Texas A&M Engineering Academic Probation High engineering attrition rate

Colleges and Universities A-Z Texas A&M University
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My Aggie is a junior at Texas A&M and currently on probation with the College of Engineering. If anyone is on Engineering probation at A&M or has been in the past, will you please comment? Or preferably send me a private message. My Aggie and I need tips on how to navigate the journey of Engineering Academic Probation.

My Aggie has excellent grades this semester. We expected that good grades & meeting with advisors, etc. would be required. What was totally unexpected was the registration block they applied. Won’t be allowed to register for Spring 2017 until Jan 2 (only 15 days before classes begin). Apparently the academic probation policy has become more punitive. I have spoken with two engineering students who were on probation during prior semesters. They weren’t allowed to self-enroll online. However, advisors helped them enroll as soon as their enrollment time opened. It has been made very clear that is not an option for my Aggie.

My Aggie has completed all core courses & needs very specific upper-divison courses for major. In a major which has dramatically increased enrollment in the past 2 years. Upper division courses in major & minor are in high demand. Our biggest concern is that my Aggie won’t be able to get a full-time schedule of courses needed to graduate. By 15 days prior to start of semester, most (if not all) courses needed will have few openings. Possibly no openings in some of the courses.

My Aggie had multiple hardships during the semester that GPA dropped below 2.0. I’m profoundly disappointed that A&M refuses to consider the hardships.

I believe A&M Engineering & Math/Science departments aren’t concerned about student success. They have admitted more students than they can accommodate & they don’t care how many students they lose. The engineering retention rate at Texas A&M is VERY low. This is in spite of goals A&M Engineering Dean expressed 3 years ago. See paragraph below & my link to article by Engr Dean.

Here’s a quote from 2013 article by Katherine Banks, Dean of Engr: “We have a retention rate of 55 percent – 55 percent of students who come into freshman engineering graduate with an engineering degree,” Banks said of the engineering college. “That’s very low. Our goal is 75 percent by 2025.” Link for entire article (which is very interesting): http://www.theeagle.com/news/local/texas-a-m-crafting-a-bigger-better-engineering-school/article_6bfdda0a-8da6-5172-80bf-77114ec7108e.html

Based on the attrition my Aggie has seen & what I’ve heard from other Aggie moms, Texas A&M has not improved their retention rate since Dr. Banks (Engineering Dean) stated her goal in 2013.

A lot of things need to change with the College of Engineering at Texas A&M. Another 2013 quote from Dr. Banks (Engr Dean): “Right now, we have classes with 250 students and it’s an awful experience for the students generally and it’s an awful experience for the teachers — I’ve taught those classes, you can’t connect,” Banks said. “So blended learning is the right thing to do.”

I’m absolutely certain that many of the huge classes Dr. Banks said are “an awful experience” for both students & teachers are still the only options for a lot of courses. I believe even more of the huge classes are offered at A&M. Especially math/science courses like Calculus & Physics.

I know there are a lot of diehard Aggie fans & would love to hear your thoughts! My Aggie friends & all the Aggie students I know are amazing! My concern is that the “system” is broken at Texas A&M. Especially in the College of Engineering.

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I am not sure about A&M in particular, but I know that where I did my undergrad if a required class was full by the time that you registered you could email the professor and ask that they allow you into the class. It’s definitely worth a shot!

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@mademoiselle2308 …I highly doubt that would work in a department whose main goal is to pack them in and attain a magical 25,000 students. It doesn’t sound like any type of personal touch will be part of the experience there. At.all.

This is a quote from the article:

“”[At Google], they have a bus that drives up once or twice a week for haircuts," Banks said. “Students, I want them to live there. I want them to be so passionate about what they’re doing that they don’t want to leave. If I can feed them, if I can give them some laundry detergent to wash their clothes and if I can get them a haircut, then they are going to stay in my labs and they are going to learn more. It’s a whole new way of thinking about these buildings.”

As a parent who strives to teach their kid balance—exercise; different friends; different hobbies, etc.===the above paragraph is NAUSEATING. Why would I PAY $25,000 per year for my kid to have that type of experience? Why would I pay for them to nurture a frantic, intense, neurotic adult who no doubt ends up with some sort of psych diagnosis and co-morbid disease like hypertension, obesity, diabetes and others?

I get that this is perhaps the vision of the future. It just doesn’t necessarily sound like the future I think is healthy. Surely others share my concern?

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@carachel2 Yes, I share your concern! Packing them in is most definitely the goal! You nailed it! I’m appalled by the idea of 100% devotion to engineering and absolutely no balance in life. It’s a very disturbing goal, and absolutely not what I want for my child!

