Reply to Does VT college of Engineering guaranteed spot in a major?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]From what I understand, Virginia Tech's College of Engineering doesn’t admit students directly into a specific major. Instead, students receive general admission into the College of Engineering, and after their first year, they are placed into a specific major—such as computer engineering—based on their GPA and other criteria.

So when a high school student says they’ve been admitted to Virginia Tech for computer engineering, is that a different type of admission? Does it mean they’ve received a guaranteed spot in that major?
What's the process for guaranteed major admission?
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For most engineering majors, there is no direct admission to major at VT. VT deliberately has several mandatory "weed-out" classes (i.e., designed to force some % students out of the E School) in Freshman and Sophomore years, so the overall number of Juniors at VT in the E School is visibly lower than the number of Freshmen in the E School.

To get a popular major, such as ComputerE, one must both survive the weed-out classes AND have a high GPA afterwards.

Not all college E Schools have intentional "weed out" classes. Their existence (or not) at a particular college is one of the few meaningful differences between one E School and a different E School. ABET means all accredited E Schools have nearly identical curricula and that all are rigorous. [/quote]

The use of “E School” suggests you are a booster of another school (and I won’t say which one). Nobody at VT uses that term.

And you don’t provide any citation for your claim of “weed out classes”. As I noted, you need a 3.0 to be guaranteed your choice of engineering major.  Here is the policy: https://eng.vt.edu/academics/undergraduate-students/resources-support/change-of-major/restricted.html

3.0  is hardly a “high GPA” for the kind of student that gets admitted to VT Engineering. Particularly since that includes 6 credits of English and 3-6 credits of Easy electives (known as Pathways at VT).

To be sure, somewhere between 20-25% of freshman engineers switch to another non-Engineering major. Most of those realize they just aren’t cut out for it. Others don’t get a 2.0 (which means they partied way too hard).

By comparison, this is nothing like McIntire at UVA which has a 50% admission rate. Do your homework, go to class, turn in your labs and you will have a 3.0 and get your choice. 
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