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<p>It’s important to know your place in the world. Every college is trying to attract employers based on a brand. Some compete on volume of graduates, some compete on quality of graduates, some compete on price. There’s nothing insulting about it, that’s just fact. UGA recognizes the competitive market of the engineering field in Georgia and has a strategy to capture a market that’s currently under served. There’s nothing wrong with that.</p>
<p>I would disagree with the statement that GT doesn’t have any ‘Wow!’ breakthroughs. They’re very focused on engineering and you might feel like a lot of ‘wow!’ breakthroughs would be a little more towards the pure sciences (in an applied sense still (sometimes)). GT’s physics program is fairly good but other sciences aren’t GT’s specialty. Having said this, there are still great achievements that come out of there and they’re not manufacturing Nobel Prize winners but really… who is? Caltech. For a school that doesn’t get the recognition that MIT, Stanford and Caltech get, it does very very well in its research.</p>
<p>Oof so how do I go about finding a major that’s for me? Math and sci…</p>
<p>You’re really behind the eight ball on this one. You choose a career, then a major, then a college. </p>
<p>That said, you need to figure out a career in the next few weeks. Seriously, every six months you wait probably costs you about $30,000 in lost salary, alone. Stop everything other than classes, eating, and bathing and think through what you want to do with your life, and I don’t just mean “I like science and math…” Do you want to work outside or inside? With your hands or with a computer? Do you want to deal with others or work primarily alone? Do you want to design something that’s never been done before, or are you better at following direction and organizing? Can you work well alone? In teams? As a team leader? Are you able to facilitate teams that you don’t necessarily lead? Do you pay close attention to detail? Are you self-motivated or do you need close supervision to stay on task? Are you able to multitask? Do you care more about salary or quality of life? Are you OK traveling? And that’s just off the top of my head. </p>
<p>Think through things like that and use it to determine an ideal career. Then choose the major that best gets you towards that career. Then choose the college that can give you the best education in that major. And there you go.</p>
<p>I’m reluctant to agree with Banjo here. Yes you’ll need to set some goals and whatnot, but it’s not absolutely imperative you figure it out now. Take the general requirements, make sure you take calculus sequences and physics and hey, why not take a programming class (it’ll only help you in science and engineering).</p>
<p>If you know that your general direction will be in the science or math-ish place then you’ll be fine for the next year or so. You don’t have to make any decisions yet… but if you’re thinking about GT make sure you look at their transfer website because they require the following classes: English I and II, Calc I and II (and preferably linear algebra), Physics I, Chemistry I, and depending on your major you may have to take an extra course in addition to that before you transfer. You also must have 30 finished credit hours before you transfer.</p>
<p>Just stay on top of it, keep thinking about it, you’ll be fine.</p>
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<p>You struggle through Calc II, Physics, and CS then decide to be a finance major. Now your GPA is shot and you’ve taken several classes that you don’t need.</p>
<p>Remember: “I like Math” is different to different people. For some that means “I like real analysis and stochastic programming” and for others it means “I was pretty good at geometry and pre-calc in high school.”</p>
<p>You don’t have to have it 100% figured out - but you need to be 90% of the way there. If you know you want to be a chemical engineer, it’s OK if you haven’t figured out if you’ll be a process control expert, a separations expert, or a reactor design expert. Heck, it’s even OK if you haven’t figured out if you want to be a chemical or mechanical engineer. However, if you haven’t decided between major fields, like if you’re between CS, engineering, medicine, and business, then you’re in big trouble. You need to figure that out right now.</p>
<p>Eh, if you can’t do physics, calculus, or computer science then I doubt you’d do well in finance anyway. Regardless, I see your point but I’d like to point out that this student has figured the general direction he’d like to go. That means that he can take general education requirements which will not be a waste and, at most, he might have one or two wasted classes but really, how is learning to program a waste? Or learning extra maths? Physics? At the very least physics will count for a science elective and calculus is almost always required by any STEM related majors.</p>
<p>I think you’re exaggerating, and honestly I’m not sure how much it’s helping. He has at least one or two semesters before he has to choose because of the way American universities are set up in the first place (again, general education requirements make ‘experimental’ sort of courses almost always count).</p>
