What happens to students who are unable to get into their desired majors in secondary admission?

Parents Forum
1

What happens to students who are unable to get into their desired majors in secondary admission?

In other words, situations where the student enrolls as undeclared or as a pre-major, must pass a secondary admission process (e.g. GPA higher than good academic standing or competitive admission), but does not pass that secondary admission for the desired major (e.g. engineering majors at Texas A&M, Purdue, Virginia Tech, Penn State, Ohio State, North Carolina State, etc., or most non-direct-admit nursing majors). Or a variant where a student is “directly admitted” to a major, but there are high GPA progression requirements to stay in the major (e.g. nursing at Arizona State, engineering majors at Wisconsin).

For students in this situation, what do they usually do?

  • Stay at the same college in a different major.
  • Transfer to a different college where they can study the desired major.
  • Drop out of college entirely.
2 Likes
2

In my limited experience at Purdue, based on our active parent group and what I heard from D, most change major and a small handful transfer.

There are 17 engineering majors at Purdue and only 4-5 are at capacity any given year (so far anyway). If students aren’t admitted to their first choice, they’ll pick a related second choice. For example, BME is often at capacity so students will do mechanical or straight biological engineering.

Usually the transfer stories are from students who were trying to transfer into CoS or CoE from exploratory studies or a different college, which is an uphill battle. Admissions is up front with students that if they have a CoE admit elsewhere, they should pursue that. Exploratory studies really shouldn’t be offered any more to students as a back up who want engineering. It’s no longer a viable pathway.
(My prediction is that will happen in the next few years and they will just start rejecting more applicants.)

Related, I heard more stories of students struggling with all the math and physics and transferring to polytechnic for more hands on/less math heavy majors.

4 Likes
3

I would love to see a comparison between direct admit vs secondary admit program retention rates in engineering. My gut is that it isn’t that much different but I can’t find any studies.

My undergrad experience was that because we didn’t declare majors until second semester sophomore year, plenty of students declared something different than what they initially intended but that wasn’t tracked at all.

4

Having gone through this myself as a Graphic Design major, class of 1998, I can say:

  1. Cry, then panic.
  2. Talk to the chair of the department about what they recommend. In my case, he suggested an adjacent major of Art Production, but because I was sort of on the bubble, he agreed to let me continue in Graphic Design on a probationary basis for one more semester. If I didn’t cut it, I was out. I kicked into high gear and finished senior year with an award for Best Student Portfolio from AIGA Seattle (local chapter of national graphic arts professional organization). Phew.
  3. If I had not made it past that probation I would have continued in an adjacent major. But if that wasn’t a good option for me I may have considered transferring.

The hard part is knowing whether one should continue in an area they aren’t strong in, or if they should take time off to figure out what suits their skills better. I guess it would depend on the cost of the school and what other strengths the student has. My D22 is going to major in CS, and VT’s secondary admission process was one reason she turned them down. If by the end of her sophomore year it’s clear that CS is not the right path for her, we’ve told her we support her changing majors of course, but we may need to consider a transfer because an OOS B1G price tag may not make financial sense if her new career goal doesn’t pay as well.

2 Likes
5

However, there can be some cases where the student’s best strengths and interests are in the major they were rejected from, because that major is so overloaded. For example, consider a Texas A&M first year engineering student whose strengths and interests are in computing, but whose 3.6 college GPA was not enough to get into computer science or computer engineering during secondary admission. Or a pre-nursing student at some colleges who may be denied with a 3.8 college GPA.

2 Likes
6

One aspect of secondary admission processes is that they depend in large part on frosh year grades. This tends to have some selection effects that may not be the intended ones, and may be less relevant to how students do later in the major.

  1. Students who handle the transition from high school to college better tend to avoid frosh year GPA damage.
  2. Students from worse high schools may have to catch up more in frosh year courses, with GPA effects.
3 Likes
7

ITA. For those students, transferring would get them where they want to go.

8

The very high GPA thresholds are definitely worrisome. A 3.6 GPA in engineering is a very high bar, especially freshman year, even more so if courses are being graded on a curve. I know TAMU has a new initiative to get their engineering retention up to 75% by 2025 but that still seems awfully low to me.

As to the comment about freshman year grades - I hear what you are saying but on the flip side, math and physics are the foundations for the upper level engineering classes. A student really needs to have a solid understanding of calculus and physics before moving on.

Some schools are now offering summer start to students who had less rigorous preparation to close the gap so they can graduate on time but those programs cost money too.

2 Likes
9

However, secondary admission requirements are typically set on the basis of preventing overenrollment (versus department capacity), rather than based on some threshold of solid understanding. Also, in theory, C grades were supposed to mean solid enough understanding to move on to following courses.

For example, at Texas A&M, computer science, computer engineering, and biomedical engineering aspirants need to aim for a 3.75 GPA to pass secondary admission. But biological (agricultural), chemical, industrial, materials nuclear, and petroleum engineering essentially admit everyone who passes their classes (down to 2.0 GPA). It is hard to believe that the latter majors depend that much less on a solid understanding of frosh level courses than the former majors.

3 Likes