I’ve heard of some of the intense engineering schools are pass/fail first semester (MIT, Mudd, Olin - not sure if still the case). It could be true elsewhere too. This seems a good way to encourage collaborative spirit. It also could help adjustment to college, especially for students coming from less rigorous hs programs.
IE emphasizes the use of math and statistics to design efficient operations, processes, supply chains, etc…
But it does seem like it is not obvious that any kind of engineering is her main interest (as opposed to something that everyone else is telling her to do). Perhaps she won’t be “weeded out” due to rigor or GPA screens, but may choose to change to some other major out of interest. It is the case at many schools that changing from engineering to a science, social studies, or humanities major is administratively easier (in terms of admission to the new major) than the other way around (but check each school to be sure).
A school with many majors and not too much difficulty changing majors may be preferable for her. She can still enter college as an engineering major (to stay on track with the prerequisites), but having options to change majors easily can be useful for her.
Yes, Mudd is P/F first semester.
I’m a senior in Purdue Civil engineering. I’m also a female student if that helps.
Any good engineering program will be stressful. Any good college program at all will probably be stressful if a student wants to succeed. Avoiding stress at all costs is a sure fire way to limit your own potential imo.
Most of the people who got weeded out were failed because they didn’t put in the effort/ just gave up. We have tons of resources here for students in the FYE program (free supplemental instruction sessions, free tutors, mentoring programs, learning communities, office hours, etc). Most people just didn’t use them.
One thing that’s great about Purdue is their FYE program. You don’t have to choose an emphasis until late into second semester if you’re undecided. If you have over a 3.2 GPA in FYE, you pretty much can chose whatever emphasis you want (I think). We also have amazing career fairs and co-op/study-abroad programs.
In HS I had a 2160 SAT, 5’s in AP Physics C, 5 in AP Calc AB, 4 in AP Calc BC, and a ~3.6 GPA. Now I have a 3.93 GPA, 20 months of work experience, 5 months of undergraduate research experience, etc.
@Commiserating My D13 went to Purdue’s STEP camp the summer before her senior year. One of things they did with the students is take them around and show them some of the things various engineering disciplines were doing in research. When they got to the Biomed Eng. they were cleaning the areas on rats brains that they had attached electrodes to and the rats were squealing. She nearly passed out and had to leave the room. She is now a ChemE in her junior year (3 out of 5 as she is a 5 term co-op student). Biomed was not going to be her forte. D16, however, loves biology and dissecting, alas she’s not interested in engineering.
@Seirsly Can you please share with me 1) How you chose engineering and 2) how you chose Civil Engineering? D is adamant about applying to Purdue and Michigan so at least there’s some determination here. Also, I’m very encouraged that there’s a lot of support for FYE. Does that support extend throughout the 4 years?
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I loved physics, but hated how theoretical it was. My high school physics teacher introduced me to engineering.
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I don’t like chemistry (no ChemE), I don’t like blood and guts (no BiomedE), I don’t like electricity, magnetism, or programming (no ECE). Between MechE and CivilE, I liked the idea of engineering large structures such as sky scrapers or large bridges more than designing cars/planes. So now I study civil/structural engineering.
Your daughter can get involved in SWE’s mentoring program. I know that civil has a mentoring program that connects sophomores to seniors in our honors society. We have free tutors for junior level classes, and professors/TAs are required to hold office hours. Learning communities are just for freshmen in dorms. Usually you make a bunch of study-buddies in your classes. I personally am decently close with many of my professors and consider two of them my mentors, but I know many of my classmates do not have close relations with the professors.
I would recommend that you visit campus and talk to the engineering departments for tours. A lot of engineering departments have student ambassadors that can talk with prospective students. Purdue is a super friendly campus imo, everybody is pretty nice and helpful. But Purdue’s program is definitely stressful.
OP, I have a DD who is a 2nd year ME at Georgia Tech and absolutely loves it. In h.s., she did not have a SAT over 2K and a gpa over 4.0 and never got a 5 on any AP exam. She has done extremely well at GT, both academically (lots of honors) and socially. She wanted a college that was supportive of her desire to be an engineer, sports teams she could cheer for and students who generally seemed happy. She applied to a variety of colleges and had no interests in the ivies. She wanted a lot of “hands on” engineering and wanted a school that permitted straight admit to the engineering major and the ability to change majors easily. GT was the second college she visited and always remained her top choice. It has exceed all of our expectations.
