C- now a failing grade in engineering

gstein
Mon, 29 Dec 2008 23:18:12 +0000

Now, will you be able to predict outcomes for every potential engineering student? Of course not, and I am not asking for perfection. I am simply asking for an admissions system that is better than the one we have currently, and the current system is pretty mediocre. When over half of the students who enter engineering programs nationwide don’t finish them, there is significant room for improvement.



That’s the only problem… you can’t predict everyone’s outcome by statistics. Recent history of similarly ranked students isn’t always accurate, and especially for state’s like mine. Under Texas state law, the top 10% of any public high school is accepted into any public U within the state. Now when you have schools like UT-Austin and TAMU-College Station within the state, many of the top 10% students who are satisfied going to those engineering programs (as they are both ranked in the top 20) don’t take any standardized tests seriously. Why should they? It’s simply required, not necessarily needed for acceptance. Just one example.

But yes, I do agree… the system needs tweaking. And as I have just finished my last semester of weed-out engineering classes, I have very recent personal experience with this travesty.