<p>Looking for opinions about college 3/2 programs…attend a college for 3 years, maintain x.x GPA and then transfer to a university for 2 years and either graduate with 2 Bachelor degrees or one bachelor and 1 master degree.</p>
<p>DD is a HS junior, taking STEM engineering courses. She’s an average student smart, quirky, but a little lazy. She wants to attend a small engineering school with 2,000 students or less. </p>
<p>We went to a college fair at the local mall and heard a lot about these 3/2 and even a 4/1 program. Knowing my daughter, I’m leery about the whole 3/2 concept because of the GPA requirement to transfer into the other school is usually at least a 3.0 and her intermittent laziness.</p>
<p>On the other hand, these schools tend to be small, and I’m hoping she’ll outgrow this need to be in a small school when she gets older.</p>
<p>Any thoughts …pros cons about these type programs?</p>
<p>I’ve heard that a lot of students attend colleges intending to do a 3/2 program, but actually only a small number follow through on it. Sometimes their intentions change in terms of major/goals. And as you stated, sometimes the students don’t meet the criteria for the program. Also, I think it is very difficult to leave your original campus after only 3 years when all of your friends are staying for a fourth year.</p>
<p>Why not just have her attend a 4 year engineering college? Places like Rose-Hulman might be a good fit. That way she can be at a small college (as she prefers), but still get a solid engineering degree.</p>
<p>She wouldn’t be accepted at rose human but moreover, it’s out of our price range. Academically she’s an average 3.0-3.2 kid…did I mention lazy? But even if she raised her gpa, I hate to say that financially we can’t do an expensive private, so I don’t want to give her false hopes.</p>
<p>In order successfully to complete a 3/2 program, a student has to:</p>
<p>(1) complete all requirements for a 4-year degree in 3 years
(2) do the above with a high enough GPA to be accepted into the 2-yr. portion of the 3/2 program
(3) beat out other candidates to earn a spot in the 2-yr. part of the program (some are guaranteed entry, but others are quite competitive!)
(4) say goodbye to friends at the end of the 3 years, and
(5) figure out how to fund those last two years!</p>
<p>Financial aid awarded at the 3-yr. school may or may not carry over to the first year at the 2-yr. school . . . but it definitely won’t carry over to the 2nd year.</p>
<p>There are a lot of engineering programs around the country . . . find one that your daughter can get into and graduate from and that’s affordable for your family.</p>
<p><a href=“1”>QUOTE=dodgersmom</a> complete all requirements for a 4-year degree in 3 years
[/QUOTE]
I was involved with a 3/2 program at a smallish LAC where the student went for 3 years then would transfer to the engineering program of his choice/acceptance. In no way did they have to complete 4 years in 3. The student ended up with a BS from School 2 and a BA or BS from School 1 (depending on the second degree - usually business). Any necessary credits not completed at School 1 were transferable back from School 2.</p>
<p>OP - not on point, but I’m concerned about the combination of the words “lazy” and “engineering” in the same sentence. Engineering is not a major for “lazy” students. It’s like jumping into the ocean in a hurricane and trying to swim like you are on the lazy river at Disney. Nothing good ever comes of that.</p>
<p>ETA: there are also some schools with 2+2 programs you might look into.</p>
<p>2+2 is commonly done with community college, followed by transfer to a state university.</p>
<p>3+2 is typically marketed by LACs without “native” engineering degree programs. During the first 3 years, the student take math and physics courses to transfer to a school with engineering, while also fulfilling most requirements for a bachelor’s degree at the LAC. After transferring, the student takes the next 2 years to finish the engineering degree.</p>
<p>However, there are a number of disadvantages:</p>
<ul>
<li>Majors for 3+2 students at the LAC may be limited (e.g. to physics, math, or chemistry), which defeats the purpose if the student wants to use the extra year to add a major in something unrelated to engineering.</li>
<li>Transfer admission may be competitive, and financial aid at the “3” school is uncertain.</li>
<li>It also takes an extra year, with an extra year’s worth of costs.</li>
<li>Students who wanted to go to a small LAC may not want to transfer to a big school to finish the engineering degree.</li>
<li>Students may not want to transfer away from their friends and tight-knit small LAC community after 3 years.</li>
</ul>
<p>[CollegeData:</a> College Search, Financial Aid, College Application, College Scholarship, Student Loan, FAFSA Info, Common Application](<a href=“http://www.collegedata.com%5DCollegeData:”>http://www.collegedata.com) searching found 62 colleges with <2,500 students and any of chemical, electrical, or mechanical engineering (of course, you should tailor the search to the most likely engineering majors). Some of them are not highly selective, and not all that expensive, such as South Dakota School of Mines and Technology and New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology.</p>
<p>Of course, some of the more well known names are there, such as Caltech, Cooper Union, and Olin.</p>
<p>Another disadvantage is that the student is not exposed to engineering courses to decide if they really want to be an engineer! I think that is a huge problem.
