Which Engineering Schools support students more than weed them out?

@eyemgh For what it’s worth, @Commiserating is the OP.

Both Texas A&M and Clemson admit to general engineering; students enter specific engineering majors later.

At Texas A&M, students must apply to between three and five majors in an apparently competitive admission process (but there is no indication how competitive it is for each major): https://engineering.tamu.edu/academics/advisors-procedures/entry-to-a-major/application-recommendations

At Clemson, it seems rather difficult to find any information on whether declaring a specific engineering major is a formality for students who have completed the prerequisites and are in good academic standing, or if there is a competitive admission process or higher GPA requirement for any major: http://www.clemson.edu/ces/departments/ge/

Contact the schools if you need more information on this type of thing. Having a high barrier to entry for a major is effectively a weeding process.

Derp, derp! Oops! :">

Don’t know anything about Clemson but feel free to ask or PM about any specific TAMU questions.

Also, could someone comment on UT-Austin engineering in terms of supporting and mentoring students?

I’ll take a guess that since huge numbers of applicants try to gain admission to UT Engineering, the program must be doing something right.

@classicrockerdad -

Arguably the most influential engineer of the 20th century was a man named Vannevar Bush. He received his Phd from MIT in 1916 where he later became a professor, VP and the first Dean of Engineering (in 1932). He is largely credited with building the government/university relationship that funds the majority of research performed at universities today.

A lesser known fact is that Bush received his BS and MS degrees from Tufts.

My advice to any aspiring engineer is to focus on the last few sentences of the following paragraphs. They hold the secret to success in engineering and oftentimes they are lost in a misguided pursuit of “rigor”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vannevar_Bush
http://www.ibiblio.org/pioneers/bush.html
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-think/303881/

@Mastadon I am not really sure why you feel the need to defend Tufts here, as I don’t believe anyone was putting the school down, nor do I see how Vannevar Bush is germane to the preceding discussion (which had essentially run its course). Of course there are more aspects to being a good engineer than just technical competence. Life in general requires learning how to effectively deal with people. That said, you aren’t going to be a good engineer by being good with people but clueless on technical topics, either.

Not defending Tufts at all. Tufts is what it is. It is often referred to as being kinder and gentler than MIT.

The point is that if you are willing to take another year and get a masters, then going to one of these “kinder, gentler” schools (which is really what the OP is looking for) can be less painful and more effective - depending on your personality, your interests and your career objectives.

Not sure if I represent a majority, but for technical track positions, I tend to recruit from MIT (and other schools) at the masters rather than the bachelors level.

Look up the returning sophomore rate of the school.

However, that does not capture those who are “weeded out” but stay in school in another major. It is also the case that retention rates (both for the school overall and in engineering majors) tend to be mostly correlated to admission selectivity.

http://profiles.asee.org/ can give some idea of how students progress through class levels at each school (look up “enrollments by class” for each school). However, beware that comparisons can be confounded by how schools define each class level (e.g. by credits, by number of semesters, with or without AP credits, etc.) and the entrance of transfer students bulking up the junior and sometimes sophomore levels.

Okay, great advice-givers, D and I need to somehow narrow the list of acceptances to top 3 to really focus on, so could I get your advice once again?

UT-Austin has what seems like an excellent Women in Engineering support group, and “GE” classes that are really Supplemental Instruction for classes like DiffE, Chem, Physics, etc. There seems to be lots of support opportunities there for first year, not sure yet about after that yet. Since they admit to a major, in theory they are picking students that demonstrate that they could be successful in their programs. They still have about a 40% engineering wash-out rate though. D has been accepted to Mechanical Engr (Honors) there.

Accepted to TAMU first year engr, but not so sure they have as much support for students. They do have off-campus tutoring that I’ve read about here, but D won’t have a car and their new location might be a hike. Need to really dig more into their support for students.

My question is: Is there any significant added value in Purdue (Honors) or Michigan over UT-Austin and TAMU that might negate the hassles and costs of OOS? I still want strong support for students to help them be successful.