Texas A&M Engineering is already stretched beyond its limits & it will only get worse as enrollment increases toward the 25,000 goal. There are already many courses & labs that don’t end until 9:30pm. What’s next? Courses & labs that begin at midnight?

Instead of Dr. Banks’ goal of students “living there” (in engineering building/labs), I want my Aggie to have excellent professors who truly care about student success. Too many A&M profs are focused on research rather than teaching. To be fair, my Aggie has had a handful of excellent profs in 5 semesters at A&M. I want my Aggie to have a competent advisor who is helpful, makes time to meet for quality advising, & cares about my child’s success. Unfortunately, I’m paying $25,000/year & my Aggie gets very little support from professors & advisors.

Some Texas A&M Engineering students w/ exceptionally high IQs devote almost all their time to academics and can teach themselves. They’re exactly the type of students Dr. Banks wants because they’re willing to “live there.” These students are very successful academically. Many other students persevere, work very hard, and still struggle to survive & graduate.

Any student eligible for admission to A&M Engineering is very intelligent & motivated. A major problem is that the A&M “system” is crushing many of them (about 45% attrition rate from engineering…according to Dr. Banks). Frankly, A&M doesn’t care how many students withdraw & transfer to other universities.

Several of my Aggie’s friends who were engineering majors at Texas A&M transferred to other universities after 1-2 years. They’ve now been been accepted into their desired major. They are pursuing their goals that were unattainable at Texas A&M because the engineering “admissions to major” policy makes it difficult for many excellent students to get into the engineering discipline of their choice.

Without a doubt, Texas A&M has a great reputation with corporations. There are also many excellent universities for students who don’t survive the cutthroat, pressure-cooker environment at Texas A&M. Some Texas universities and especially out-of-state universities are great options. My youngest child attends an out-of-state university. Several of her friends who are engineering majors were offered very generous A&M scholarships. They decided to drive past Texas A&M and attend a university in another state. One of them told me she ruled out Texas A&M because of the “cutthroat environment in engineering.” She’s at an great university with smaller class sizes, excellent/caring professors whose primary focus is on teaching (rather than research), & superb one-on-one advising.

I truly hope that Texas A&M (and Especially the College of Engineering) will turn their focus back to quality instruction & student success. A&M students are amazing. Most have a very strong work ethic. Many are very involved in the community & give generously through volunteerism and fundraising. Aggies are the most polite students I’ve seen at any campus. I want more of these students to be successful at Texas A&M and I hope that A&M will implement policies to make that possible.

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I believe the COE at A&M believes that their high attrition rate is a function of their acceptance policy to the university which is why this year all engineering applicants are going through a holistic review process. They have said that they see many students that are just not ready for the rigor of the 1st year engineering course work based on their HS coursework. I’m sure having unprepared students in the program, those that didn’t take higher level math and physics in HS, is having a negative impact on the overall experience at the university. They appear to be in the midst of trying to correct for that.

With that said A&M probably isn’t the place for everyone and for some other universities may offer a better fit for them. I will also say that I have heard many that have had the exact opposite experience from what you outlined above so while I don’t discount your experience I would say that it is just one experience of a student at A&M and not the norm.

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As a mother of two engineering daughters, I can completely understand the feelings and the frustration – I remember, with both of my girls, getting a call from them during their freshman year after the second Physics 218 test was handed back. In each situation, there were just sobs at the other end of the phone because they had gotten a failing grade on the test (as did most everyone) and they had worked so hard to prepare for the test. They were questioning if they could handle this path. As a mom, your heart breaks and, because they had prior success in high school, you have no basis to understand how, if they really worked hard, this could be happening. It does happen though and, the truth is that some kids don’t make it through the program. The attrition rate is real (and the attrition rate was high at the large, well-touted engineering university I went to a million years ago) Both of my girls have watched some of their friends find other majors (although I don’t think they know of any that actually transferred once they got there) and they truly seem to love their new fields of study.

However, I also know that this site has lots of future engineering students/parents who this discussion may scare to death and I don’t think that should happen either. What I would say is that neither of the girls, looking back, would have chosen any other path. They and their engineering friends work really hard but they also had/have a great life balance – including sororities, student councils and other great service organizations. Just this last week, I watched the younger daughter, now a junior, perform in Chi-O’s SongFest – which required hours and hours of practice and probably 15 hours of performances/practice that weekend alone. She has time to have lots of fun and go to all the Aggie games so I would disagree that a healthy work/life balance has to be sacrificed. She hasn’t missed a home game and she and her close engineering friends can, for the most part, also maintain their GPAs and scholarships. .Another point they would make – they would tell you they have had a tremendously high level of instruction and great internship and career opportunities. Were all of the professors caring and great instructors? No, they have had a few awful ones but I would guess you could probably say that any where. At graduation, my older daughter also found some great professors she had to search out and thank for all the extra time they spent when she struggled with some concepts and especially for their guidance and advice as she was deciding on her new job.