Many engineering students earn a BS and MS in a 5 year program, so you need to judge whether that is better than getting 2 bachelor’s degrees.
Are there any relatively small engineering schools that you can visit with her? Their idea of big and small changes once they get out of high school but they can’t imagine that being the case. My son was originally really focused on small schools but as we visited colleges he started liking some of the medium-sized universities such as Case Western.
Clarkson is fairly small and a little less selective than schools like RPI, though it is remote.
Being female will help somewhat with acceptances, she will be perhaps given a little slack on grades or SAT scores relative to the averages at the school. But she has to be motivated to do the work. She might like WPI, it is about 5,000 but it has a small school feel to it, but she would have to raise her GPA a little. If she seems like a really strong candidate, she could earn merit awards - many engineering schools are trying hard to get more girls to enroll.
What about your state schools? They probably don’t meet the “small” requirement but…</p>
<p>Also, this subject has been discussed many times on CC, search for 3+2 or 3/2 and you will find them.</p>
<p>D2 will be an engineering major next year. We SERIOUSLY considered one of these programs, but decided against it for the reasons intparent cited. It just made more sense to go on to a 4 year school - she has an unweighted 3.75, makes mostly A’s, she’s also a bit lazy, but knows how to pour it on when needed.</p>
<p>Is your D committed to WORKING HER BUTT OFF next year? If I didn’t feel confident about that for sure, with that gpa, I WOULD actually consider one of those programs. She might find that engineering is not for her, and a strong LAC might be just the place to be to explore her options.</p>
<p>If you’re confident she’s going to work hard, and in working hard could perform at a higher level, AND that engineering is the right major, I would find a good strong regional school that suits the purpose. </p>
<p>One school that my D was initially looking at because of proximity was Lamar University. It’s a small regional school, certainly not Tier 1, but has a good engineering department that offers a lot of coastal co-op opportunities. Class sizes are small, there are mandatory tutorials for kids having trouble, the dorms are OUTSTANDING. Problem is that it is DEFINITELY a commuter campus. That place looked DEAD on the weekend, and there’s not much around it in the way of recreation/restaurants, etc.</p>
<p>Thanks everyone. For clarification on the ‘lazy’ term. My daughter is not lazy in her advanced math, engineering or chemistry classes- she’s getting A’s and high B’s in those. Its the others- AP history and English type classes.</p>
<p>Earlier this year we toured several schools small and large. She definitely wants small. We did tour WV Institute of Technology which I think is now part of the WVU family and it fit all of our criteria small and inexpensive.</p>
<p>As others have stated, I think she may have trouble transferring once she gets attached to friends at a small LAC and that would defeat the purpose. We’ll continue to do some research and spend this spring visiting a few more schools. I’m also going to see if any of these schools has a summer ‘camp’ she can attend. I know WV Tech does. She may find that spending a week or two at a small school isn’t what she thought it would be…</p>
<p>Biggest drawback of a 3/2 program is leaving your friends. A 4/1 program would probably be a better way to go. I also think it’s a stretch for a 3.0 high school kid to do well in engineering but often you find kids turning around in college so who knows. I think the LAC idea is probably a good one. It gives her options outside of engineering if that doesn’t work out for her. I did a search for someone else on LAC with engineering programs and there were 60 schools across the country with some kind of program. Not all schools show up on all searches though. Do you have geographic limitations?</p>
<p>SteveMa- no restrictions at this time. Mostly restricted by cost, unfortunately we are supporting my mother so cost is a huge factor.</p>
<p>We have spoken to her about expectations and how she needs to step it up a lot in order to be successful in college. At this point its up in the air on if she’ll even go to a 4 year school. She may be attending the local CC to “prove” she can follow through. </p>
