How competitive are the engineering school admissions at UMN and UW-Mad? I’m trying to determine some safe/match/reach schools, and am very interested in these two. I have a 3.92 weighted GPA (3.6 unweighted) and a 1520 SAT (790 math, 730 reading). I have 3 solid ECs, and am out of state for both schools.
Don’t forget to consider how difficult the secondary admission process is after you enroll.
Minnesota starts engineering students in a pre-engineering state. Technical GPA of 3.2 admits to any engineering major. Students with lower GPAs are admitted on a space-available basis by technical GPA, but many engineering majors have enough space to admit down to 2.0: http://www.advising.cse.umn.edu/ and http://www.advising.cse.umn.edu/cgi-bin/courses/noauth/apply-major-statistics
Wisconsin admits to major, but has progression requirements that weed out many students by technical and overall GPA, where all majors require at least a 2.8 technical GPA; most require a 3.0 technical GPA or higher, with some as high as 3.5: https://www.engr.wisc.edu/academics/student-services/academic-advising/first-year-undergraduate-students/progression-requirements/
For most students admitted to engineering at both with similar costs, Minnesota is more desirable because there is less risk of not being able to get into most majors.