Sounds like magic.
Why doesn’t their magic avoid this?
Why is one arbitrary GPA better than a different arbitrary GPA?
@AlmostThere2018. Here’s your ray of sunshine ?. Depending on your situation many OOS kids get between $20,00p-35,000 from Michigan. They started this about 4 years ago. Lots of factors involved but they do try their best to help. People have this illusion they won’t help. There are also department scholarships, internships, co-ops etc to help defer cost. Also the costs your seeing are not true costs. Living off campus and getting off the full meal plan (kids like never use it all) can really save a decent amount of money. My engineering son gets used books or pdfs or no books at all. He got /kept a few for future reference. Have questions. Pm me if need further clarification.
Iowa State is a pretty easy admit for lots of kids but they confuse this with an easy program. It’s not, like most engineering programs. It’s a great affordable program with one of the largest engineering fairs around and great opportunities for internships /jobs. Great campus spirit and their teams travel extremely well. I wouldn’t rule it out. Kids love this school.
For Michigan the schools avg is 3.9 unweighted with 34 ACT for engineering and 3.9 with 32-35 Act for lsa so not a huge difference. Showing interest is key with a great essay and some luck ?.
Also… NC State is a highly respected program. If that’s instate I would assume that is one of your affordable options. NC has so many great options.
My son fell in love with Iowa State when we visited and it is his first choice right now of the schools he’s been admitted to (although I’m secretly hoping he chooses Minnesota). The campus is gorgeous and we hear nothing but great things about the program.
Due to Iowa requiring that anyone meeting the Regent Admission Index be accepted to the school and direct admit to whatever major you want, it’s easy to get in…we got our acceptance email within an hour of applying…but that means there are a lot that are in over their head from the get go too. The weeding just happens later.
@AlmostThere2018 D20 was accepted to both direct admit and first year general programs; after mulling over and contemplating her offers, she’s now leaning towards first year gen. She’s “known” which discipline she’s wanted since middle school, but after taking some “out of the box” stem classes this year, her mind is opening to all of the possibilities. She’s actually liking the idea of learning about all of the engineering disciplines. Some may not agree, but I think it’s good for a kid like mine, one who’s been so hyper focused on a singular path. You don’t know what you don’t know, so to speak.
If you don’t mind the OOS cost, U Maryland is great for CS.
In Ohio maybe Ohio State, U Cincinnati and U Toledo.
WVU would probably give him merit.
Did you look at the University of Maine? They offer in state tuition to students from a number of states - not sure if yours is one of them. It’s not too big but it’s not a small LAC.
Just make sure that the school with first year engineering undeclared is not unreasonably competitive for her most likely engineering majors. If she goes to Michigan or Pittsburgh, first year engineering undeclared students just need to earn 2.0 college GPA and C grades to choose their majors. But if she goes to Texas A&M, she needs a 3.5 college GPA to be automatically admitted to her desired major; otherwise, she needs to go into a competitive admission process with essays as well.
So if your kid had a 3.5 GPA at end of freshman year and the cutoff was 3.6 for their engineering choice you’d be ok with that? I wouldn’t.
If your kid had a 2.3 GPA then yes. It might be time to look at other options. It depends on the policies and the weeding out process that particular college uses.
Well, for starters. I have a hard time believing a 3.5 GPA wouldn’t be in the top 90% of engineering students. It’s not high school and not all students are CC perfect.
Secondly, I don’t know any school that has a hard cutoff at 3.6 GPA to progress. Maybe they’re out there, but I doubt my kid would have gotten into them in the first place. Madison SAYS 3.5 technical GPA for a couple majors, but that is guaranteed progression, I know for a fact that they go below that although I cannot find the stats right now. BTW, they direct admit. It’s progressing that requires you meet the GPA.
MN does not direct admit and requires a 3.2 GPA for guaranteed admission. In the past three years they denied about 10% into Biomedical Engineering (their most in demand major), but I have the stats for that. 24% accepted had a GPA between 2.8 and 3.2 so I think it’s safe to assume those denied due to space were quite a bit below the 3.2 automatic.
http://www.advising.cse.umn.edu/cgi-bin/courses/noauth/apply-major-statistics
Obviously, this is a deal breaker for you which is fine. We all have our own criteria for school choice. But no, it doesn’t bother me if a school isn’t direct admit.
You’re entitled to your opinion as am I and BTW I don’t have anything against non-direct admit schools either. Their game, their rules. As long as schools are transparent about this and provide stats then it’s up to parents and kids to do their due diligence and decide if it’s worth the risk.
A few things. First, engineering requires a lot of hours. The room for a large variety of general education courses is limited. It can help if he has a lot of credits coming in but many of the math and science courses will either not be usable or he should consider carefully concerning retaking. My D used her credits primarily for her gen eds and was able to reduce the average number of hours as an engineering student to an average of 15 - 16. Some of those included research. I mention this because if he stays with engineering he probably won’t have time to be taking a lot of non engineering courses. The advantage of being at a school that is larger and is strong in a variety of fields is if he chooses to change his major he will have more and different options.
Second, I can appreciate his desire for a name brand school but it really does eliminate some very good engineering schools. Schools that people in Ohio might recognize as very good schools for Engineering people in other states will never have heard of. Many of them would be considered safeties for your son. U of Cincinnati, U of Toledo, University of Dayton, University of Akron (especially for Chemical Engineering) and even Ohio University are all very good engineering schools with great outcomes for engaged students. U of C and U of Toledo have mandatory coops. I’m sure it’s the same in most parts of the country. There are probably schools that have great engineering programs that we never considered simply because they weren’t near us.
