Wednesday, November 17, 2010

How easy is it to change majors at the University of Houston??

I applied for Civil engineering and didnt get into the program.. I want to get into civil engineering and am planning to switch into civil engineering after my first semester.



Will it be hard for me??How easy is it to change majors at the University of Houston??
It appears that UH has more rigorous admissions requirements to their engineering and business programs than they do for their other academic departments. Apparently, those two programs look for higher SAT or ACT exam scores.



If those programs allowed students to enter the university in some other program, then switch over to engineering or business after the first semester, there wouldn't be much point to the high thresholds, would there?



If you're going to earn admission to the civil engineering program, you are going to have to demonstrate that you have the academic chops to qualify for the program. There's no way that one semester of general education classes is going to allow you the opportunity to impress the engineering department quite that much. I'd be fairly willing to bet that it will take you at least one year of really good grades to build up the academic resume that will get you into the civil engineering program, and it might even take two.



Keep in mind that the first two years of just about any university program is heavily invested in fulfilling the general education requirements that are pretty much common to all students, regardless of major. You'll take English composition, maybe some history, some math, maybe a fine arts course or two, a language - all of these courses are designed to ensure that your education is well rounded. It's only after you complete those requirements that you move into the ';upper division'; at the university, and that's when you're permitted to start taking the higher level, more specialized ';major'; courses that you need to complete your degree.



Of the courses that you'll be taking while completing your general education requirements, some will be of more interest to the engineering department than others - that's because some of the courses are far more relevant to engineering. Anything math related (the higher level the better), and some of the science courses, like physics are particularly germane to engineering, so the better you do in those sorts of classes, the more likely you are to build a transcript that will enable you to switch to civil engineering.



Don't worry so much about your declared major for the first year or two, because most students are working on the general education requirements, regardless of their major. Whether you're in civil engineering or not won't matter until you start taking the advanced civil engineering courses - registration for those is going to be limited to enrolled majors, so that's when you need to worry about what department you've been accepted to.



Look carefully at the course progression that is recommended for civil engineering students in their first two years, and do your best to take all of those courses that you can - and do well in them (!). Once you have a track record of college success under your belt, that's when you'll be a good candidate to approach the engineering department about acceptance to the civil engineering program.



Good luck!
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