Advice on Starting School Over

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spaceloaf

CAGiversary!
I need some advice for my girlfriend. She's been trying to complete a Computer Engineering degree at a major university for a couple years now. She's had trouble with her schoolwork, but rather than switch majors, she tried to stick with it.

But now, it looks like she might fail out of her engineering college, and she's finally beginning to think that CE might not be really what she wants to do. So she wants to start over at a new school, with a new major (she's still undecided what that will be).

Unfortunately, her GPA isn't so great anymore. Also, most of the professors that could give her a good recommendation haven't seen her in a couple years. So, with a lack of a good GPA, or current references, it may be difficult to get accepted to just any school.

I've heard that if you spend a couple years at a Community College, you can usually transfer into a major university.

Do any CAGs have advice for how to start over with a clean slate?

Thanks in advance.
 
She should get a minor in CE since she probably has the credits then continue at her current college under a new major, if she transfers most likely it will be to a lesser known school and CC won't be of much benefit since she probably has every general education requirement fullfilled.
 
Unfortunately, the Engineering College she is in does not have Minor programs. So even in the best of conditions, it's not possible for her to get a Minor in CE.

However, it this case, it's even worse, because if she fails this semester, she will be expelled from the school. But even if she doesn't get expelled, she wants to change schools.

So, basically, I'm asking what the best way is to change schools with bad credentials. Certainly, going to a CC wouldn't be worthwhile in its own right, but it might be the only way she can get into a major university at this point.
 
I'm pretty sure most schools, at least in this area, have to take a certain percentage of their incoming students from community colleges. At least thats what my HS college counselor told me a long long time ago. I have had a few friends go to community for a couple years and get their GPA up as well as saving an assload of money. So if she's really worried about getting accepted somewhere else community college would be a great way to go.

I know one of the RA's in my dorm was a super super super super senior, he went like 4 years as a bio major and then changed to business admin. So you can always switch majors at the same school you just need the Dean of that college's approval.
 
Hmmm, thanks GiantPacu, that's good to know.

She just doesn't want to stay at her current school, so even if she has the options to switch majors, I don't think she will take it. But at least there are some alternatives.
 
[quote name='spaceloaf']Unfortunately, the Engineering College she is in does not have Minor programs. So even in the best of conditions, it's not possible for her to get a Minor in CE.

However, it this case, it's even worse, because if she fails this semester, she will be expelled from the school. But even if she doesn't get expelled, she wants to change schools.

So, basically, I'm asking what the best way is to change schools with bad credentials. Certainly, going to a CC wouldn't be worthwhile in its own right, but it might be the only way she can get into a major university at this point.[/QUOTE]

Well what she could do is go to a smaller school, in the case of many privates it is more about having money or loans than it is about grades, also there are plenty of decent smaller state schools she could go to for a year or so to clean up her GPA.

The problem with starting clean over is that unless you transfer something you are going to have to retake a lot of general reqs and most of those things were bad enough the first time through.
 
I had to goto a CC to get my GPA up in order to get back into college. She is in a tough place and I feel her pain. I have been struggling to complete my BS in electrical engineeing/computer science. Lucky for me I have some awesome study groups that keep me a float. Plus there has been many a night that I had to sacrifice my social life to get this far (graduation is in four weeks). Remember that changing a major will add time to the clock too (I did it and have been going to school for like seven years). Good luck ;)
 
I'm in a very similar situation. I plodded my way through 3+ years of college at a very expensive private school working towards an Engineering degree, but realized by the end I couldn't hack it or stand it anymore. I despised college. My GPA sucked and I ended up failing a ton of classes before I finally left.

Now I've been away from college for a while and I will eventually need to get back into it, and probably as a fine arts major, no less. Just thinking about school makes my skin crawl, let alone when I've been doing the research to reapply. Failing pretty miserably at that too.

I guess I honestly don't have much constructive criticism, but I am in a pretty similar spot right now.
 
Don't sweat it TireDamage. My GF will be happy to know that there are other people in her situation. Trying to stay afloat has definately been hard on her. She lost her scholarship and she has a student loan that will be tough to pay off if she doesn't graduate and get a decent job.

But I always tell her not to give up. Hopefully she can fine something that she enjoys enough to push through it and complete a degree.

Good luck to you too Thanks for sharing your experiences.
 
[quote name='spaceloaf']Don't sweat it TireDamage. My GF will be happy to know that there are other people in her situation. Trying to stay afloat has definately been hard on her. She lost her scholarship and she has a student loan that will be tough to pay off if she doesn't graduate and get a decent job.

But I always tell her not to give up. Hopefully she can fine something that she enjoys enough to push through it and complete a degree.