<p>As much fun as it might sound, a C in CS isn’t going to help anyone get into med school if that’s his ultimate decision. </p>
<p>And he doesn’t have a “general direction”. Read his posts. He jumps from Engineering to Science to CS to Math to Business to Medicine. Next will be Law, I’m sure. These are very different paths.</p>
<p>I know it’s fun to say “yeah, don’t worry… college is where you’re supposed to figure things out” but it doesn’t work like that in reality unless you want to be an Art History or General Studies major or spend 6 years earning a BS. Let’s see how it works in reality: this guy is a first semester freshman at UGA. Let’s say he decides to be a mechanical engineer. He’ll apply for Fall 2011 transfer decision (it’s too late for Spring 2011), and he’ll start at GT in Spring 2012 (if accepted). At this point he’s already missed three semesters at GT. Even if he took all the classes he could at UGA that will transfer and are applicable for GT ME, he’s now a semester behind the GT engineering students, or costs about $30,000 in lost salary. Not only that, but he doesn’t have a Summer 2011 or Summer 2012 (who interview in Fall 2011) internship. This puts him way behind the other students in terms of employment potential at graduation and probably costs about $10,000 of starting salary.</p>
<p>Let’s say he delays the decision for a year. Now he’s 1 year, or $60,000 in lost salary potential and without an internship, probably won’t have a job at graduation (so that $60,000 might be a moot point).</p>
<p>well I never mentioned CS. But yes right now I’m stuck between many things. Its hard when you like so much… I understand your point but this is actually one of the reasons I picked uga over tech. It offered more majors and the higher gpa could be nice for grad school (whatever that may be). about the science/math classes hurting my gpa… they wont, I guarantee it. I’m trying in college and thus far have had a great start. A on honors chem test. 99 on calc 2 test. I’m just trying my best. Taking the courses I enjoy. But ok anyhow you’ve really made done excellent arguments. This weekend I’m going to take a lot of time to plan out a future career goal and the such…
sorry for grammar/spelling. On my phone.</p>
<p>so am I really as screwed as you make it sound?</p>
<p>Oh and I most definitely want to stay at uga over tech. Happier here…</p>
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<p>Not if you react quickly. If you wait another semester or two before really figuring out what you want to do, you’re looking at either a delayed graduation or settling on a major. I didn’t intend to make it sound like you’re screwed, I was just trying to express a sense of urgency.</p>
<p>As far as UGA vs. Tech, if you intend on a technical major, particularly engineering, staying at UGA will greatly reduce your options in terms of graduate schools (not to mention that you’ll limit the potential majors you can pursue). I would delay making a decision on the school until after you’ve chosen the major.</p>
<p>Thank you everyone for your input.
I’ve been thinking over this quite a bit and I would like to know what you think about this idea. My main goal is going to med school. Because of how hard it is to get in I would like to do engineering as a backup plan. I figure with a solid engineering degree I could try for med school but if that doesn’t work out I could stay in engineering or go on to get an MBA down the road. I would like to be as competitive as possible so would it be a good idea for me to stay at uga under bio engineering focusing on core classes and later transfer to tech as a BME major, say my junior year? I imagine the boosted gpa could be nice/helpful. </p>
<p>I’ll probably post in the premed major thread or one of the specified schools once I have access to a computer. But yeah please let me know what you think of this. Thanks</p>
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<p>First, when you transfer from UGA to GT your GPA will be reset. Second, not all UGA classes will transfer to GT. Third, by spending two years at GT, you’ll be significantly behind on major classes. </p>
<p>GT is also a very different school than UGA and requires the development of different study habits and skills. The longer you spend at UGA, the less developed you are and the more developed the other students (you competition for grades) are. It will probably be very difficult to earn good grades. Remember that kids in high school that sat in the front of the room and knew the answer to everything the teacher asked? Tech is a school where 90% of the students are “that kid”. And since grades are set on a curve, you’re competing with him for grades.</p>
<p>I would not go to GT engineering for the sake of a backup plan. Your life will be much, much more difficult and your GPA will be much, much lower. If you’re interested in a backup plan, go to UGA as a business major.</p>