I have the following points to add to this discussion:
- I suggest you and your daughter read the book "Is there an engineer inside you?" by Celeste Baine. You can get it on Amazon. The engineer recruiter at Clemson suggested it to my daughter and she really enjoyed it. It helped her focus and see that she truly had an engineer inside her. I recommend it to many students.
- See if there is a Society of Women Engineers chapter in your community and any outreach high school programs. Have your daughter make contact with them and talk to them about their college experiences. My DD found GT that way and the mentors were life-changing for my DD. Also make contact with the SWE chapters at the colleges you are thinking about. Many may have chat sessions, hosted events etc and help your daughter figure out if engineering is truly for her.
- See if your DD can shadow any engineers. My DD did a few shadow days and it helped her focus on what she wanted to do.
- Many colleges will have Women in Engineering Depts. or Women in Engineering Recruitment teams. Here is GT's. http://wie.gatech.edu/home My DD found that colleges who had such departments were much more supportive of their students and wanted to see them succeed. At GT there is a mentor program, Tea with the Dean, special opportunities, a WIE only career fair etc. For example, the head of WIE took my DD out to coffee this week when she had questions about career issues and gave her great advice. I call that very much hands-on support.
- As I mentioned above, my DD wanted to know she was in her engineering program when she was accepted. She didn't want any college where she had to have a certain gpa to apply to that major after sophomore year and didn't want any impacted program. At GT you can change your major as much as you want.
- I know it is late in the admission game for you, but one thing that really influenced my DD's decision where to apply was the kind of tour the college did. Many colleges have designed recruiters for potential freshman in either the engineering major or COE. She had it a point to always meet with them if they had them. Part of the meetings involved touring the labs, student competition centers and attending classes. Perhaps your DD can email those recruiters with her questions.
- We are a house of political science majors/degrees and we say our DD speaks a different language. As others have mentioned, engineering is a hard major and takes more effort. I believe my DD does well and has a nice balance with her social life (she does intramurals, is in a sorority, lives in a special learning community and is one of the leads for a competition team) because she stays organized, has good time management and seeks outside help. At GT this has taken the form of visiting profs. during office hours, attending plus sessions, getting help from the GT help desk, mentors, team coach etc. She doesn't get discourage when she gets a bad grade on a test and instead tries to figure out what went wrong. My DD has told me that some students complain too much about GT and she finds some students goof off, don't go to class and starts their assignments way too late. She finds GT students are very collaborative and want each other to succeed. She also makes sure to exercise and take time off to have fun. GT has a great graduation rate, retention rate and job after graduation rate so they must be doing something correct. Plus going to college in Atlanta is fun because there is always something going on.
I can’t remember all but she applied to Oregon State, LSU. Purdue, Clemson, SMU, University of Tulsa and Missouri Science and Tech.
Good luck.
However, while a 3.0 student at many other schools will have no issue getting into or staying in his/her desired engineering major, a 3.0 student at Purdue may be shut out of his/her desired engineering major.
I forgot to share one more resource: There are college profiles on the ASEE website (American Society of Engineering Education).http://www.asee.org/papers-and-publications/publications/college-profiles Look at the colleges your DD is interested in. Examine the numbers between years, if you see a drop-off each year then I suspect the college is one interested in weeding students out of their engineering program.
Re: ASEE profiles
Drop-offs are usually greater at schools with lower admission selectivity. But transfers in can confound the observations. Also, class standing by credits can be confounded by students entering with lots of AP credit and the like.
Now, if you find a school with:
a. relatively low admission selectivity
b. relatively low attrition rate out of engineering
c. good reputation for producing good engineers in the workplace and PhD students in engineering graduate school
then you may have found the a school that helps students succeed despite weaker preparation and without watering down the curriculum.
