<p>So your school didn’t have engineering distribution requirements taken sophomore year, chosen from among: intro electrical systems, intro chem e, statics, dynamics, engineering thermodynamics, several others? Mine sure did, and these courses were prerequisites for the major courses taken later. I would not want these all compressed into two years, if yours was I feel sorry. There were also a course or two freshman year attempting to serve as intro to the profession. People in 3-2 must have to jump right into an engineering specialty area with no prior directly applicable coursework, other than general sciences, and fewer intro experiences, no engineers on campus to even talk to about it, before choosing a major. My engineering school did not work that way, and I feel sorry if anyone else’s actually did. </p>
<p>To take a trivial example, my nephew entered Columbia intending to be a chem e, then took intro chem e courses soph year and bombed them. Still had time, at that point, to shift gears and fulfill a different major, at the depth of coursework he desired. If he was just finding out junior year that chem e was not for him, he would have had that much less room to swerve otherwise. Without taking more time, that is.</p>
<p>Probably many people just finish out, given the $$ implications, but have a less optimal exposure to engineering as the tradeoff.</p>
<p>I don;t know about your undergraduate college, but I’d been under the impression that the sequence I experienced was fairly typical, for ABET accredited engineering programs.</p>
<p>I just did a quick Google, first school I looked at was Purdue, here is their course sequence, note the # engineering courses taken years 1 & 2, sure looks similar to mine. I count eight (or nine) engineering department courses offered or required in the first two years, many of which are prerequisites for later courses, and which are not available at an LAC. This has obvious implications for the depth you can go into higher level courses, and the engineering electives and design courses you can take senior year.
<a href=“Undergraduate Program at Purdue ME - Mechanical Engineering - Purdue University”>Undergraduate Program at Purdue ME - Mechanical Engineering - Purdue University;
<p>You’re saying there is no penalty on the engineering side from cramming as much as you can of this into 2 years, when these courses are prereqs to what you have to, or may want to, subsequently take? I respectfully do not agree with that at all. Even best case, cramming five engineering courses at a time in a semester might slay many people, they are hard.</p>