Yes, it is a challenging program and at times it can be frustrating and draining but it also leads to mature, well-balanced, self-sufficient, successful adults and looking at my kids and their engineering friends, I don’t find any that could be described as " frantic, intense, neurotic adult who no doubt ends up with some sort of psych diagnosis and co-morbid disease like hypertension, obesity, diabetes."

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Sounds like not much has change since I was there working to get through. I do think the holistic review will help them weed out kids who probably should not even be in Engineering. Without a strong math and science background you will struggle. I know at Georgia Tech if you have not taken calculus your admissions application is weak. They basically want 100% of the students to have already taken AP Calc. I’m sure they feel that helps them ensure they students they take will be successful. The weed out courses back in my day were Calculus 151 and 152. Then it was always the first course in your major for me ChemE. 204. In my class 26 of 39 made D’s or F’s and had to retake it. We started with probably 500 or so in Chem E my freshman year and ~120 graduated with degrees. Some switch to other engineering majors and then others just went to something else.

I also have read that they only will admit 4500 at college station which is a good number but I suspect that at least a 25% will probably still drop out.

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Our son is a freshman at Texas A&M and he was assigned a registration date and time and by the time he was allowed to register all of the engineering courses that he needed - Math and Physics weren’t available. This is as of today so I don’t know what will be available by January 2nd. This string of emails has gone down the path of what if you aren’t prepared which is a key issue in engineering programs but our son is prepared and he can’t get a class. They accepted him into the engineering slot but there are no classes available. This is an even bigger issue in my opinion because it isn’t even about whether you are prepared or not or how large the class size is…the classes are closed to more students. It’s a tough position to be in and be stressed about one week before finals in physics, math, etc. It’s very frustrating.

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Very interesting discussion. Thanks all for your insights. This is the kind of information and things to think about you would simply not get anywhere else. And hopefully it will result in better and more informed decisions. Appreciate all of you taking the time.

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@RWwashington have him stayed glued to Howdy and refresh the page constantly. My son is also a freshman and had a 5:15 registration opening today. Before he left for his 4:10 pm class, he made the perfect schedule and everything he wanted and with whom, was open. He logged on right at 5:15 and everything was closed. Physics 218 was closed for the longest time but seats opened up here and there. You just have to be quick to get them. He now has everything he needs except Math 152, and nothing has opened this whole time. Lots of kids in lots of majors are experiencing this and new sections do open up eventually or a few seats might come available. Open registration opens at 6 am in the morning and I don’t think theirs closes tonight. My son is staying up until 11 then hitting the hay, and has an alarm set to check back in the wee hours around 2. With open registration hours away, surely there has to be more opening up. Tell him to stay vigilant.
It is stressful. Son had last Math 151 class exam Tuesday night, after his longest day, went home to study more for the Chem Lab Final Exam he had at 8am today. Now, waiting up to register for 5 hours.

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@RWwashington, You will likely see movement during open registration tomorrow and during add/drop week, but remember there are force requests, too. Last year, my son’s physics 218 class was cancelled a week before school started in the fall. He called his advisor, but she was unable to secure him a spot. He then contacted the physics department directly, stating it was a required class, and they forced him into a section. Labs are hardest as there is usually a maximimum number allowed due to fire code. Again spring semester last year, his econ class was cancelled on the first day of school (it was an honors section, and they only had 6 students registered and needed 10 in order to hold the class … why they didn’t email students earlier, I don’t know). This time, he contacted a specific professor and asked to be forced into a closed class, and it was granted. During registraton for the upcoming spring term, he found all technical writing courses (required for engineering) full. He’s hoping he can get forced into an online section of the class, but still checking Howdy regularly. Not sure what his plan B is (online over summer while working?). I do understand your concern – it’s puzzling how they plan to expand the engineering program when they can’t meet demand currently. Good luck to your student.

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@Axonta Engineering advising at Texas A&M is awful, and registration is an absolute nightmare.

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@mademoiselle2308 I think only advisors can “force” students into full classes. My Aggie’s major & minor have “no force” policies.

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Most (but not all) majors have a printed or online force request form and require students to work through them. I learned this morning that the majority give preference to their students. My son in engineering is required to take ENG210 Technical Writing, but after speaking to the English department, they said they will only grant forces to English majors – not engineering students, although it is still a required course. He was told they will not open any more sections (for engineering students, they have only 7 sections of 30 students each … clearly not sufficient). All of my son’s prior force requests have been done with the department or professor specifically, not with an engineering advisor (his engineering advisor said she was unable to force him into PHYS 218 last year, so he went to the Physics department and worked it successfully). Point is, work all avenues if you need the course.

