Thoughts on Texas A&M as an Engineer

Overview

Fall Semester:

• FYEX 101 (First Year Experience)
• ENGR 102 (Engineering Lab)
• MATH 151 (Calculus I for Engineers)
• CHEM 107 (General Chemistry for Engineers)
• CHEM 117 (General Chemistry for Engineers Lab)
• CSCE 120/121 (Program Design and Concepts)

Spring Semester:

• PHYS 206 (Newtonian Physics)
• MATH 251 (Calculus III for Engineers)
• ENGR 216 (Engineering Lab II)
• CSCE 222 (Discrete Structures)
• CSCE 181 (Introduction to Computing)

Fall Semester

Lowkey, I treated my first semester of college like senior year in high school. I tried, but not that hard. That's most because these classes weren't difficult for students who already had a background in the subjects. Chem 107 was just AP Chem and Engr 102 was just basic Python programming, though I can totally understand how other people struggled, especially when they have no experience. The chem lab wasn't that bad either, it was just a lot of work writing reports and doing experiements. As for CS 120, for people who already think in terms of writing software this class should be a breeze, including the exams where you're given 5 sheets of double sided notes. The homework might be a little time consuming, but that's expected when working with C++ memory management.

I basically put in minimal effort in these classes and was trying to find new interests. Originally, I was planning on doing Computer Science but then I decided that wasn't worth the stress with worrying about GPA and I'm more interested in embedded and hardware systems now anyways. I also joined a bunch of clubs and realized that I literally wasn't interested in any of them so I proceeded to drop them all. I also hit Plat 3 in Valorant.

To be completely honest, I was just acclimating to a new lifestyle and that was plenty enough of work.

Spring Semester

This is my ETAM rant.

For those who don't know, ETAM is Entry To A Major which is a filtering system for all engineering students at TAMU to decide which specific discipline they specialize in. However, because of how it's structured, certain majors such as Computer Science, Aerospace, Mechanical, and Computer Engineering to an extent, require at least a 3.75 GPA to even have a fair chance to get admitted (Rumors have been circulating that it will be increased to a 4.0 soon). So the 4 largest departments, constituting about 54% of all A&M engineering, are gatekept by a GPA requirement. Source

ETAM is beneficial for people who geniunely have no idea what they want to major in, which seems to actually be a lot of people. But for students who already have an interest it just adds more hoops to jump through. From the College of Engineering's perspective, this is a useful process because it gives students more experience to the fields before committing, dramatically decreasing the time it takes for students to graduate because students stopped switching majors after their first year. However, many departments don't like this system because it limits how early they can start teaching major-specific concepts. Additionally, many students who already have mentally committed to a major also dislike ETAM because it adds a seemingly arbitrary GPA benchmark to pursuing an interest. I assume that ETAM has been a net positive for the college since they've kept it around for so long, and there's probably a large monetary incentive for pumping out engineers at a steady rate.

While ETAM might have been designed to give meritorious opportunities for all engineering students to discover which discipline suits them, it ends up becoming more of a gatekeeping mechanism that encourages GPA optimization like taking easy padding classes and discourages students from taking advanced classes early. Overall, I understand that my prejudiced judgment on the system is a little harsh and selfish since the students who work the hardest should obviously benefit from their labor, but it is still annoying to go through another round of admissions only a year after submitting (getting rejected from) college applications.

That's all for my rant.

Besides ETAM, classes are alright, not too difficult, or at least they're the difficulty I expect them to be. I've started picking up more hobbies such as finishing up my network security training, learning about systems programming, and tinkering with physical network penetration devices like the Flipper Zero. These are infinitely times more interesting than any of the classes I'm taking right now, I wish I could just drop out and learn the fundamentals on my own but I know I will lose all motivation as soon as I stop attending class and taking exams.