Anonymous
Post 10/24/2023 10:19     Subject: Dropping out of engineering
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Chemistry and Multivariable Calculus tend to be weed out classes. They are purposely designed to break engineering and pre-med students. He survived. Physics is also known to be difficult.

That's a pretty heavy course load for a freshman who's never taken any AP courses. He will have been way underprepared compared to his fellow students, who presumably had taken the usual 8-14 AP classes that most Ivy League students will have taken in high school, including Calculus BC, Multivariable, and Chemistry. And since these classes are graded on a curve, he did ok all things considered. In fact, I'd say if this is his first introduction to calculus, chemistry, and physics, he did outstanding.

If he's passionate about engineering, I would never in a million years tell him he needs to drop it and move on. The weakness is the rural high school. Not his intelligence or drive.


+1. He’s doing great. Also, there are more options than engineering vs humanities. Especially at a school with so many opportunities.


+1
He is doing great! He's in those classes with kids who took 10+ APs and are retaking them now in college. The curve will be affected by that. He passed the classes, has some Bs (not all Cs). Welcome to engineering---it's a hard path. If he wants to continue let him. Many times the higher level classes are "easier" because they are more interesting, not "weed outs" and more focused on what he wants to learn
Anonymous
Post 10/24/2023 09:26     Subject: Dropping out of engineering
Anonymous wrote:DS is a sophomore at an elite Ivy, and he is majoring in engineering field.

We live far from DC in a small town in VA, having moved here so I could SAH, the high school seemed well enough, but didn’t have any AP courses or such, and only about a 1/3 of kids go to college (most go to Old Dominion, JMU, etc).

I was talking to DS about declaring his major, and he got a B- in chem, C+ in calc, and C- in physics first semester, and then B+ in chem, A- multivar calc, and C+ in physics second semester. His best grade was an A- in a civil liberties course.

He claims he doesn’t care about grades, he is committed to engineering and even wants to go grad school!

I know the Ivy name might help, and maybe they have some grade deflation, but I think most people would take these kind of grades as a sign to switch to a humanities major, esp with the grade in Civil Liberties. This semester he seems on track for Bs and Cs still.



Will he be employable with these kind of grades? I assume grad school won’t accept him, so just care if he can lead to work. Did anyone stick it out in a hard major even with bad grades?


OP you set you kid up for failure. Who starts their kid in engineering without a good background.

That said he’s doing great this is engineering. A high percentage of kids get f’s

Let him continue you have no idea how to educate a kid so sit this one out.

Yes grad schools accept kids with C a C average might be be Ivy League however plenty of programs do. Then his gpa resets and Grad schools rarely give C grades then job

I hire engineers all the time your kids got this he’s smarter than his parents

Anonymous
Post 10/24/2023 09:02     Subject: Re:Dropping out of engineering
NP. Talking him out of (Ivy) engineering degree would be the dumbest thing a parent can do. If anything, encourage him. Lucky you, he does not need any encouragement. Just stay out of the way.
A Ph.D. engineer.
Anonymous
Post 10/24/2023 09:02     Subject: Dropping out of engineering
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Don’t be an idiot. Don’t discourage him from pursuing engineering


He wants to build airplanes — this isn’t Big Tech money, and will they let C students work on planes??


Apparently, Boeing did.
Anonymous
Post 10/24/2023 09:00     Subject: Dropping out of engineering
I struggled with engineering at a competitive school my freshman year but was able to recover and graduate with a 3.0. I was smart and well prepared for my small town, but was so far behind kids from schools like TJ and Stuyvesant. I powered through and it sucked, but I made it.

I think your kid should think about what kind of engineer he wants to be and whether he is at the right school. I didn’t realize until I was on my co-op assignment that schools each have assumptions about how many of their students will proceed to grad school and what industries they are groomed for based on the professors’ research.

I am glad I stayed and it got me into a good consulting firm doing non-engineering work, but if I knew for sure I wanted to work in industry I would have switched to a state school to struggle less or if I knew I wanted to go to grad school I may have transferred somewhere I thought I could get better grades.

Anonymous
Post 10/24/2023 08:56     Subject: Dropping out of engineering
Anonymous wrote:Anyone else feel like OP is a troll, making up a scenario at midnight in an effort to prove to themselves that high school quality matters a lot?


Hmmm, maybe it’s the one who was asking about better to be from mediocre schools than magnet schools? Reframing the same question.

From my experience at an Ivy, there were certainly kids who succeeded from small no name high schools, though I wasn’t in math or science much so maybe there is a baseline there that is hard to make up?
Anonymous
Post 10/24/2023 08:30     Subject: Dropping out of engineering
Anonymous wrote:Leave him be. The coursework is hard.


+1.
Anonymous
Post 10/24/2023 08:29     Subject: Dropping out of engineering
Anonymous wrote:Those grades seem pretty bad to me but he should talk to his advisor and career office to see what they think. They’re the experts.


They’re not, though. He passed tough courses. No Ds or Fs. Only in liberal arts courses (which DCUM loves to pretend are just as hard as STEM courses) can you expect to cruise to an A.

Stay the course!
Anonymous
Post 10/24/2023 08:22     Subject: Dropping out of engineering
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Don’t be an idiot. Don’t discourage him from pursuing engineering


He wants to build airplanes — this isn’t Big Tech money, and will they let C students work on planes??


If he graduates with the degree, yes.
Anonymous
Post 10/24/2023 08:18     Subject: Dropping out of engineering
So do kids with 2.5 GPAs really get jobs and internships in 2023 (i.e. now and not 10 or 20
yrs ago) It seems really challenging (my kids are currently at the internship phase) and it seems really hard, even with great grades (one of mine has great grades, one does not).
Anonymous
Post 10/24/2023 07:55     Subject: Dropping out of engineering
Anonymous wrote:Those grades seem pretty bad to me but he should talk to his advisor and career office to see what they think. They’re the experts.


The advisors are very hands off and career services says they should do what they love. They won’t be give any clue about how much an aviation job pays — from what I read it’s peanuts, but at least he’ll make more than DH and can probably live near a city.
Anonymous
Post 10/24/2023 07:54     Subject: Re:Dropping out of engineering
No connection to anything here. But Yale, Brown, Princeton, Harvard, Cornell, and likely others, have engineering.

Don't understand the dismissiveness here. Kid is doing what he wants to do and learning how to learn in a hard place.
Anonymous
Post 10/24/2023 07:54     Subject: Dropping out of engineering
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Why attend 'Elite Ivy' to major in engineering? It's like going to Caltech and studying Women's Studies.


What elite ivy even has engineering?


Princeton is undertaking its largest building project ever to build a new home for engineering, and they just built an enormous new CS facility

https://paw.princeton.edu/article/building-boom-adding-space-sciences-engineering-and-more
Anonymous
Post 10/24/2023 07:53     Subject: Dropping out of engineering
Anonymous wrote:He loves humanities like history and English too — he wanted options in case he did decide to switch.


No!!!!Worthless degrees.


Maybe for engineering, but not in general. Philosophy major has the highest percentile acceptance rate into medical schools, and it's always been super solid for law.

These things often depend on what you do with them.
Anonymous
Post 10/24/2023 07:53     Subject: Dropping out of engineering
Those are wash out courses , the ones after that are much easier