You didn’t say where you live but sounds like maybe PA. I’m a ChemE with a polymer background and I’d recommend UD personally. That Dupont connection is so strong. If he really likes the military aspect of the Corps, sure, that’s unique to TAMU. Travel from the northeast to CStat is much more of a pain than getting to TCU.
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Agree, College Station is not at all convenient to any airport. He hasn’t been to campus since he was a kid, but it made a big impression! Also, he might not get into ChemE at TAMU after year 1, then what? Lots of decisions to make. He really loves all of the schools to which he has applied for different reasons. U Del has a fabulous marching band without needing to be in cadets. Yes, Delaware is also a top ranked ChemE program! I appreciate your POV. If he got into honors there with honors housing, it would sway him. The campus is a just right fit, but housing is tight after year 1. Financials are important, too, and debt is real, so he’s thrilled about the admits, but balancing all of the pros and cons.
He is a fortunate guy to have choices like these, for sure.
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Bush airport in Houston is about 1 hour and 15 minutes tops. Super easy drive on aggie expressway. Not sure why anyone would say not easy to fly in and out. Whether you live in Houston Dallas or Austin, the drive isn’t much different in terms of convenience from living in big city. My 2 cents.
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If you keep a car on campus, sure 1.5 drive is not too terrible. I just don’t consider that convenient when compared to TCU or many other big schools with an airport right there. Not a cheap Uber ride away.
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We have an airport shuttle. $50 one way. Very nice service. Just fyi. No way Dfw beats that.
And big city traffic is awful. My fam lives in Dallas. Takes them over an hour for airport. My parents live in Houston. Takes them 45 minutes. From my doorstep, it’s 1 hour and 5 minutes to the parking spot. I do live in south college station but just saying that with the Aggie expressway, the travel time is a non event.
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Agree @Christi1993. I live in far West Houston suburb, not close at all to Bush or Hobby. I have dropped my husband off at Bush/IAH several times, on Aggie gameday weekends. It’s pretty much the same time frame from CS to IAH vs my house to IAH.
If a student is a SWA flier, they’ll need to fly out of Austin, United out of IAH. I wouldn’t consider Hobby/HOU, at all, for Aggies, just TOO far.
Austin and IAH aren’t that close for Aggies , like for my UHLaw daughter & friends, or friends at Rice (Hobby is basically minutes away), but that’s pretty rare.
OOS students just need to plan ahead of time for holidays-booking flights and shuttle early(Ground Shuttle)-as the shuttle does fill QUICKLY. And students really don’t (or shouldn’t) be coming home, except for holidays/semester break.
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Thanks for all the good, detailed info! That’s really helpful. 
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My daughter applied in August (still waiting on a holistic decision), but she is considering changing her second choice major from Nutrition to Women’s Gender and Studies.
Two Questions:
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Can majors be changed after the Dec 1 application deadline?
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Are there any reasons that changing a second choice major would not be a good idea at this point?
- Technically one can change major, and from last few cycles, when the change major button was gone without a decision, it indicated PSA offer.
- Admission has set a standard for admitting students, so the second choice is designed for qualified applicants when first choice is full. Many applicants think changing to a lesser known major may increase chance, it usually is not the case. So there is no particular downside of changing major during application. Just make sure the changed major still align properly with the essay.
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Oh a $50 shuttle would be very convenient indeed. Had no idea.
I have a few questions about honors programs, read here and reddits but still couldn’t get all the answers - looks like you apply both UH and engineering honors, but can you stay in both, or you’ll have to choose one?
NMSF are guaranteed for UH, is it also true for engineering?
I know housing/choosing roommate is one thing about UH. But about class selection, does ENHR have a different lineup of honor classes than UH? I read one post in Reddit saying it is much harder to find required honors classes in upper class for UH but not for ENHR. All due to advisors?
Any other “perks” that ENHR offers but UH doesn’t?
Thanks!
@DI25 my $.02… do 1 HNR program, or the other - but not UH (University HNR) AND a college/dept program. ZERO reason to do both.
Hands down, departmental/college HNR programs are FAR better vs UH.
Biggest perk to UH is early registration…that’s about it. No UH advisors, lots of ‘busy work.
UH, IMO, is a bummer 
I haven’t heard NMSF automatically gets into Engineering HNR.
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Both A&M and Texas should focus on lowering tuition for all students or move to have more merit. That’s how other public schools operate in other states, we act like elite private schools instead. We should replicate the models in Georgia, Florida, and North Carolina which are all comparable states to us. They keep their best and brightest in state with free tuition and very low tuition for virtually all students at their flagships.
Instead A&M and Texas have some of the highest in state tuition rates in the country in spite of having the 2 largest endowments among Publics in the country. Yet the focus is all on going to means testing for tuition effectively having tuition artificially higher for many students to pay for the others without consideration of merit. If you aren’t going in the Corps or NMSF it’s tough to get any merit money and thus A&M and the state lose tons of great students who go to places that are happy to incentivize them. Instead we penalize people for paying taxes and saving money for college.
