UW has a reputation of being ultra competitive to gain admittance to a specific engineering major. With their change to offering Direct admittance to SoE for incoming freshman (but not major), we are wondering how likely my son could major in Mech if he’s admitted to SoE.
The UW SoE website describes the process and says most students receive one of their top two choices, but I’d love to hear from students about how stressful this is in reality. https://www.engr.washington.edu/current/placement
Since the process is new, there is little or no information from prior years about how competitive each major is, so competitiveness of each major is a big unknown.
It may also be more stressful due to use of subjectively evaluated essays instead of just grades or GPA like at some other colleges.
You may have to ask a dean or associate dean at the SOE for more info on what would be considered acceptable gpa for MechE, since this is the first year as ucbalumnus notes. It looks like other factors will be considered but gpa could be a first screen. MechE is pretty popular, so what would be the second or third choice.
@theloniusmonk is right that MechE is popular, but they have one of the largest number of slots, too.
You can see how many graduates they have per major by downloading the fact sheets for each major. https://www.engr.washington.edu/departments/inbrief