<p>It is so frustrating to see her with mediocre grades when I know that if she would follow through (turn in homework) then she would have at least a 3.6 gpa. But when we talk all I get is the “I know, mom” and uh huh … tuning me out. Of course, she is a mini me and I’m definitely getting back what I gave MY mom. I was able to turn it around in college so I’m sure she can do the same. But she may not make it there if she doesn’t get her act together… but that’s a rant for another day/another thread. ;)</p>
<p>ChuckleDoodle–sounds like my oldest :D. It’s incredibly frustrating. We did find that once we left everything up to him, he did MUCH better. He sunk a bit lower for a while when we weren’t on top of him to get things turned in, etc. and it probably cost him some dollars down the road in college but he is now done with school and gainfully employed to it did work out in the end. It was just HARD to watch!!</p>
<p>Steve… I took that approach at the beginning of this year… thought it might work better if she knew I wasn’t going to “hover”. She got even worse…one month into school and we are having parent teacher student meeting to discuss the 19 not handed in (NHI) homework assignments! So I’m going back into ‘hover’ mode for the rest of this semester. I know eventually she’ll figure it out, but it’s like watching a trainwreck. I keep hoping that she’ll get back on track before she crashes and burns. Oh well, if I don’t kill her, she’ll only get stronger. or something like that :)</p>
<p>The problem OP is that your D is not ready to go away to college. While you can “hover” for senior year, you will not be able to hover when she is a few hundred miles away. Crashing in burning in college is not a good plan.</p>
<p>If ‘going away’ is what she truly desires, put the onus on her to step up her game to prove that she is ready, willing and able to make the personal sacrifices to succeed in all subjects.</p>
<p>If she’s willing to go to a women’s college Sweet Briar might be a possibility. It does have a small engineering program. I’m not sure if it has ABET accreditation they were applying for it last I looked it up. I have a niece who likes horses more than school who is there. Don’t know what they are like on the money front however.</p>
<p>bluebayou- you are correct- she is not ready for college…yet. She has about 20 months before she’ll start (fall 2014), so I keep hoping that she’ll get there. The decision about which school she’ll attend will be made as late as possible, with the local CC being the fall back and punt decision. But we have to keep giving her enough rope…one day she will stop hanging herself with it and finally make a basket or something… ;)</p>
<p>ChuckleDoodle, I had one who I has misgivings about being ready for college at the same age as your D. I am happy to report that he blossomed in college and now has a great job where he is doing very well and navigating things I could only imagine.</p>
<p>One thing that I found when we were looking for schools for this child. I felt that there were two schools of thought in engineering schools. (others have given great advice about 3/2 programs so I won’t go into that). There are engineering schools and programs that are more nurturing. To give an example I felt Rose Hulman was very nurturing. It was small enough that your child would not fall through the cracks. They were determined to get your kid to succeed. They had a lot of tutoring and small groups and they were very upfront with “we will help your child succeed”. There are many other schools like this, I am just giving an example. </p>
<p>There are other schools which I would like to say they throw you out into the bathwater and hope you swim. I am sure that there are the same opportunities such as tutoring and small groups but they tend to be harder to find. They have advising but you have to look for it and if you fail, oh well, they have plenty of other majors. An example of schools that I felt were like this were Michigan and Purdue. Both very fine schools and there are children who would do very well in this environment but not my S.</p>
<p>Anyways, just some advice. I think the best way to figure out what is best for your D is to tour schools. Most schools have a dedicated engineering tour and they can be a great resource for what kind of school your D needs.</p>