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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Seems like engineering schools are probably losing competent students just because the kids and their parents are used to inflated HS GPAs, believe a B is the equivalent of an F, and think a freshman year GPA of 3.0 means they’re “bad at engineering.”[/quote]

I do wonder though if many good well rounded students wind up pursuing engineering just because they got good grades in HS math - I mean not everyone who can get an A in HS Calculus is ready to be an engineer. I guess the question is what does a parent do about a kid in engineering who can't manage a full course load and fails a fairly standard high level course...do they bail before its gets worse or try to grind through in the hopes that they can make it through and the actual career will be heavy on other skills?[/quote]

In my E school, back in the day, the rest of the university has a “standard” course load of 15 credit hours/semester.  Engineering by contrast had a “standard” course load of 18 or 19 credit hours/semester. And the E School had an enumerated list of permitted “general” electives, none of which were easy.  This is why some E Schools offer a 5-year option for the undergraduate degree.  UMd Engineering used to allow this; not sure if they still have the option.

One odd thing about engineering, in my own experience, is that engineers have to take prodigious number of advanced math courses, but after graduation engineers generally use mathematical software (e.g., Maple, MatLab, Mathematica, R)  for the day-to-day computations on the job.  I do not know anyone doing daily computations by hand.

Now, if interested in STEM but does not want the pain of E School undergrad, then consider a slightly different academic path, such as a BS Chemistry followed by MS ChemE. Or a BS Physics (with appropriate upper electives) followed by an MS ECE. Or a BSCS with a minor in ECE. [/quote]

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