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notre dame AL · 05-07-2008, 05:22 PM

I'll add my 2 cents--Engineering is HARD! And, while I am not making excuses for your son, Engineering is HARD!!! Currently our son is a Soph engineering student at ND and while it is not GA Tech, I can tell you that it is my impression be it GA Tech or any other engineering school, the first year is basically a weed-out year. If he is serious about engineering, he will regroup and refocus and forge ahead. He has to examine where he stands and what can be done to improve. From our experience, son's Intro to Eng class in the fall sem of his freshman year started out with 400+ students (each in different sections, of course). Three weeks into the course many had dropped out or were going to drop out of engineering. By second semester, the intro to eng class was down to about 150+. So that by the end of his freshman year, there were maybe 125 or so left in the freshman engineering class (give or take). Yes, the Calc is extremely difficult (again weed out courses as most are taught from engineering perspective as is physics and chem). As another poster mentioned, once he begins to start taking classes in his true major(aero, civil, mech, etc), I think it will make a huge difference. Engineering is such a rigid, structured program with not much wiggle room in terms of courseload and variety of classes (unlike liberal arts). In fact, most of son's classes have all began at either 8:30 or 9:30 am vs his liberal arts major friends having classes that can be scheduled at 11 am. His lab classes have been killers as well. Try to have him truly examine whether he wants to continue in engineering. And, as previous posters have also mentioned, attend ALL study sessions, study with a group, and most importantly meet with professors when those low test grades come in. It does make a difference. Unfortunately, engineers don't have much of a party life on a college campus and because of their workload/study hours, most of their friends tend to be engineers, which I suppose, offers some sort of support system. Hang in there and listen to your student-you both can hopefully come to some good solutions/conclusions about engineering!

05-07-2008, 05:22 PM	#22
notre dame AL Member Join Date: Jul 2006 Threads: 21 Posts: 600	I'll add my 2 cents--Engineering is HARD! And, while I am not making excuses for your son, Engineering is HARD!!! Currently our son is a Soph engineering student at ND and while it is not GA Tech, I can tell you that it is my impression be it GA Tech or any other engineering school, the first year is basically a weed-out year. If he is serious about engineering, he will regroup and refocus and forge ahead. He has to examine where he stands and what can be done to improve. From our experience, son's Intro to Eng class in the fall sem of his freshman year started out with 400+ students (each in different sections, of course). Three weeks into the course many had dropped out or were going to drop out of engineering. By second semester, the intro to eng class was down to about 150+. So that by the end of his freshman year, there were maybe 125 or so left in the freshman engineering class (give or take). Yes, the Calc is extremely difficult (again weed out courses as most are taught from engineering perspective as is physics and chem). As another poster mentioned, once he begins to start taking classes in his true major(aero, civil, mech, etc), I think it will make a huge difference. Engineering is such a rigid, structured program with not much wiggle room in terms of courseload and variety of classes (unlike liberal arts). In fact, most of son's classes have all began at either 8:30 or 9:30 am vs his liberal arts major friends having classes that can be scheduled at 11 am. His lab classes have been killers as well. Try to have him truly examine whether he wants to continue in engineering. And, as previous posters have also mentioned, attend ALL study sessions, study with a group, and most importantly meet with professors when those low test grades come in. It does make a difference. Unfortunately, engineers don't have much of a party life on a college campus and because of their workload/study hours, most of their friends tend to be engineers, which I suppose, offers some sort of support system. Hang in there and listen to your student-you both can hopefully come to some good solutions/conclusions about engineering!