@doschicos - My D16 is experiencing it at both large publics and LAC, although her LACs are direct entry programs and it is the GPA needed to maintain a spot in the program. I am referencing schools Pitt, Purdue, Marquette, Duquesne, Drexel.
At the public u. my son attended, the business school was very competitive for admission (starting junior year) and a couple of the specific high demand engineering majors were very competitive. Also, the undergrad public policy program had become very competitive. However, most majors only required that you completed a few courses in their department with at least a B average in those courses in order to make that department your major.
Nursing is a different story. It is almost always more difficult for admission than for the general student population. For some universities that accept nursing majors for the junior year, admissions can be highly competitive.
Curious as to LAC and what major. Can you provide an example @labegg? What I’ve heard of more for LACs are weeder courses that might make students reevaluate a certain major.
Harvard: visual and environmental studies.
Cornell, Columbia, Pennsylvania: some changes of major or between divisions presumably require a minimum GPA higher than 2.0, or competitive admission.
Some majors are commonly restricted. Engineering and CS are commonly restricted at well known state flagship and similarly selective schools. Business majors that are considered “elite” are commonly restricted. Nursing seems to be very difficult to find a school where it is unrestricted. But even popular liberal arts majors like economics, psychology, or biology may be restricted.
Direct entry BS/DPT programs (Seton Hall/Quinnipiac/Marquette/Duquesne/Ithaca) generally require a 3.2 (some higher, some lower) to stay in program. If I recall Duquesne mentioned “liking a 3.5” for acceptance in BS/DPT although I do not think it was a hard line for acceptance. D16 was told she would need to maintain a 3.2 GPA at Baldwin Wallace to stay in Music Therapy. Marquette also has a making sufficient progress toward completion of major requirement.
Thanks, @ucbalumnus, for the clarification. The VES looks like it is a 3.0. That plus the 2.0s you mention don’t sound like major stumbling blocks or difficult thresholds. I’d argue that there are issues other than pursuing your chosen major if you can’t meet that, especially the 2.0, although I’ve never heard of Harvard having a whole lot of grade deflation.
I always thought nursing majors were direct admit along with many, many of the engineering and CS majors.
Does seem like something every applicant should have a handle on. Still unaware of how this would apply in the LAC world but I know its an issue with large schools with limited room/resources in certain majors.
EDIT: I guess I never associated the schools mentioned in #584 as being LACs, but I guess I define LACs as SLACs for the most part as opposed to medium sized universities.
@doschicos, there is no GPA requirement for certain majors at Mudd. I just gave it as an example of a school where you can pretty readily find GPA info if you want it. The college president actually talked about it in a presentation for parents & students at orientation, and I have seen it in writing as well.
I was using the definition of LAC as - A liberal arts college is a college with an emphasis on undergraduate study in the liberal arts and sciences. A liberal arts college aims to impart a broad general knowledge and develop general intellectual capacities, in contrast to a professional, vocational, or technical curriculum. Sorry if there was confusion.
The only instances I’ve heard of this at LACs is that (at least at the schools with which I’m familiar) students need to have a certain minimum GPA in their major to receive a degree in that major. It’s usually low-e.g. a 2.0. While they aren’t technically kicked out, unless their eventual GPA is above the minimum they need to find another major. I’d say this is pretty rare in that most kids major in a discipline in which they do well.
I meant that the threshold to change major or division may be higher than 2.0 (e.g. 2.5 or 3.0 or whatever). I would consider 2.0 or C grades to be essentially unrestricted (students below that probably have other issues to deal with, like academic probation or dismissal).
Some schools direct admit, some do not (or admit to a pre-nursing or pre-engineering program), and some direct admit some but require others to compete for the remaining spaces. Of course, at direct admit schools, students who initially entered for some other major may find it very difficult to change into the restricted major.
“How widespread is this “needing certain GPAs to get into a major” thing? Mainly big state flagships? Ivies, too?”
At engineering schools like Purdue and Wisconsin students are admitted to a Freshmen Year Engineering program, and don’t choose a specific major until the complete the first year engineering requirements. Once those are completed, you have to apply for a major, and different majors have different gpa hurdles, depending on capacity and demand.
At Illinois, you are admitted directly to a major, so DD has been admitted to ChemE. However, if she wants to change to a different engineering major at some point, that could be challenging because, strangely, Chemical Engineering is not part of the Engineering School.
Penn has 4 undergraduate schools: Wharton, SEAS, CAS, and Nursing. Transferring into Wharton is difficult, and transferring into SEAS is somewhat difficult. It is easier to move from Wharton or SEAS to The College. Nursing probably has the least movement due to specialization.
Cornell has more separate undergraduate schools than Penn, which increases the complexity of transferring. I think they had 9 schools, but I think that the business and hotel schools are consolidating. I am not sure of the exact number.
The point is that this is an issue at many schools, but it is not discussed much, which seems odd to me.
