Every student that gets accepted to the engineering dept had/has great grades in HS, great ACT and SAT scores or they wouldn’t have been accepted into engineering. My son, class of 2020, just finished his first semester as a freshman and yes it is very hard to maintain a 3.5. I signed him up for tutoring classes at 4.0 right from the start for Chemistry and it helped immensely. This semester he is signed up for tutoring for Physics also. Its worth it to me and him.