Good luck to you too Thanks for sharing your experiences.[/QUOTE]

If she's not able to pay for school now and wants to switch majors, going to a JC for a couple years is a good idea. Cheaper and it's a great way to boost her GPA.

Also, in every school, if you're in the College of Engineering, you're held to a higher standard than everybody else. My 3.55 is great compared to my friends, but my advisor tells me that it wouldn't hurt to boost it...
 
College isn't for everyone. It may shock some people here but I'm a high school dropout who took over ten years to bother getting a GED. It wasn't of ability to learn so much as a lack of ability to function in the academic setting.

Your GF may want to consider vocational training to enable her to hold down a decent job while pursuing a degree on the side. If she was already inclined towards CE she may find it quite easy to pick up some of the major IT certifications. If you don't need a lot of classroom time and/or already have a good deal of realworld experience the cost can be quite low. I've know a few people who couldn't stand being fulltime students who went this route. They were able to acquire jobs that allowed for a decent life while adding afew college credits every year until finally picking up two year and four year degrees that came in handy when they starting coming under consideration for management positions.

I'd be a lot better off today if there had been these kinds of certification programs twenty years ago.
 
I'm also in a similar situation. After starting in Computer Engineering, I switched after a few months because I couldn't stand the programming. Now I've been in Engineering Physics for 3 years+ and I'm starting to burn out on it. I took the quarter off to look around to see what kind of job opportunities are out there. For now I don't have a set plan for going back, but my idea is to get a job and go back part time to finish it out, just so I can have a 4-year degree. I'm looking into getting certifications and working in the computer/IT field. I've been using those skills all my life, so I figure I may as well profit from them in the mean time.
 
Thanks to everyone for their posts so far.

I agree that the vocational route would be a good option, but I'm not sure if my GF will want anything to do with computers after this semester.

Actually, she is somewhat artistically inclined, and might want to move towards an architecture degree. Other than that, she has also expressed some interest in foreign policy (particularly in North Korean; she's Korean).

Please keep the posts coming; these have been very helpful so far.
 
Computer degrees aren't the best anymore...

I went for a Computer Science degree for a semester... but since everyone and their dog started going into the field, jobs are getting really scarce.

And with Engineering... every single person I talk to in there, hates it.

But, good luck.
 
Has she talked to an advisor? University Adivisors are a greatly underused service. Thanks to the advisor I had back in school, I shaved almost a year off of my degree, and she also introduced me to the head of the Counselling and Placement Services, who managed to have a internship ready for me almost every summer throughout my education.

If college isn't for her, epobirs suggested a very good path as well.
 
I thought Asians are supposed to have really amazing work ethics, don't they devote 99.9% of there energy toward their work?
 
[quote name='radjago']I'm also in a similar situation. After starting in Computer Engineering, I switched after a few months because I couldn't stand the programming. Now I've been in Engineering Physics for 3 years+ and I'm starting to burn out on it. I took the quarter off to look around to see what kind of job opportunities are out there. For now I don't have a set plan for going back, but my idea is to get a job and go back part time to finish it out, just so I can have a 4-year degree. I'm looking into getting certifications and working in the computer/IT field. I've been using those skills all my life, so I figure I may as well profit from them in the mean time.[/QUOTE]

If you know anyone who has gone this route you should see about borrowing the CD(s) that came with their books to try the practice tests. This will give you a very quick assessment of how ready you are for the real test.

You'll often find most of your effort going into learning the odd way they state the questions or memorizing some desparately obsolete stuff about equipment that no sane company has installed in nearly a decade and that nobody would ever pay you to anything in relation to it other than replacing it with the current standard. For instance, Token Ring. I've been doing this stuff at various levels for almost twenty years and have never seen a Token Ring network anywhere except in classroom demos and trade show booths. The chance of Token Ring ever coming up as a needed area of knowledge by anyone entering the workforce today is vanishingly small. It's only purpose in the text books is to serve as an example of a deterministic networking method as opposed to Ethernet's probabilistic nature.

There are tons of issues like that in the certification tracks. You learn it just to pass the test and move on to real problems with the stuff you pretty much already knew.
 
[quote name='Lina']Computer degrees aren't the best anymore...

I went for a Computer Science degree for a semester... but since everyone and their dog started going into the field, jobs are getting really scarce.

And with Engineering... every single person I talk to in there, hates it.

But, good luck.[/QUOTE]

There are tons of jobs out there for CS grads. The difference is that since reality overwhelmed the dot.bomb madness the pay offered has gone back to where it was in the early 90's, relative to inflation. So entry level coders aren't being offered 6-figure salaries but there are real jobs with decent starting salaries to be had in abundance.
 
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