ETAM) is described at https://engineering.tamu.edu/academics/undergraduate/entry-to-a-major/index.html .

Note that a 3.5 college GPA means automatic admission to the desired major. But note that 3.5 GPA is typically much harder in college than in high school (aiming for a GPA that high or higher is normally associated with stressed-out grade-grubbing pre-meds). Unfortunately, Texas A&M has not publicly posted information recently on how competitive by major the ETAM process is for those who do not meet the automatic admission GPA of 3.5. It is certainly possible (and feared by some students as evidenced by some of the ETAM-related threads here) that some popular majors are full or nearly full with 3.5 GPA automatic admits, making chances of admission poor even with a 3.4 GPA.

The page linked above says that “82.0% of eligible engineering students were placed in their first-choice major” but it does not say anything about specific majors (i.e. some of the less popular majors may have admitted all applicants, but the admission rate was much lower for some of the more popular majors).

6

On the other hand, @DaleWatson with all of those AP subjects you may be able to avoid many of the “weed-out” engineering courses freshman year and make yourself a very doable schedule. If you have both AB and BC Calculus you must have taken the test already on at least one of them, what did you get? Have you checked the chart to see what courses you would get out of based on your AP scores? I see Physics 1 but not Physics C (which is the calculus based one you will need to get out of any applicable courses) are you taking it now?

https://web-as.tamu.edu/ecardimages/publications/testing/AP_052219.pdf

For ETAM you have to take 2 math courses at TAMU from a list:
MATH 151
MATH 152
MATH 251 or MATH 253
MATH 308
MATH 304
CSCE 222 (Discrete Math)
In your case CSCE degree plan does not require Calc3 (251), Calc4 (308) but they are among of a list of math courses you have to select one from in your junior year. That list also currently included math 302. So if your AP test score is high enough to test you out of Calc1 (151) and Calc2 (152) you can take Math 304 (linear algebra) and CSCE 222 your freshman year. If you look at the average section grade distribution in those math courses for the same semester it looks something like this:
Calc1 - 2.2 -3.65 depending on the professor taken
Calc2 -1.2-2.7 sections GPA vary depending on professor taken, why tamu kids try to avoid taking this class at A&M. That GPA average is abysmal.
Calc3 - 2.2 - 3.2 depending on professor
DiffEQ (math 308) - 2.2 - 3.0 depending on professor
Math 304- 2.6 - 3.5 depending on professor
CSCE 222 - 3.0-3.2 depending on professor

You also have to take two science classes at TAMU to satisfy ETAM requirements and for CSCE Chem1, Chem2 and Physics1 are on the degree plan not the dreaded Physics 2. The list of science classes you need to take 2 from for ETAM is the following:
CHEM 107/117 or CHEM 101/111 or CHEM 119
CHEM 102/112 or CHEM 120
PHYS 206
PHYS 207
PHYS 222
If your AP chem score is high enough you can test out of both those chemistry. If you are not taking AP physics C then you will need to take Phys 206 but since Phys 207 and 222 are not on your degree plan I believe you will get a waiver for the second science but you will need to ask a general engineering advisor on that to verify.

Scanning the rest of your AP classes it looks like if you have a high enough test grade you can get out of both HIST 105, 106 plus Engl 204 and maybe 210 ( my son’s engineering department accepted credit for 210 even though it does not say that on AP list), POLS 206. You can check the required ISD electives to see if you have some more covered, I am guessing you do. That leaves a very light freshman year course load, check out the current degree plan:
https://catalog.tamu.edu/undergraduate/engineering/computer-science/bs/#programrequirementstext

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ucbalumnus, You are spot on! Statistics lie and I am apoplectic about how misleading the current ETAM process is at TAMU. High School Counselors need to take note and query their former A&M bound STEM students of the last 5 years or so–get the real scoop so they can advise HS juniors/seniors with a better understanding of what is happening and the gamble that is very real for students opting for TAMU over the 99% of other universities that accept students truthfully into a degree program. TAMU is basically getting students to their university, then saying they do not have enough seats in particular degree programs . Sometimes, the students first FIVE choices are denied. Let that sink in. Under the ETAM process, students passing their classes may not get to continue in any of their top FIVE choices within engineering or computer science. (I wouldn’t even be happy with my second choice when it is my money, my time, my education, my degree, my future occupation–much less going beyond my fifth choice.) This sounds like ultimate government control–NOT like something you would expect out of a traditionally conservative American University like TAMU was. If you don’t believe it, call the engineering department and ask, “Is it possible for a student passing all their classes, paying their bills, and not in any academic or legal trouble with the university during the Freshman general engineering year to not be permitted to continue to pursue a degree plan of their choice?” The answer is “Yes”. Not everyone is a top A student in college but any less than that, TAMU can and is denying students a chance to continue pursuing a degree in the most popular accredited engineering and computer science degree programs. This is a fact.

I believe there would be even more outrage but bright talented students are embarrassed to admit, they have been duped. They accepted that they didn’t measure up and are taking what TAMU is herding them into to fill the numbers. The excuse is always, well there are these weed out classes, blah blah blah. And perhaps Johnny/Johanna wasn’t cut out for engineering. Hey TAMU, TEACH the material instead of keeping the tuition money but in order for the students to make the necessary grades they have to pay tutors to actually teach them so they can return to the “weed out” classes and pass the exams. And secondly, if you do not intend to make space available stop ruining careers/lives by admitting students under false extremely misleading pretenses. In order to save the TAMU reputation, cancel the ETAM process as a “sounded promising but turned out to be a disaster” plan, and continue the great Aggie tradition of graduating successful engineers. Rememer, “Aggies Don’t Lie” and the A&M institution shouldn’t either.

8

They could probably reduce the stress and fears that students have about being denied their major with a 3.4 GPA by publishing ETAM admission rates for each major by GPA band (e.g. 3.40-3.49 GPA applicants had a % admission rate to __ major, and so on for more GPA bands and other majors). An overall first choice admission rate of 82% suggests that most majors are not highly competitive; it would also be desirable if those that are highly competitive are obvious to prospective frosh before they decide a college.

That might reduce the apparent resemblance to stressed out grade grubbing pre-meds that frosh engineering students seem to be like, based on posts here.