<p>In terms of graduate school, I don’t think that graduating from UGA over GT will be much of a handicap, if at all. I know for a fact that lots of people can get into top engineering schools without having gone to top schools for engineering, and some get in without even having majored in engineering (read: physics). I know of one particular case personally, a student was a physics major at CMU and was accepted to Caltech for engineering. It is possible, and maybe even more likely if you get a physics degree because you’ll end up with a higher GPA. This is a good thing because if you want to go to medical school, you also need a very high GPA plus the couple of bio and chem requirements.</p>
<p>OP, I say major in physics because it seems to fit perfectly with both your plan for graduate engineering and for medical school, that way you don’t have to choose now. Infact, if you decide to do research at UGA, which has a decent department as I’ve said, in biophysics or something of the sort, you’ll make yourself look very attractive to medical and engineering graduate schools.</p>
<p>As for being behind in curriculum at GT… that’s not true. GT has a program called RETP where basically there are 10 or 15 schools in the state that take in ‘pre-engineering’ students for 2 years and then have them transfer to GT if they have a 3.0 or above. At GPC (Georgia Perimeter), and I know this for a fact, most of the students go on to GT and graduate with 3.5+. For this reason, GT loves GPC because they provide them with students who do so well, the best out of all the RETP schools. One thing about GPC: it’s a community college! It’s basically a joke (except for the engineering classes), yet these students do so well at one of the toughest schools in the country. I doubt that if you went to UGA you’d be so much worse.</p>
<p>Personal advice: don’t go to GT, you don’t need to if you’re planning on not majoring in engineering. If you do major in engineering, going to GT is still a bad idea because there’s no way you’re going to get into med school (unless you’re some kind of super genius or if you work insanely hard, then it’s somewhat possible, but I’m assuming you want a social life…).</p>
<p>Once again, thank you.
It all makes sense to me; I’ll take GT out of the picture, which is fine by me.
I’m not so sure about physics - my goal would be med and then business. I just thought that engineering would allow me to go into either. So what it really comes down to is picking something here that could give me the opportunity to pursue one or the other. I’ve heard you can go into business under any major, but idk.
I’ve heard good things about the genetics and biochem programs here. Also I wonder if a double major would be needed?</p>
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<p>That’s just bad advice. Is it possible to get to a top engineering school from a 3rd or 4th tier school? Sure. But it’s a heck of a lot harder. A perfect or near perfect GPA, excellent undergraduate research, and a letter from the dean of your program are a starting point. </p>
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<p>That’s very, very wrong. First of all, unless you have access to the transcripts of the entire study body, you can’t know that “for a fact”. And even if you did, I have seen a large enough sample size to know that it’s simply not true. The majority of MIT transfers to GT don’t graduate with a 3.5+ GPA - that’s bordering highest honors which is the top 1% of graduates. In fact, make that GPA 3.0 and it’s still not true. </p>
<p>The problem with transfer students is that they don’t have the same fundamentals in their base classes and have to cram major courses (which require more work) into a shorter time period (instead of 2 to 3 per semester with electives thrown in, they take 4 to 5 per semester). It’s a difficult path.</p>
<p>What about considering Econ?</p>
<p>Would that cover my basic prereqs?</p>
<p>No, you would need to take addition pre-med classes, however it would put you in a good position for business school while still giving you a math-based education.</p>
<p>There are not that many students transferring from the GPC system to GT, first of all. Second of all, there are professors that work at both GT and GPC, experienced professors from other good schools, etc. Third of all, by the time you’ve transferred to GT, you are in a good position to do research with the MANY researchers at GT. You’re also eligible for internships. Saying that you need a perfect GPA to get into top 10 top 20 schools is just… wrong. I heard those words from a professor himself, a person who is in a position to view transcripts and statistics as well as talk to people from both schools about student performance. I’m also wondering… if you don’t have access to those statistics, how do you know about MIT students at GT? Furthermore, the average GPA in the entire school is close to 3.0… so I’m not sure what you’re talking about or where you’re getting your numbers from.</p>
<p>Also, to clarify, when I said going to UGA versus GT will still get you into a top school, that was with regards to majoring in physics then going on to graduate engineering.</p>
<p>And I think economics is a good idea, and you’ll probably be satisfied with regards to science since you’ll need to take [for most schools] two of each type of science and obviously math classes for both med and econ.</p>