<p>Two questions:</p>
<p>Are more people choosing engineering as a major?
What is the typical attrition rate for students who claim engineering as a major?</p>
<p>I read in the WUSTL forums that they filled their quota for their engineering school while others they are going to their waitlist to finish filling. I also read that the University of Alabama’s engineering school has tripled in size in the last ten years. If it’s true then is it the STEM emphasis coming to fruition or the fact that engineering is one of the few fields that hasn’t been completely decimated by the economy or relocated overseas?</p>
<p>Just curious.</p>
<p>I only know that a lot of my friends are going back for an engineering degree after finishing their science degree…</p>
<p>Yeah, a lot of us math and science majors end up doing engineering-related jobs. After a few years, you start to notice that many of the bigger engineering corporations favor folks with engineering degrees…that is why many of us math/science grads-turned-engineers take advantage of those M.Eng degrees or those more broad M.S. Engineering degrees that don’t require an ABET engineering degree for admission.</p>
<p>Page 27 of [this</a> PDF](<a href=“Page not found”>Page not found) shows information on degrees granted.
Pages 30-31 might help answer the second.</p>
<p>I can’t upload graphs here, but it isn’t hard to do yourself. Plug these data into Excel and you’ll see that engineering enrollment has increased substantially since ~2006. The number of degrees granted has increased at a lower rate; however, it isn’t clear to me whether this is because more students are washing out or simply because of lag as larger classes make their way through the four-year program.</p>