@ucbalumnus - I agree with your point about transfers and drop-outs. In my experience (I volunteer a lot for h.s. STEM programs) a lot of high school students say they want engineering because a) they think they can earn a lot of money with that major and/or b) their parents are engineers so it is familiar. When I inquire further as to what kind of engineering activities they do (whether formal or informal-I had a student once who liked to build then blow up things) and find they have done none, then usually I am not surprised in learn they changed their major in college. Like you mentioned, it is important that the “unsure student” attends a college that allows flexibility for changing their major. Also somewhere last year I read that New Mexico Tech and Missouri Science & Tech fit the bill for the factors you mentioned.
For the OP, I found this article which might be helpful. http://blogs.ptc.com/2012/08/06/high-dropout-rates-prompt-engineering-schools-to-change-approach/ Colorado at Boulder is mentioned as supportive as well as Purdue. Also I have heard very positive things about Smith. George Washington has a beautiful new engineering/science school and they are dying for out of state females. My students this past year got merit awards of $30k per year. Your D would definitely qualify for it.
@itsv, thanks for all the resources! Do you know why so many places increase their headcount Jr. year? I would expect more drop off then.
Also everyone, this might be opening a can of worms, but should we consider engineering where there’s no PhD program offered like Baylor?
I wouldn’t but there are a lot of people here who would disagree with me. At the end of the day, it comes down to personal choice. Personally, I value the greater opportunity to get involved with research as an undergraduate at research universities above the smaller class sizes. I got my bachelor’s degree at a large program at a research-oriented state university and I felt that, while the classes were large, I typically got exactly as much personal attention as I decided to seek (as opposed to getting it by default at a smaller school). I had the chance to do undergraduate research, as well, and it really helped me decide to do graduate school immediately after I finished as opposed to going into industry right away.
YMMV
Junior year is when many transfer students come in, particularly in states like California where many college students do their frosh/soph level work at community colleges and then transfer to universities to complete their junior/senior level work.
@Commiserating junior is when some programs allow their students to be accepted for that particular major. By this I mean that all students go in as undeclared eng. freshman and then get the grades, take the prerequisites and then apply for the particular major. Other colleges also may say that a student has to declare by junior year so that is when some students are cementing their major choice.
I think it is okay if there are no PH.Ds offered. My DD didn’t like Baylor when we saw it years ago because the engineering school was small in comparison to the science program and seemed like such an afterthought. I have heard that they built a new engineering school, living community too and students like it now. Plus your D could apply now and get some great merit money.
I also recommend your DD apply early action to her schools as possible. For Michigan and others this means Nov. 1. Engineering is very competitive and the programs fill up fast. Applying early action will increase her chances especially at a school like Purdue. Plus it makes senior year so much nicer to have the college decision settled by Jan. 1.
I also thought of a few more places. My DS graduated from Ohio State and loved it. His two best friends graduated from engineering. Both did not seemed stressed in college when I saw them and had lots of job offers. I also liked Miami of Ohio. It is a public ivy and looks like it should belong on the east coast. I liked the engineering school when I toured and with your DD stats she would get nice merit. Also look at Wisconsin at Madison and Minnesota at Twin Cities.
This is a lot more complicated than simply saying that schools that do or don’t offer PhD are better. Some schools that do not offer PhDs are significantly under resourced; they don’t have many toys. Swarthmore would be a good example. Some schools that offer PhDs do a good job at marshaling resources towards undergraduates. Lehigh is a good example.
The holy grail is finding a school that values undergraduate instruction and has enough resources, whether they offer doctorate or not.
For my money, I’d rather my son be in a class of 40 than a class of 1000 (yes, Intro to CS at UCB has 1000 students) and that can be independent of whether they have a doctoral program or not.
CS intro courses have had exploding enrollment at many schools. Both Stanford and Harvard are over 700 now. Check how the school is handling that surge of interest.
Very true. Some schools, like those mentioned take the massive lecture, smaller discussion, typically taught by a TA approach. Others offer more lecture time slots. The massive lecture typically isn’t seen at schools that don’t offer doctoral degrees.
Even small LACs have seen exploding CS enrollment. Harvey Mudd’s introduction to CS has about 200 students, plus another section of over 100 intended for cross-registration students.