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So true!
It really is sad with how little if any they give if the student is not NMSF. My son got a full ride to U of H and Lamar and a good amount of money form Tech and UTSA, but his dream is to go to TAMU so that is where he is going. Luckily he is 1st in his class so he has the first year of TUITION paid for but other than that I would be surprised if he gets anything else with our FAFSA score. I can see how other students who aren’t dead set on TAMU following the scholarship offers.
It’s really eye opening when you look at how other states operate. Even California is far less expensive for their in state students with tons of merit opportunities at the UC schools compared to Texas. They also have a law there that no OOS student can get scholarship money from the school and they must pay a $22,500 OOS fee. At A&M if you qualify for $4k in scholarships you automatically get In State tuition and if you major in Maritime in Galveston you automatically get In State as well if you are from any Gulf State.
I have no problem with making college more affordable for anyone but I do have a problem when you have a finite pool of money that seems puzzlingly small considering the resources of the school and it all seems to go to 2 groups (NM or purely means tested). The other reality is that a lot of that means tested money is going to kids that are Top 10% from poor performing schools and are among the most likely not to be successful at A&M academically. Sorry but that’s the truth.
A Top 10% kid from the Valley or the bad part of a major city is in for a massive shock when they get into some of those Freshman classes and unfortunately a lot of them don’t make it. If you are taking Math 151 odds are half those kids have already taken AP Calculus in High School and are just doing it for the easy A. Yet it’s hard to turn down that much free money even if they would likely be better off going to school closer to home at a less rigorous University. Then they can always transfer in. Instead we encourage the reverse with our System Admits. We send the kids from Suburban HS’s to the Satellite schools where they can make an easy 4.0 and then transfer in but unless they are a die hard Aggie or Longhorn they will just go OOS typically.
It’s so frustrating how we do so many things as a school that end up hurting our rankings and pushing away some of our best students. Most kids who are decent students can go OOS to a Flagship from multiple states around Texas cheaper than they can go In State staying at home, lunacy.
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Don’t get me wrong, while I’m upset about the lack of scholarships offered to student’s like my son I am overjoyed that he is now an Aggie. I am an Aggie and my husband is an Aggie. We brainwashed him and slipped the koolaid in his milk and managed to raise our son to be an Aggie. He is choosing A&M over other schools giving him a full ride because he knows that his Engineering degree from A&M will open up way more opportunities for great jobs than the other schools.
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Oh I’m there with you and I get it. I went there, my wife went there, my older son goes there, my Dad was a Yell Leader there and a Class Agent. We tailgated all day Saturday and had my son sit in the Student section with my other son.
If it comes down to a full ride from another great school (looking at several) vs dropping $100k plus at A&M though that’s going to be a tough call or if he can get into a truly elite school and pay similar to what he would at A&M. We have saved what we could and have some resources but can’t pay for 2 kids at A&M without loans. Not to mention how much some other schools bend over backwards recruiting him while A&M doesn’t.
If we didn’t have such a strong Aggie connection A&M would likely be middle of the list for him. That’s my real point, he is exactly the type of kid who will thrive at A&M and make an impact but if it weren’t for our family connection he likely wouldn’t know and wouldn’t feel a pull there. That’s what A&M needs to fix, we should want the strongest students with leadership skills in Texas to want to attend. Instead we are seen as a Safety school by the best students and we deny or we make it difficult for kids that would thrive at A&M to get in and make it really expensive for them when they have a lot of options.
I’ll always love A&M and so will my sons, I just don’t know if my youngest will go even though he is already accepted to Engineering and I know so many talented kids who are pretty turned off by the things I have discussed. If you look at UNC/NC State, UGA/Georgia Tech, and UF/FSU they have figured out how to solve this issue and keep those kids in state at a much higher rate than we do. Same with the UC schools though they have a different system. We are instead acting like the public schools in the Northeast that don’t get the best students in their states to go there such as NY, Connecticut, Massachussetts, etc. The top kids from those states aren’t going to Stony Brook, UConn, and UMass yet we are much closer to operating like those schools do than we are the schools in the South in many ways. It’s very short sighted and I would like for it to change so A&M can reach its potential.
One thing I will add though, A&M has some incredibly kind and generous donors. The Brown Family is incredible with their commitment they have made to the school. One family literally donates twice as many scholarships per year as the entire Forty Acres program at Texas. I would just love to see A&M encourage more of that, I think that they could have success doing so if they did. As it stands most of the money either goes to NM or means tested scholarships.
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Has anyone heard anything from holistic review in college of agriculture or animal science majors?
any idea when there will be more acceptances??