Engineering: Rigor, Grading, and GPAs
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Anonymous
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This post is mostly intended for parents of current E School students or parents of HS students planning to go to E School.
Many Engineering schools do not have (much) grade inflation. Most E Schools grade each course on a curve. Often grades are curved to a 3.1 or 3.0 median grade, which means a fair number of students in a class will get a B- or C+. Even those with lower GPAs will be able to get a good job after graduating with an engineering degree. Parents ought not freak out if their E School kid does not have a top GPA. Parents should be supportive of all their college students, and a struggling E School student might need more support than some others. All ABET accredited E Schools will have similar coursework with similar rigor. Very top schools like MIT/CalTech do not bother with ABET, but obviously they also are rigorous. Afternoons often will be spent in graded labs. All this rigor means the E School college experience often has both less free time and less flexible time than students in Arts & Letters will have. E School is a hard slog for virtually any student with Feynman being the exception who proved the rule. When I was in E School, I only took off Friday night and Saturday night (and Sunday morning for church). Otherwise, it was mostly eat, sleep, or academics. Students planning to apply to E School should try to take rigorous math, physics, and chemistry classes in HS. Calculus is essential, but getting an A in Calc AB is probably better than a C in Calc BC. Students with no calculus likely will struggle if they even are admitted. |
Anonymous
Two engineers different schools and one family member whobhas taught at NC State and Cornell and others, has tenure at a different ivy. The rigor is no where near the same. Not close. At all. Top schools get the brightest students and the professors can and do move fast and expect more. The curriculum of one semester physics was covered in the first half a semester at the top school, similar situation with calculus pacing. |
Anonymous
Agreed. I had one at Cornell and one at a school you've never heard of. Both Engineering and courses were quite different. I will say both are well employed after graduation. |
Anonymous
It’s almost certainly true that the top schools move faster/go deeper, but from what I’ve seen the ABET accreditation insures that there’s a floor on how easy these programs are. I started out in engineering at a very mediocre state school. I had high SAT scores (1550+) and mediocre grades in HS. I thought engineering would be a breeze because the school was so easy to get into. I was completely wrong. I heard similar things from friends going to VT. The non engineering folks breezed through, 50% of the engineering folks struggled and changed majors. |
Anonymous
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Thanks for this. My dd is considering engineering majors but I am in the natural sciences and engineering is totally foreign to me. I even find it strange that you have to apply to specific programs during the admissions process (e.g., jhu and bme). How are these kids supposed to know what field they want to be in as a teenager?
BTW, I'm thankful that E schools are resisting grade inflation. Our bridges need to stand, after all. |
Anonymous
The vast majority of elite schools do not require applying to a specific major. Most but not all require applying to the engineering school but even then switching majors all around or switching out or into the E school is easy. No gpa-gate-keeping into majors. The hard part is getting in to these E schools. Jhu bme is the rate exception among T20 private E-programs |
Anonymous
I think there is a difference, but maybe not as large as this statement. I went to a lower ranked engineering school and, for calculus, we used the same text book, syllabus and practice tests as the department chair's mentor at MIT. It was similar for physics and chemistry, etc. The departments tried very hard to match the curriculum of top programs for all the core technical classes. The difference was that my lower ranked school curved to a 2.6 so it was very, very hard to have a good GPA. Often a 300 person class would only have a handful As given out. I also suspect that the liberal arts requirements were significantly easier than they would have been at a top school. I went on to a prestigious PhD program, as did my husband from the same undergrad, and we both found we were well prepared to keep up with those coming from top schools, but we were also in the couple of kids with excellent GPAs. |
Anonymous
What universities which offer engineering admit dont admit by major? We have a child who doesn't know if he wants to study math or engineering, or even a science. We are looking for schools where he just obtains school admission then has option to change the major depending on how much he likes it. Is there a list out there? |
Anonymous
| Keep in mind that a 3.0 kid in engineering is not necessarily "struggling." It's built into the grading that very few will get As no matter their grasp of the material. Employers know this, which is why GPA is flexible. I think what they are really doing with grades is deciding who will go on to get a PhD, and who will get out there and do great engineering work. |
Anonymous
In today’s admissions climate we are wondering whether to apply as an engineering or arts and sciences for a kid who is genuinely on the fence about engineering vs pure science. Does anyone have any insight? |
Anonymous
Brown Chicago Northeastern's Explore Program RIT's Explore Programs (there are several) Lehigh WPI Rice Holy Cross (3-2 program with Columbia) There are a bunch more. |
Anonymous
I went to UIUC. There were basically different sequences in math. It all covered the same material, just at difference paces, but it was basically 5 classes worth of material. Most students passed out of the first class through AP or the placement test. Many passed out of the first two. Then it was up to you how fast you wanted to cover the rest of the material. You could take a 1 semester class that went through 3 classes worth of material in lightening speed. Or do it over 3 semesters. Or you didn't pass out of the first two classes in the sequence, you could do it in one semester, two or even three. So the inner city or rural kid that never took Calc in high school could take a slower paced sequence and go to summer school to catch up to avoid doing 5 years. Or they could do it rapidly to catch up. The kids that passed out on a the first two classes and then took an accelerated pace on the rest, could graduate early, take a semester off for an off-campus internship, study abroad (rare for engineering students at my school), or a co-op, do a major research project, or take very advanced graduate level classes their senior year. These were very ambitious kids. Many would go on to PhD programs at places like Purdue, Michigan, Georgia Tech, UIUC, Berkeley, Stanford and even MIT. Anyways, that's how a really big school did things with people with varying levels of math skills. Even the easiest sequence for engineering wasn't easy, but if you were a grinder and dedicated, you could get through the math needed. |
Anonymous
University of Rochester |
Anonymous
| We have a niece that it now trying to get into her engineering program from being admitted only to the College of Liberal Arts. The school makes it almost impossible to do. It would have been 100x simpler to apply to the engineering school |
Anonymous
I have heard that some schools do this because they need more liberal arts majors, and they don't need more engineering majors, so there may be a slight an advantage to applying as liberal arts. But they don't want students to use this as a way to get into the engineering programs. I do think it's a shame that kids can't change their minds! |