They go out the way to screw you over

College Majors Engineering Majors
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<p>There is a link on quite a few of the many threads on this site with the actual retention rates for almost every engineering program – I believe GP is the one who usually posts the link. The fact is that retention rates are much higher than most people think, and are definitely above 50%.</p>

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<p>This is a very well done study of this exact question/statement. Although somewhat dated, I would recommend that anybody with a nagging interest in the correlation between admission criteria (i.e. SAT scores, etc.) and ability to succeed in engineering.</p>

<p><a href=“http://fie-conference.org/fie97/papers/1068.pdf[/url]”>http://fie-conference.org/fie97/papers/1068.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>A few noticeable highlights in the study that I found interesting are:</p>

<p>“A notable fact is that the students with an A or B in
MA151 are over 100 points lower on SATM than students
with a C in MA173, yet they have the same retention rates.
Another interesting point, is that if the student with an A in
MA151 took MA161, based on SAT math score, there is a
high probability that student would could get an F in MA161.”</p>

<p>(MA151 is precalc, MA161 is calc1, MA173 is calc1 honors I believe)</p>

<p>“Notice that the average SAT scores for an A
in the spring are below the average SAT math scores for an
F in the Fall. Thus, the same person who may fail the
course in the Fall could get an A in the Spring.”
…
“However, getting an A
appears to be much “more likely” in the Spring than in the
Fall. This could be because the level of competition in the
spring is lower, because the students have a semester of
college experience, or because the student took MA151
he/she is better prepared to pass MA161 satisfactorily.”</p>

<p>So, for anybody that thinks grades can be eveluated on an even platform, no such luck. People who take a lot of these classes during the fall term will have much lower grades. Plan your schedule accordingly ;-)</p>

<p>Other noticeable things are that UG engineering students at Purdue have avg SATM scores of 650 during the years of this study. Below is a link to an interesting study relating IQ to SAT scores during years covered in the above Purdue study. </p>

<p>[SAT</a> Percentile Rankings](<a href=“http://www.eskimo.com/~miyaguch/sat.html]SAT”>http://www.eskimo.com/~miyaguch/sat.html)</p>

<p>And of course these will change by year, but with whatever data year was used, a 650 is the 86th percentile for the SATM.</p>

<p><a href=“College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools”>College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools;

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<p>My thoughts…</p>

<p>Looking around and knowing that 2/3 of those around you will be gone in 3 years is terrifying. That being said, even though I’m scared as hell, I think its best. Having intense competition and extreme rigor is mandatory. Navy Seals aren’t Navy Seals because they trained as your average seaman. They busted their butts and suffered. There is undeniable growth in trial and tribulation. As someone else stated, it easily seperates the men from the boys. I’m fighting through multiple AP classes right now and it sucks but I know I’m growing and am becoming a better student (much smaller scale than top 10 engineering obviously but you get my point). </p>

<p>I don’t know if I can afford the top 10 engineering schools that I got into quite yet but do yall think Virginia Tech will have a similiar experience?</p>

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<p>My grandfather said they did the 2/3 left right deal at Michigan when he got his degree. He was then appalled when I proceeded to tell him Stanford’s graduation rate (granted, he is not very happy with my decision to go here in the first place).</p>

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<p>hadsed and cyclone, I think you still fail to understand me. Nothing I have said argues for reduced standards or graduates who don’t know their stuff. I don’t really even expect anyone to read my posts, but at least read the OP’s. My only point is that some people don’t thrive well with the Social Darwinist approach that many of you seem to favor. I don’t hold your attitudes against you, I simply claim 1) that your approach may not be the only reasonable one, in fact there are very good programs that don’t use it and 2) the OP shouldn’t necessarily think he’s weird if he’s uncomfortable with it himself. And I don’t know about “separating the men from the meek”, we’re talking about engineering not special ops training. PS- I also wouldn’t jump to any conclusions about who designed Toyota’s sticky gas pedals, it could very easily have been one of your survivors.</p>

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<p>My father, a grad of Purdue said told me they did the 2/3 as well. Ive always wanted to go to purdue but after reading a lot of this and other things about purdue, im scared as hell.
(I probably have the lowest sat math to ever get into engineering at purdue)</p>

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<p>Oh and Oakland, Tech is a great school. the folks at Tech will probably tell you (if you ask) that they’re not as brutal with “weeding out” as they used to be, although some of that still survives. I think from what I’ve heard lately the environment is pretty reasonable. But actually, it is partly stories from former Tech students that cause some of my current ranting. I have heard many credible stories of weed-out courses that bore more resemblance to fraternity hazing (but carried out by the professor) than anything else, and these experiences include individuals who were successful, not just drop-outs with an axe to grind.</p>

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<p>dont be terrified, just expect to work your butt off, its part of life and engineering, not is given to you, you earn it. I love going to school here, the opportunity to go to a Big 10 Engineer School give me so many opportunities I normally would not have had. The job prospects with a Purdue Engineering degree are great</p>

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<p>wow i’m reading posts here saying 2/3 won’t make it or that there are 50% drop out rates in engineering, I think there is some pretty low quality info being passed around…those are exaggerations. </p>