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@RWwashington, the scenario you and @Thelma2 describe is indeed very frustrating. It should not be like that. Something is not working the way it should. I hope someone is seeing this and taking necessary action to rectify the situation. It does give the impression the intake is not aligned with actual capacity. I have to admit that I don’t know enough about other big schools to know if this is a universal problem.

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@lee6666 How long did your son wait to go to the Physics dept. to ask to be forced in. Open registration just started today so there is time left.

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@Thelma2, Freshman year, he got an email one week before classes started saying that his PHYS 218 class was being cancelled. That was it – now word on how to get in any of the closed sections. He started with his Engineering advisor, who said it was up to the Physics department whether to force him in. He called that same day. He is still trying to get his required ENG 210 (technical writing) class for this upcoming Spring semester, but the English department told him today they will only force English majors into the class, despite it being a requirement for his major too. He will continue to check Howdy daily. Some people have success through their advisors, but he has had better luck working with the individual departments/profs on forces. No time is too early, and I would work every angle to get the class he needs.

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@Thelma2, And isn’t it a bit crazy they’re all jumping through hoops to get their basic REQUIRED classes for next semester when they could be studying for finals? My son left the library 1 a.m. and set alarm for 5 a.m. only to wake up, access Howdy, and still see NO SEATS available. Fingers crossed some movement will occur soon.

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@lee6666 It is ridiculous. My son did the same exact thing today. He had his last Math 151 exam Tuesday night, went to study more, had his Chem 117 lab final exam Wednesday morning at 8a, 3 classes on Wed, had a perfect schedule built at 4, went to class and by the time he got out, all was gone. got up at 5 this am to get on Howdy. No seats as well. Granted, he had class here and there but I got a text at 11:38 that just said, “still”, meaning still no seats.
He has another final in ENGR 111 on Tuesday. I sure hope he gets this resolved so he can focus on finals. My son and I were just discussing COMM 210 because if he goes Aero, he will need that and it completes his UCC in that category. We noticed very few sections open and thought, surely, they will open more. I guess not. In investigating that class, he noticed the difference for the different sections only being for engineers. Son was planning on taking ENGL 104 and maybe 208 at JuCo (man, going IB Jr yr and switching back to AP Sr yr really messed up him having credits to claim). Now, I’m thinking he needs to take SPCH 1315 (common course number) with English.

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@lee6666 My Aggie’s advisor is also the advisor for his major. Web page for that major clearly says NO forces will be granted for his major. He’s meeting w/ advisor tomorrow & will ask about force (just in case). High turnover for advisors in his major. He’s only in 3rd semester of major. His first 2 advisors resigned. One left last spring, the other resigned very recently & abruptly. Students given less than 24 hrs notice; some had already booked online appts. A friend said her daughter & several of her daughter’s friends were told a certain course would be acceptable for their degree plan. New advisor told them earlier this week: “no, it won’t count.” These are seniors, scheduled to graduate in the spring. They’ve already registered for the course they were told is ok. They’re taking exams this week, completing senior design projects, & studying for finals that begin in one week (Dec 9). This level of stress at the end of the semester is NOT ok.

Note to potential Texas A&M students: advising is AWFUL. I’ve discussed this with quite a few parents of current & former A&M students. Incoming engr students attend a mass advising session in an auditorium. Not specific enough to their major. Regardless of what advisors say, GET IT IN WRITING. My son was “advised” to take a freshman course not needed for his major. Lots of wasted $$ and time! My Aggie is a junior & has never had an advisor with a technical background. A&M likes to hire recent A&M grads with majors like psychology & sociology to fill advising positions for engr majors. When my son was in high school & went for a campus visit, he met with an advisor in chemical engineering…a very bright, but also overly confident (arrogant) senior. He was even advising other seniors, not just incoming freshmen.

When I was in college, I had quality one-on-one advising from a professor in my engineering major. Except my freshman year, when a PhD chemical engineer did freshman advising. It was much smaller university than A&M, & one advisor did a fabulous job with freshmen. We visited that campus in 2013, and one-on-one advising is still the norm.

As a parent, I didn’t go into this expecting to pay $25,000+/year for:
1)subpar advising at Texas A&M and 2) not enough sections of required courses being offered. That’s the case not just for basic freshman courses, but also courses in majors that students have already been admitted to.

My son is minoring in Business. Because of high demand for business minor, no forces for those courses either. There’s a waiting list for most required courses for Business minor. Students who need a course in Spring semester to graduate will get top priority.

Thank God, my son’s dual credit English IV counts as a substitute for English 210. Otherwise, that would be YET ANOTHER course my son can’t get into. He’s very likely to be a part-time student in the Spring. Unless he adds 6 hours he doesn’t need (in an obscure major that has low demand).