For the OOS price differential you could hire a bunch of private tutors.

Excellent point.

BTW, my question relates to their Engr curriculum, how they teach, professors, extra support, etc. Anything goes here. Bottom line: Any need to justify the OOS hassles and cost? Should we just cross them off and focus on Texas universities?

I’m certainly late to the party on this thread, but I’ll add my 2 cents because the “weeding out” issue was a concern for my DD ('15). The competitive vs collaborative environment was also a consideration. She landed at University of Southern California/Viterbi School of Engineering and it’s been a good fit. They focus on collaborative learning (engineers in the real world work in teams) and provide good support for students. If I recall correctly, when I asked a Viterbi admissions rep about the weeding out issue, he claimed that over 90% of students who come in as engineering majors end up graduating as engineers. And it’s a very rigorous academic program.

The general support and environmental at a school is really important for all students, but particularly for high stress STEM majors who need to be comfortable with high level math & science problems. Best of luck as you make your decision!!

Seems like she is in her major at UT Austin, which is an important distinction.

At Texas A&M, admission to engineering majors is competitive, and mechanical engineering is one of the more competitive ones. Go to https://engineering.tamu.edu/academics/advisors-procedures/entry-to-a-major and look at the student profile links at the lower right. For example, the spring and fall 2015 mechanical engineering profiles are:
https://engineering.tamu.edu/academics/advisors-procedures/entry-to-a-major/resources/analysis-spring-2015-admission-cycle/meen
http://engineering.tamu.edu/academics/advisors-procedures/entry-to-a-major/resources/analysis-fall-2015-admission-cycle/mechanical-engineering

In other words, the risk of being “weeded out” of the mechanical engineering major is higher at Texas A&M (need a GPA in the high 3s to be admitted to the major) than at UT Austin (need overall and technical GPAs at least 2.00 to stay in good standing).

I did see those stats at some point and about had a heart attack. Then I saw the summer stats, which as I understand it, is when the students apply for their majors after First Year Engineering. It shows a 75% acceptance rate, with GPAs of 2.6 - 4.0. It looks like about 88% got in if they provided additional information on their application.

It is kind of nice to already have a major though…

We’ll evaluate UT vs. TAMU soon. At this point though, I’m wondering if Purdue and Michigan should draw our attention and money away from Texas.

Purdue and Michigan are both similar, large state research universities, neither of which are known as bastions of undergraduate teaching. I’m not in any way saying ANYTHING bad about either of them. They both produce lots of very good engineers. I just think that given her great situation at UT, the teaching and support for undergraduates won’t be substantially better and could POSSIBLY be worse at the others and cost lots more money… Again, nothing negative about Purdue or Michigan. They are all great programs. Why pay more? Go Horns!

Both Purdue and Michigan admit to first year pre-engineering, like Texas A&M. However, declaring a specific engineering major at Michigan is a formality after passing (with C or higher grades and a 2.0 or higher GPA) the prerequisites: http://www.engin.umich.edu/college/academics/bulletin/rules/registration . At least some engineering majors at Purdue have higher GPA requirements: https://engineering.purdue.edu/ENE/Academics/FirstYear/T2M

Michigan is rather stingy with transfer credit, so a student who took college courses while in high school may be forced to repeat what she already knows if she attends Michigan.

If she has direct admission to her major at UT Austin, it looks like that is the best choice if minimizing the possibility of being “weeded out” and low cost are important.

Probably because USC currently has high admission selectivity and has reserve capacity within the engineering departments to avoid having capacity constraints on majors within the engineering division (although the engineering division as a whole may limit transfers from other divisions). Stronger incoming students are less likely to wash out of the major or the school, and the lack of capacity constraints on majors means that the only students who leave the engineering division are those who leave voluntarily due to changing interests or do very poorly (worse than 2.0 GPA or worse than C grades in required courses).