Can I just say as a student… I’m from NY and really want to go south for college. My mom absolutely hates the idea but is warming up to it because she believes I can handle being so far away and it’s what a really want. Personally, I i felt restricted in choosing a college right now I’d probably be going crazy. For any reason besides money and safety i don’t see a reason why we shouldn’t be choosing our own school…
Wouldn’t you want better for your kids than what you had? @LBad96
Deal breaker for me. A school that does not have a hospital in close proximity to the college campus (daughter has a serious and potentially life threatening health issues), a specialist in her disease that is not nearby would also be a deal breaker. Of course cost since we have unpredictable medical expenses which is why we really pushed for scholarships at each school she applied too. For our daughter, the deal breaker was not having a direct admit for freshman nursing majors, an opportunity to live and work on campus was a must for her. She wanted to go to school away from home but close enough that she can come home on long weekends or school breaks since many of her friends are choosing to go to a local college such as UCF or Seminole State. We found a great compromise as she accepted an offer to attend FAU’s College of Nursing Direct Admit Program. FAU is a 3 hour drive from home, an hour drive from a great hospital in Miami plus there is a hospital across the street from the FAU campus.
Visited Fau couple yrs. ago. Looked like a really sweet place to go to school. Can’t believe its not swamped with Northerners and Canadians who don’t like cold weather.
^^I nearly graduated from FAU (H was transferred halfway through my last semester senior year, after I’d been admitted to the grad school). It is by far one of the favorite colleges (out of 10 and counting) that I’ve attended. There were a lot of retired Ivy-League (and Ivy adjacent) profs teaching there. For me it was a commuter school so I can’t speak to the life on campus, but the professors were uniformly amazing.
^^^FAU also has fairly low OOS tuition rates ($17+K a year), offers freshman merit scholarships, and even international student merit scholarships…
I attended college in the '70s, and at least one or more dorms had co-ed bathrooms, officially or by default since students didn’t want to walk a bit farther. More of an issue was GF/BF taking a shower together, generally in a single sex BR. They would take FOREVER. I lived in a dorm that was co-ed by floor, and our urinal was decorated with artificial flowers.
As to crime? Our small, safe community had a serial killer. One of his victims was a good friend of a dorm mate. The killer was the son of a campus employee so drove a car with a university sticker. A week or two before she was killed, the friend joked that she should write a book about hitchhiking as she could identify safe and unsafe rides. Not. 
Cost/finances was our only limitation. That being said, DD was being pursued by a LAC we’d visited that DD ultimately decided was not a good match. She and I decided that the school might throw so much money at her that it would be difficult to turn down. I told her she didn’t need to apply. I also determined that room & board were a lot more expensive on the coasts than in the Midwest and South. To reduce the research, I asked her whether she would rather attend school in a Blue State with snow or a Red State without – not taking into account what climate change has done to regular weather, LOL. Republicans are apparently a deal breaker for my kid.
If the school was not on the West Coast, she was told she couldn’t come home for Thanksgiving due to time and cost constraints, and that she should also consider the school’s distance to the airport. Not deal breakers, but things she needed to consider.
I think DD had more deal breakers than I. I have no problem with gender neutral bathrooms but I think she would have been uncomfortable. She is straight but is an LGBT ally, so LGBT hostility would have been a deal breaker. She is a person of color who attended a multi-racial high school, but pretty much all LACs are darn white, maybe hers less than others. But still. She is followed in stores and stopped by cops when she is in town, and all students of color are advised to wear school insignia when in town. It hasn’t been enough to want to make her transfer, but the racist YikYak comments have been concerning if not alarming.
One of my kids got to know a Princeton coach at a sports camp for high schoolers. Seemed like kid had an inside track for acceptance , so We went for a visit . I’d been there before, and loved its quaint and cozy beauty. We walked around a bit, including the little strip of stores next to campus. Had beakfast at that famous bustling diner.
The whole school was even more enchanting than I remembered it, and as our visit wound down, I had a big Ivy-wannabe smile on my face and said, “well, what do u think?”. Kid said, “No, I don’t like it.” If I’d been drinking something, I would have done a spit take. “You don’t LIKE it? It’s not OLD enough for you? It’s not PRETTY enough for you?” Kid wouldnt elaborate, but wouldn’t budge . I took to calling kiddo (jokingly) “the person for whom Princeton isn’t good enough.”.
Eventually I got my explanation…kid said as we strolled around the town, we passed.the very same lady (setting up a display outside a store) 3 times. Kid knew that everybody makes stupid mistakes in college, and didn’t want to go to a place that was so small that everybody knew each others business, and that you couldn’t avoid certain people if u wanted to.
@moooop , I like that story a lot. What we think is great is not impressive to a teenager. I loved Wesleyan. I couldn’t understand what my daughter didn’t like about it. What’s not to like? Guess what, it’s 90 minutes from home. Deal breaker for my then-16 year old. Also didn’t help that it was summer, no kids were around, and it was literally the first college she ever visited. Lesson learned.