ecnerwalc3321

So I am interested in applying to graduate school in the near future. Next semester will be my senior year. While constructing my schedule, I felt that I wanted to take more liberal arts classes that I've been missing out the past couple years. I was wondering how admission committee's at top-tier engineering grad school will view this. Do they want balance (ie engineering mixed with a little humanities) or do they want rigorous courses in the sciences with as high a GPA as possible? In other words, should I fill my electives with math and science courses or go with what I want to take (humanities)? Thanks.

ecnerwalc3321

bump. lol

uefastation

I would say take whatever you want to take as long as you take the required coursework to fulfill your degree plan. Your only an undergrad once, so take what you want while you still have the freedom to do so.

JohnWillkins

I hope they don't look at that poorly, since my schedule has been all physics/math/engineering for the first two years, so the latter two have at least 1 or 2 humanities class per quarter by requirement (since I need x number of hours in the social sciences/humanities classes). Since you are graduating then you've obviously fulfilled the requirements for whatever your engineering major is, I don't think they will question it (unless of course you also don't have some sort of work showing interest in the field like research, lab work, internships, etc).

nmike

I guess they could see it as unfocused and at the worst give a vibe that you are not sure what you want to do. Also, instead of those courses they could ask why you didn't take grad level coursework or other advanced courses relevant to your field. I see that as BS though and I hope they don't actually think like that.

I'm going into my second year and have already finished virtually all of my general education but plan on taking more courses that interest me outside my engineering major. If a grad school seriously rescinds my candidacy because I took the scuba diving sequence, rafting, extra economics course, art, an extra English/writing class (although those last two could be spun as relevant), etc. instead of more math/science then I might not want to go there anyway!

In all seriousness, the point of a university education is to develop well-rounded people so I'm sure it's fine but would appreciate the keen insights of anyone here that reviews grad school resumes or has other experience with that process.

nshah9617

I went through the graduate process and I'll throw in my 2 cents.

First, at the end of the day your Major GPA and then your overall GPA are the main backbones of your application. Granted, you can't fail all your English/humanities classes but a stellar major GPA will show your graduate school that you are a competitive candidate.

As for "scheduling'--it depends on the graduate school but most programs will want a strong engineering background. Some programs (like Columbia) would like to see some leadership or communication roles but at the end of the day you are applying for engineering graduate school and you need a HIGH major GPA.

Finally, why not submit your transcript before you take those humanities classes? Also, graduate schools want to see some direction--why not do some undergraduate research in your spare time as well?