<p>Are there any engineering schools that it’s easy to get into? If so, which ones?</p>
<p>Utah State University
Kansas State University
University of Wyoming
University of Texas - El Paso
University of Akron
Wichita State University
South Dakota State University
Northern Arizona University</p>
<p>Depending on your stats, many schools practice auto-admit. That means, if you have above say, a 2.8 and a 23 or higher ACT you’re in. </p>
<p>^^ But those schools tend to have a high attrition rate. </p>
<p>Engineering is just really tough. It requires math skills; good, everyday study habits; skill in working in groups; and the ability to turn in work of high quality on time. Students who didn’t do well in high school AND who attend colleges that accept most of their applicants may find themselves suffering not only from their own weaknesses but from those of their classmates. Engineering ain’t no joke.</p>
<p>Taking a year off to work, study, volunteer, and get your game face on is sometimes the best option for the grossly underperforming high school student.</p>
<p>Your point being? These schools admit essentially anyone who applies. What’s more pertinent to the OP is his chance of dropping out, not the chances of one of his classmates who had a 2.3 GPA, 21 ACT score.</p>
<p>If MIT and the University of Wyoming suddenly switched student bodies, the graduation rates of MIT would plummet, while those of Wyoming would skyrocket. </p>
<p>^^Since the OP asked the question, it is a reasonable assumption that his/her stats would make admission to competitive schools unlikely.</p>
<p>OP, what are your stats?</p>
<p>All ABET certified engineering schools have to maintain certain standards, otherwise no company will hire those graduates and they will lost their certification. If a school allows any warm body to come in and still maintain its certificate, the school has to implement some weed out classes thus the attrition rate. In order to be competitive in the society an engineering student must change his study pattern and sail through those difficult courses, otherwise, he will be not be competitive in the school and cannot get a job after graduation.</p>
<p>Despite its low national profile, engineering at Akron ain’t no joke either. Chemical Engineering students and Materials Science Engineering students would fight each other in a roman arena if it meant getting a seat at the the Goodyear Polymer Research Center at U of Akron.</p>
<p>Mississippi publics are not too difficult to get into either.</p>
<p>You can look up more schools with low admission bars in <a href=“Updated list of schools with auto-admit (guaranteed admission) criteria - Applying to College - College Confidential Forums”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1562918-updated-list-of-schools-with-auto-admit-guaranteed-admission-criteria-p1.html</a> .</p>
<p>However, as noted previously, engineering is not generally considered an easy major. Many less well prepared or less motivated students do poorly in the beginning math and physics courses and get “weeded out”.</p>
<p>You may want to assess your readiness for calculus with these placement tests. Engineering students start off with calculus, so a strong knowledge of algebra, geometry, and trigonometry from high school math is essential.
<a href=“http://math.tntech.edu/e-math/placement/index.html”>http://math.tntech.edu/e-math/placement/index.html</a>
<a href=“http://math.berkeley.edu/courses/choosing/placement-exam”>http://math.berkeley.edu/courses/choosing/placement-exam</a></p>
<p>If you need to take remedial math courses before calculus, you may want to consider starting at a community college and then transferring to a four year school as a junior to complete an engineering degree. Starting in remedial math courses means that you will need to take extra time, meaning that it will take longer than two years at the community college before you are transfer-ready, but the extra years at a community college will cost less than extra years at a four year school.</p>
<p>@whenwhen, I don’t know to whom you were addressing your question, but I’ll take it as an opportunity to speak about having weak classmates in engineering (or English for that matter). Because of the group work involved, when a student stops coming to class or drops out of a program, the remaining members of that workgroup are left wondering what happened to him or her and then struggling to make up the work he or she was responsible for. No one is happy when this happens, and it is not good for anyone’s grades. Group work comes in late or not at all in my classroom all the time for this reason. </p>
<p>As a practical matter, a student with a marginal high school record is unlikely to have much choice other than either (a) start at a community college and transfer to a four year school later, or (b) start at a less selective four year school. Taking a gap year would not really change that choice. So starting at a school where all other students are highly motivated high performers would not really be an option for such a student.</p>
<p>However, the OP’s other posts indicate that the OP has something better than a marginal record with a 3.2 GPA. No SAT score, but apparently a 185 PSAT score, so probably will get a decent SAT score. So s/he may have more choices beyond the least selective schools from an admissions standpoint, although cost constraints can limit the choices.</p>