Finally, the question of first year engineering programs and cutoffs. Nearly all first year engineers will take similar courses regardless if they have a direct enrollment into a specific engineering major or not. Most students have little idea what is involved in the various engineering majors they can choose. The courses they take freshman year will give them a taste of the rigor of their engineering path and typically at least one course will educate them on what the various engineering disciplines entail. Once a path is chosen it’s fairly sequential and can be difficult to change. Giving students a year to understand what they will be studying I don’t think is a bad idea. Many HS students won’t be ready to make that decision. There are a number that think because they like Chemistry they should consider Chemical Engineering. What they won’t know is that it requires far more physics than chemistry and they won’t necessarily be the same course a mechanical or civil engineer would take. All schools have to consider class size. The other way to do this is to become much more particular about who you admit. There are pros and cons to each method.
@ucbalumnus Thanks for the advice. Not to hijack the thread, but hopefully it will help OP and others when evaluating programs. DD was direct admit BME to some programs, and gen eng to those that follow that format. Thankfully many of the first year gen eng program classes will contain a lot of review for her. The advisors from 3 of 5 programs all highly recommended she re-take calc 2 for B/C, Chem 1 for AP Chem, etc. They strongly suggested not to take Calc “3,” and recommend she take a humanities class instead. She’s taken several engineering classes that included programming and CAD, physics with calc, Calc
BC, Stats, Bio, Chem, etc, but she’s only transferring her humanities credits (except maybe AP A/B for calc 1). The professors she met with did not seem to care for the AP classes and strongly encouraged her to start at the “beginning” for any sequential classes because they’re seeing such a high failure rate of kids going AP to college level sequentials. Luckily she started planning early and spoke with them at the end of sophomore year, so she knew she was taking the APs to get the base knowledge, not necessarily the credit. Every program she spoke with was very helpful and open to giving recommendations early on to make sure she set herself up for success later. As far as competitive secondary entry, the dual university stamped NC State/UNC BME degree program for example caps at 60-80 kids per school per application cycle, so she considered it a “high reach” program for entry. They were one program that strongly recommended re-taking calc 2, Chem 1, any sequential physics class, etc. This was not info given at engineering open houses or info sessions, but during the “one on one” conversations with professors. She is still weighing all of her options, but is definitely excited to learn about all of the engineering discipline options available. At the top of her list are programs with great academic support offices; she knows a 4.0 h.s. gpa and high test score does not necessarily equate to good grades in college, so she reached out to the academic support offices of her top choices to see what services they offer. Listening to her friends who struggled freshman year in engineering programs gave her a wakeup call; many transfered AP stem credits, assuming they were “equal” since their schools accepted the credit. She has the benefit of having mostly older friends in some great programs and is soaking in and learning from their experiences. Obviously, every program is different, but perhaps the lesson in all of this is to ask the engineering departments what they recommend to give the student the best chance of success.
She can make a more informed placement decision by trying the college’s old final exams for calculus 1 and 2, chemistry 1, etc… Blanket recommendations to repeat all AP credit can waste the opportunity to get additional free electives later.
Of course, it is more likely that students with AP 5 scores are ready to move on than students with AP 3 scores.
My kids were able to work their way into engineering majors at Ohio State by scheduling the classes they needed (fresh/soph level) to declare their majors as DE students (last priority for scheduling, outside of CoE). At Ohio State declaring your major after completing FYE confers priority scheduling for the major classes (junior/senior level) needed to graduate. There are students having less than the minimum guaranteed admission gpa that are able to continue to make progress toward their degree (they need to be flexible on classes they are willing to take) that just re-apply and others that will choose closely related engineering majors. Mine have had great experiences and felt supported, never like anyone in engineering was trying to weed them out.
If your son is on the fence between business and engineering I’d suggest applying to Fisher at Ohio State because he has the stats to be a direct admit to their program if accepted to the university. It’s very tough to work your way into Fisher from within the university (always competitive, no clear gpa minimum pathways, fewer seats open up) and it would be an even steeper hill to climb if his gpa suffers in freshman engineering classes if he discovers it’s not for him.
Ohio State also has a joint IBE program for a limited number of incoming honors students https://fisher.osu.edu/undergraduate/academics/honors/integrated-business-and-engineering-ibe-honors which may be a good way for him to explore his strengths and interests.
@ucbalumnus she’s made all 5s. These were not blanket recommendations; she asked, and they gave their honest opinions. The point was now is a good time to ask these questions to set yourself up for success, especially if considering a secondary app program.
Try Union. My daughter attends for engineering.
Industrial engineering equates to business engineering if this hasn’t been mentioned… FYI
@Knowsstuff – yes, I’ve suggested industrial engineering but so far no interest. I think it’s because he perceives it as too manufacturing oriented which is not his thing so far. But it’s one of those things where with more exposure he might change his mind…
The consistent thing I’ve heard from him is interest in tech industry and product design / development. He talks about being on the business side of the house eventually but wants the knowledge (and credibility) of having an engineering background as his foundation.
If you were to meet him you’d think business / deal making – he’s very charming and socially at ease with all types of people. He flows across several friend groups.
I also happen to think he’d also be a great lawyer b/c he’s tenacious in an argument and good at getting what he wants! 
He’s more been talking about an MBA at some point after undergrad but is intrigued by the IBE model too…