Ok, but you should come up with a plan with him for if you aren’t able to get into your major. It’s not even your fault if that happens, UW turns away admission to majors to even many of the best students there.
^research alternate majors in the meanwhile.
Yes besides industrial engineering I also found human centered engineering and design a pretty interesting major. They both have a 40% acceptance rate
That’s too low. You are very capable, but you’ll be competing against kids whose first semester will be mostly review (because they took the class while in high school and didn’t claim the credit).
Any major with a 60-70% admit rate that you find interesting? (For a Plan C).
By the way, Human-Centered Engineering is fascinating and has excellent professional outcomes.
I think if the OP and her twin end up changing their majors… that’s it, they change their majors. They can still choose something math-y or analytical, they can get their degrees, they can move forward. Most college students change their majors in any event.
She doesn’t need to figure Plan C out now. It’s not as if she is going to drop out or get kicked out of college if she doesn’t get into her top choice majors. Plan C will probably depend a whole lot on where she stands if and when she learn that she has been turned down from whatever it is she currently thinks she wants to major in. Which very likely may not be something that is all that appealing to her after a few quarters on campus.
I think the real question is whether UW is worth spending $$ over UH for ANY major – as I am sure that OP’s parents aren’t the type to pull out the funding if OP calls home one day to announce that she has decided to major in something else instead. She’s 17 and she has a notion of what she wants to do, but she hasn’t been to college yet so doesn’t have a clue as to what she will find or how she will grow and change over the coming years. I think that there are probably a lot more students who start out as wannabe engineering majors and end up as humanities majors than the other way around.
“It’s not as if she is going to drop out or get kicked out of college if she doesn’t get into her top choice majors”
I mean I had a friend at UW who didn’t get into her major so she (rightfully so) transferred out to go to a different school who would, because otherwise job prospects in that field were gonna be weird.
As long as OP and parents can afford whatever U without crushing debt and get a degree that the twins can get jobs with to pay off their loans, great! It sounds like UW is VERY tough to get into majors like engineering, if not a direct admit.
OP’s long term goal is an MBA. She doesn’t need an undergraduate engineering major to get a job in business.
Of course, I will be open to other majors if I don’t get into my first choice. I may look into business when I get there, take a class or two maybe. Mostly my parents think there are better opportunities for me at UW not just bc of academics but also because of the new environment it’ll provide.
I’m asking my bio teacher a lot of questions about UW since she graduated from my high school’s IB program and went into engineering at UW, so she has the same experience as me. She took a while deciding on her major but still graduated on time because of her credits from IB
Transportation should definitely be more reasonable from Seattle than Rochester, so that is a plus.
Here is UW’s list of majors. Note that many of them are competitive admission:
https://www.washington.edu/uaa/advising/academic-planning/majors-and-minors/list-of-undergraduate-majors/
Please also understand that schools can change and become more (or less) competitive in a very short period of time.
The bottom line issue is affordability–can your folks afford to send both if you for all 4 (or possibly more) years to wherever you are planning to attend without crushing debt for them OR you and twin.
The reason I worry about major choice is that a high return major sounds necessary for such a high level of debt.
UW will have cheaper transportation costs, but UR guarantees OP her major as well as her sister, and they may be able to negotiate) not possible at an oos university.)
The Biology teacher can certainly explain about environment, vibe, student experience ,but can’t speak to the issue of competitive majors, which are relatively recent for that level of competitivity. Five years we hardly mentioned the issue.
It is the parents taking on the large debt -there are also student loans in the mix, but the bulk is on the parents and there is no indication that parents expect their daughters to pay them back. So really it is about the parents’ earning capacity.
Kids who graduate from college with degrees in Engish or history or philosophy get jobs. My kids were poli sci majors and both had full time employment, with benefits, within 2 weeks of graduating, which paid well over minimum wage. Maybe not as much as the might have had with a STEM degree… but then there are long threads on CC about kids with STEM degrees having a tough time finding employment – so a degree, by itself, is no guarantee of a job. My son actually graduated debt free because he had the sense to finish his degree at CSU, paying instate tuition - but my daughter had the full complement of subsidized Stafford loans and was easily able to make the payments on a job with a starting salary in the mid $30K range. My rule of thumb is that maximum debt should be no more than first year salary, so even a debt of $30K should be something that a student with a non-technical major can handle.
IMHO, the most important predictor of whether the college grad will find a job is employment history, and the OP has mentioned that she currently has a job – so if she has paid employment at age 17, I have no doubt that like my kids she will have accumulated a good work history by the time she is 22.
I also think that sometimes the graduates with the non-technical majors fare better with post-college employment simply because they are more flexible, and more likely to cast a wider net in looking for employment, as well as being less picky about what they get, as they aren’t bound by the expectation that their work has to match their employment. Given OP’s interest in business, she could work just about anywhere.
If her goal was to become an engineer or a scientist, I could see your point–but she wants to go for an MBA.
I agree that the cost of these universities is very steep and I’ve posted before, if OP were my kid, she’d be going to the in-state U. But she isn’t my kid and if her parents want to make what I consider to be a poor financial decision, so be it. We’ve counseled her, but her dad didn’t ask for our advice, and it’s really none of our business what he does.
An article on a change to us engineering next year: http://www.washington.edu/news/2017/04/13/engineering-direct-to-college-admission/
How about the prospect of international schools? If the OP wants prestige, some of the most historically prestigious schools like the University of Edinburgh, Trinity College Dublin, and University College London still have applications open until late June. Plus, these schools will likely have tuition under $20,000. This would not include living costs, but at least factors like rent can be minimized by the sisters sharing an apartment.
They would also have to check if their programs of interest are offered (which might have different titles), but it just might be a feasible idea.
It would be a far distance away from the islands, though so is Rochester, and anything other than colleges in Hawaii would present a large amount of adjustment.
@OHMomof2 That applies to this fall’s applicants, not entering freshmen.
Yes I’m aware @AroundHere . It speaks to an issue that is so problematic that they are changing a major policy to address it.
All it will mean though, is that the UW selective process will apply earlier on. Students with inadequate HS math and sciences will self select themselves out of engineering at a school that can cherry pick candidates.
Right - but at least kids will know this before they choose to go there.