<p>@ucbalumnus, there are students who did not perform well in h.s. not because of intelligence but because they didn’t work hard. It is these students I had in mind who might not want to go from h.s. directly to college, let alone into an engineering program. Students and parents are programmed to believe the best route is to go from 12th grade right into 13th, and when one follows that path without having learned how to work hard one wastes a lot of resources. Too many college students have followed this route when there’s absolutely no need to do so. College isn’t 13th grade, of course, and to maximize outcomes from one’s investment of time and money one should be accustomed to working hard and approach college as a job. It has much more to do with the rest of your life than to do with the first 17 years. </p>
<p>If you don’t like the informality of my hiatus year, consider this. We’d be better off as a nation if most college-going students had to wait a year or two before going to a 4yr college. What’s the rush? College will always be there. Perhaps a couple years of community college or a couple years of work would help. Perhaps a year or two of post-h.s.national service could improve the quality of the student work I get and provide some college cost benefits. </p>
<p>In addition to the students who didn’t work hard in h.s. and are emotionally unprepared for college, we have those whose cognitive maturity is not where it needs to be to make the most of their college education. We could be giving those adolescent brains a little more time to develop. In addition to poor work and study skills, many students are cognitively unprepared for college. Parents need to recognize this in their children and prepare another course than bundling a child off to college 2 months after they complete high school. College is such a huge investment of resources that we should re-examine when students should start college.</p>
<p>SUNY Buffalo has a strong engineering program, yet is not difficult to get accepted to. </p>
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<p>Whether or not a specific student would benefit from a gap year (note: going to community college is going to college, not doing a gap year) does not change the fact that a marginal high school record will limit the student to less selective colleges, which reply #3 claims are disadvantageous. While there may be reasons for a student to do a gap year, “upgrading” the selection of available colleges is not one of them.</p>
<p>Now, whether gap years or national service should be mandatory is a whole different debate versus whether an individual student would benefit. Mandatory gap years might be a net loss, at least economically, as the college-ready students would delay their entry into the work force as skilled college graduates in exchange for working as unskilled high school graduates during their gap years. National service would need to find something to do for all of the high school graduates, since the obvious types of service (military service, Peace Corps, etc.) would not need that many high school graduate recruits.</p>
<p>good discussion, @ucbalumnus. you’ll observe, please, that I never called it a gap year. I also did not suggest a student use the time between h.s. and college to “upgrade” his choices but rather to mature so that he or she can be better prepared for college. We are sending babies to our colleges right now and wondering why it takes them 6 years to graduate. </p>
<p>as for mandatory service, your response assumes nothing else would have to change if such national service became law, but that’s not the subject of this thread so I’ll let it pass.</p>
<p>You should look into Rose Hulman. It’s one of the best engineering schools in the country, but it is really small and has a pretty high acceptance rate. </p>
<p>^^^You really can’t use acceptance rate to determine if a school is “easy” to get into. Acceptance rate has to be linked to the pool of students that are applying. A directional school may have a lower acceptance rate than Rose Hulman, but the median GPA/Test scores could be much lower.</p>
<p>At Rose Hulman (for example):</p>
<p>Median Class Rank (percentile): Top 7%
Median SAT: 590 critical reading, 710 math
Median ACT: 30 English, 31 math</p>
<p>Also, since Rose Hulman’s yield (Percent admitted who enrolled) is a bit low (around 20%), they have to increase the acceptance rate (% offered) to compensate.</p>
<p>Since Rose Hulman is a great school, it shows that acceptance and yield rates (taken out of context) can be misleading. </p>
<p>Also I think another factor is that schools like RH often have a “self selecting” group of talented applicants. </p>
<p>Many of the [url=“<a href=“http://theaitu.org%22%5DAITU%5B/url”>http://theaitu.org”]AITU[/url</a>] schools are similar to Rose Hulman. Since they are primarily Engineering and Science, they need to have high academic standards but since the pool is relatively limited across the country, the acceptance rate is high except for the most selective ones (read MIT, Cal Tech, etc.). However, the OP needs to consider that success in any engineering program is highly correlated with high school grades in math and science as well as test scores. Students with marginal academic statistics are at risk in in an engineering curriculum and so the advice to start with community college as given above might be the best way to go. </p>
<p>Yes, I know that there are sometimes very intelligent students who do poorly in high school and should be given a chance, however, my personal experience as a physics professor at Illinois Tech for the past 31 years indicates that it takes both intelligence and the self discipline to go to class and do the homework to succeed in engineering or physics. When i look at applications I like to see a balance between test scores and grades in high school with the weight being given to someone who has taken the most challenging courses in high school and gotten high grades. It is well known that test like the ACT and SAT have inherent flaws that make them an imperfect measure.</p>
bump