<p>I should clarify I wasn’t speaking of drop outs before, that category isn’t important, they didn’t belong in engineering. I was speaking of the fact that engineering classes are designed to have a normal distribution and separate the top students from the average from the below average, and as a side result of small significance,yes, get rid of the small % of students that don’t belong because they’re not studying. I mean yea there were classes that were median at C- freshman year but that was just freshman year because there were students that didn’t study; after that they’re all median around B</p>

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<p>in the real world people die from miscalculations. a circuitry miscalculation gone wrong in the cockpit of a commercial airliner while the plane is traveling miles high traveling thousands of feet above sea level above the pacific ocean can mean death to hundreds of passengers, men, women, and children… all because of some miscalculation in the circuitry done by some careless engineer. but unlike school, you don’t just miss out on some points, many people die and the airline company goes out of business. this is just one example out of the many infinite grave examples i can think of.</p>

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<p>“cabhax, I understand your statement but I don’'t accept the premise that a “weed-out” philosophy correlates with a quality education.”</p>

<p>Such a philosophy would be unnecessary. In a quality engineering program, weeding out would happen automatically as the less-qualified students drop. The only question would be, when would this weeding out happen? It behooves everybody to make it happen soonest so many students aren’t wasting a year or two working towards a degree they will be unable to complete. There’s also the question of: are the classes being well-taught and challenging, or just badly taught and too difficult? This can be a separate issue from the weeding out concept.</p>

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<p>cyclone10, those are truly not a exaggeration, 50% dropout rate is normal in these parts. Part of it however is that fact that you see Business majors and Liberal Arts major doing significantly less work so it makes people feel sorry for themselves and drop Engineering.</p>

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<p>keep in mind “drop out” does not mean out of school. Most people fall back on business or liberal arts and still get their degree. </p>

<p>In fact, business people will generally make more money than engineers in the end even though they were the engineering drop-outs (go figure).</p>

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<p>BostonEng, there is another thread titled, ‘Why are we so stupid?’ I recommend you read that… in reply to your claim about business majors.</p>

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<p>Here’s the exact number, taken from the link I posted earlier in this thread.</p>

<p>“The figure shows that the graduation rates vary from
year to year, however, if you average the rates for the past
fifteen (15) years, on average of 78% of the entering
engineering students graduate with a degree from Purdue,
with 57% graduating in engineering.”</p>

<p>The data used in the study was taken between the years 1966 and 1990. Like I said, for more recent data GP (I think) has a link to the data. I’m pretty sure that graduation rates have gone up since this study.</p>

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<p>I stand corrected, I checked my school’s graduation rate and it’s less than 70%…so 50% drop out rate isn’t that much of an exaggeration, and considering some of the factors at my school i could see how it could be much great than 50% at other’s. For instance, U of Iowa grabs all the business, las, pre-med, pre-law, the only reason people come to my school is to study engineering or design(artsy design). I’m stunned nevertheless, that’s sad</p>

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<p>I would really like to see the new data…because my source is older too…and certain professors here are quick to point out engineering programs 10-15yrs ago were even more brutal. I mean my math professor didn’t even know how to use a TI-89, imagine getting a ph.d in math from germany all by hand…ranting I know…</p>

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<p>cyclone- just to clarify, the “old look to the left, look to the right” routine I mentioned, which professors at some schools really do apparently use as a scare tactic (intimidation tactic?), never was intended to be a completely accurate indication of the rate of engineering drop-outs. I’m sure even the way some professors tell it varies. Some might say “one out of three of you will be gone”, or some such. Bottom line, it’s a way that’s sometimes used to make a point, it’s not data.</p>

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<p>Interesting discussion.</p>

<p>I think having tough classes is good for you. As a double major in Physics I’m used to getting the high grade in class - 25%. Here’s how I look at it… as long as I’m doing better than most other people, I’d prefer my grade to be lower. If you’re getting 100% on every exam, you could probably be learning more.</p>

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<p>I haven’t been victim of scare tactics here… </p>

<p>they’ll say, ‘hey your going to fail, and then your going to struggle, and it’s ok…but don’t lose your confidence…don’t lose your confidence’</p>

<p>this is all I heard over and over for 4 yrs…and today I really believe in this, and it’ll give you so much confidence going into grad school or industry because if you succeeded in engineering then you’ve been in the situation where you’ve be knocked down hard but you got back up and put your confidence back together from being shattered into pieces, and you keep getting better. over and over…it’s like they say in wrestling, once you’ve wrestled you can do anything in life. </p>

<p>Resilience is the key to succeeding in engineering, maintaining your confidence…that’s the advice they offer here. </p>

<p>‘It ain’t bout how hard ya can hit, it’s about how hard you can get hit, and get back up and keep fightin’ - Rocky</p>

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<p>Although I understand where you are coming from, any team that designs an airplane (or any piece of technology where failure results in catastrophe), that can be brought down by a single mistake made in a single part of an aircraft that is only worked on by a single engineer with no layers of protection against system failure is guilty of far more than just a simple miscalculation.</p>