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

Forum Index » College and University Discussion

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

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][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?
[/quote]

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]

NP.  I feel as if you're talking about "weed out" classes in a negative way.  Schools with rigorous, demanding weed out classes ensure that ONLY the best engineering students remain in the program and receive degrees.  Schools which coddle all students are dumbing down the curriculum.  They are not graduating the best students.[/quote]

Actually, they are ensuring that the size of the major stays within budget - -grades adjusted accordingly. That's what weed-out means.[/quote]Just to make sure we're speaking the same language: Are you referring to "weed out" classes as those general first-year courses required to apply to an engineering major, generally Calc 1&2, chemistry, physics, English, and intro engineering? (This specifically describes VT's approach, but it's generally consistent across pre-engineering programs.)

The key question is whether these courses, mostly taught by different departments and taken by students across various majors, apply special curves specifically to engineering students, or if all students suffer equally when "grades are adjusted" to keep engineering programs within budget constraints.
In other words, are pre engineering students being uniquely targeted by these challenging gateway courses, or is everyone taking these foundational classes subject to the same potentially brutal curves regardless of their intended major?[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics