Son’s two best friends and he all wanted to pursue engineering degrees when they applied for undergrad. His two friends attended the in-state public that like A&M had a general first year and then at the end needed to apply for a specific major. Now their school has been doing this for some time, to weed out about 75-80% of the students, again same as A&M’s numbers of about 25% acceptance. At their school you can re-apply at the end of 2nd year but those numbers for acceptance are even lower. Most had trouble with the math sequence of Calc, and its the calc for engineers, not for life science and/or humanities. Engineering is usually through def eq, and of course the physics is also for engineers, calc based. So they can see how they do AFTER freshman year with those classes.
Both of son’s friends had high Math SATs and high GPAs and neither were ever able to matriculate past the general core into a specific engineering major. Both took 5 years to graduate, having to deal with trying to get into the specific engineering major and they ended up in accounting and business agriculture majors (easier to transfer those first engineering courses.)
Son attended a different undergrad with a direct admit into mech eng. He graduated with a mech eng degree. He is SOOO very glad he did so compared to his two friends. Keeping such a high GPA with taking a grinding schedule for engineering would have been difficult. He did well and with the stress of keeping up such a high GPA absent he reallt enjoyed his classes. He was able to take courses which might have hurt his GPA and was really able to take full advantage of his program. He is currently employed as a mech engineer, and has been promoted several times after graduating May 2013.
My advice would be to take the direct admit at UT-A. After watching son’s friends struggle and eventually not achieve their goals and seeing my son’s success the direct admit was a game changer. (this is not the son at pton with the econ major!)
Hope this helps!
Kat