Shifting from Columbia Engineering to Columbia College

beard_tax
Sat, 13 Nov 2010 21:54:34 +0000

admissionsgeek, once again I agree with everything that you have to say. There’s definitely a bit of inertia when it comes to creating a cohesive undergraduate experience. Nonetheless, I’m warning the poster to reconsider engineering even if he or she has a hint of a doubt. It will be an incredibly painful experience to not have any academic freedom. The most that you’ll have is to choose Applied Mathematics, which has the fewest requirements in the SEAS curriculum. The admissions committee does not really care if you are struggling in engineering. The only way to have them consider your application and allow you to transfer to CC is you have a high enough GPA that you can essentially go anywhere you want to (i.e. a 3.8 or above). You’ll be treated essentially like any transfer student, and if you don’t have a 3.5, don’t bother applying.

Furthermore, if you have any pre-professional dreams, you’ll need to work much harder to achieve them, whether it’s pre-law, pre-med, or finance. GPA is tantamount and it’s true that you don’t need to do engineering once you get a degree, but getting a degree with a 3.5 is quite a challenge. Considering that the average GPA in SEAS is a 3.0-3.3, there are many opportunities that are precluded from these students. Furthermore, engineering firm tend not to recruit on campus, so it’s difficult for many students to find jobs in engineering after school. Just a warning, don’t do engineering unless you are 90-100% sure you want to. Don’t try to leverage the engineering degree with the Columbia name.