Which colleges offer the most flexibility in changing Engineering majors?

ucbalumnus
Sat, 24 Aug 2019 21:06:40 +0000

Many Midwestern schools admit to first year engineering, and students declare specific majors later. Unfortunately, most of them have high GPA requirements or competitive admission for the more popular majors. Note that Cornell is similar, but the thresholds are in the 2.x range instead of over 3.0. Wisconsin has a variant where students need to earn high GPA to stay in the major. UIUC admits directly to majors, but changing can be very competitive.

Some GPA thresholds for students admitted to first year engineering. There may be space available for competitive admission for students be who miss the threshold.

2.0: Michigan, Pittsburgh
2.x, varies by major: Cornell
3.2: Purdue, Minnesota
3.5: Texas A&M
3.x, varies by major: Penn State, Ohio State, Wisconsin
Competitive: NC State

Less selective schools (e.g. the non flagship public serving commuters from your home town) may be less likely to have capacity limitations that require them to ration admission to major, probably because natural attrition due to course rigor reduces student interest.

At the other end of the scale, smaller wealthy universities like MIT may have big (in a relative sense) enough engineering departments that they always have reserve capacity to admit any student who is passing the courses.