I’m in kind of a tight situation right now and need some parental advice. I’ll try to keep this short.
I am about to begin my undergraduate studies in a well-respected business program. I leave for college in four days. Here’s my issue: I’ve realized that I want to study engineering. My college doesn’t have an engineering program. I’ve thought about applying to transfer to a school with an engineering program after freshman year, but I can’t do that because of the structure of the business program; I won’t have enough math and science courses to be competitive for transfer. My school does participate in the 3/2 combined plan with Columbia, but I read such negative comments about combined plan programs. Right now, it seems like my only option is to take a last-minute gap year and reapply to colleges.
Am I missing something here? How should I convince my parents that this is the best option? I doubt if they’ll take me seriously. Am I crazy to do this?
Another option is to start at a community college and then transfer to a four year school to complete an engineering degree. Whether this is desirable depends on whether the community college transfer path in your state is good, and whether you have high enough high school stats that reapplying as a frosh would likely get you more choices at lower cost than the community college transfer path, since scholarships are less available to transfers, and some schools may not admit many transfers (enrolling in any college will start disqualifying you from frosh admission, though thresholds do vary).
However, you need to talk to your parents about your desire to change major, particularly when it means changing college (or doing the 3+2 program at an extra year of cost, not to mention cost uncertainty at the “2” school).
If I were your parents, I’d be assuming that this is just a manifestation of cold feet or ‘buyers regret’ that many freshman feel with increasing intensity as the departure date approaches. I’d be inclined to say soothing things like ‘give it a year and see if you still feel the say way next spring’ or ‘you can always go into financial engineering and cover both bases,’ etc… Since you know this, you have to accept that your parents are probably not going to be on board no matter what you say.
The fact is, you can refuse to go - no one can ‘make you’ now that you’re past the age of 4. But how sure are you that this really isn’t just anxiety turning up the volume before you head off? And what would you do with the time off? You haven’t lined up anything, so unless you’ve already got a job you can keep or a good opportunity waiting, it’s going to be a scramble in the fall followed by the entire reapplication process.
If you just can’t see yourself in business or at that school, then you withdraw your admission and take the lumps that will go with it including some justifiably upset parents. You’ll survive. Read The Gap Year Advantage and then either follow ucbalumnus’s advice about community college or figure out your gap year plan.
I believe it is much easier to change from an engineering major to a business major than vice versa. Not sure why you now think you want to do engineering now, but if your parents only want to pay for 4 years, you are better off taking a gap year, imo. If you transfer in a year you will then be scrambling to make up required classes you missed. If you stay the course, take a look at the required classes for engineering majors and make sure you take what you can at current school, ie calculus (the right flavor calculus, which is probably not calc for business majors).
Did you get accepted at any other schools that offer the program you now want? If so contact them and see if it is possible to attend. At this stage, it is probably too late but it might be worth a phone call.
Can you switch out of the business program into one that is more engineering based? Engineering can be a highly structured program. You are right that transferring after a year will likely set you back in the sequence.
If this is a serious well thought out change of mind then a gap year might be in order. College is too expensive to go to a school for a year that will not prepare you to transfer to a program of your choice.
Can you explain why you have changed your goals? Were you keen to do the business originally or was that a kind of passive choice? What made you want to do engineering? If you could explain a little more, I think we could offer better advice.
Hello everyone, sorry I haven’t replied yet. I read over your comments and talked to my parents more, and they were simply too opposed to the idea of a gap year. The fact that they’re ex-engineers doesn’t help (they worked briefly as engineers but quickly left for other professions). At this point, I can’t blame them. I’m going to contact my college advisor and see if I can enroll in the general College rather than the business school. Hopefully, that can allow me to take enough science courses to transfer to an engineering program. If that doesn’t work out, I’ll just have to go with the 3/2 option and take on the debt for the fifth year.
Thanks for asking compmom, I should have explained that. Business is still an interest of mine professionally. It’s just that after taking a business course this summer, I realized that I don’t want to pigeonhole myself right now. I realized that I’d rather study a more versatile discipline that caters more to my skills… math, anything quanitative, and problem-solving. Not that you can’t find that in business, but it’s on a different level, and the business program incorporates so many topics I feel indifferent about now, like marketing. As I loved physics in high school and found the most interesting part of my course to be the discussion of actual, physical products, I thought about engineering. I explored mechanical engineering through a lot of reading and kind of had an epiphany I guess. I could be wrong though… If only I had a crystal ball that would tell me everything!!! Haha, that’s life I guess.
Anyway, thank you for the comments! It helped me sort things out as much as I can for now.
If you have a good merit or financial aid pkg. you will lose it by transferring. When you were admitted to this school were you admitted strictly into a “business school” or admitted to the school with an intended major of business. There is a difference. Go online and see if you can contact the 3/2 engineering advisor. This may be a viable option for you to take the pre engineering requisites and double major in business.