Years ago there was a parent on CC ranting about her kid not getting accepted to the flagship U for engineering. Kid was accepted to Arts and Sciences, but at a college where switching was very, very difficult. We were all sympathetic, offering up suggestions on the language to use when appealing, offering up other U’s still accepting students, engineering adjacent majors in Arts and Sciences which could allow the kid to get a Master’s in engineering down the road, etc.
A few hundred posts later it was revealed that the kid had NOT taken the recommended sequence of bio/chem/physics (which was offered at his HS) because he needed to “protect” his GPA with environmental science, anatomy and geology. The U was pretty clear on how to get into engineering– take bio/chem/ physics. Ignore the “recommendation” at your peril.
Parent was STILL ballistic even when posters pointed out that the guidance counselor who signed off on an engineering wannabee with no physics really had to answer for the pathetically bad advice. And the parent pointed out that the HS only required three years of science- which the kid had fulfilled.
Yup, transcripts matter.