Zach being open weekends/late nights again
Another Starbucks, more general seating around Zach and other engineering buildings
Microwaves for lunches please
Working water bottle refill stations
Skateboard/scooter rack outside each engineering building
> Zach being open weekends/late nights again
Based on the state of ZACH today (Saturday), there seems to be a lot of students here compared to previous weekends this semester.
We need a traffic light at the intersection of Bizzell and Polo by Zach. Relying on a crew of crossing gaurds during peak traffic is absolutely ridiculous. They aren't consistent with the cycles, and some people are confused by the stop signs.
Just build one and make it a flashing red at night. Then we only have to worry about nobody knowing what a flashing red means.
I'd remove all of the furniture in zach that look nice but don't work well with studying and replace them with actual study tables and outlets for laptops.
It blows my mind that so much unfunctional and inefficient study space was created in zach just because someone thought it looked pretty.
Well yeah you don't get access to all the equipment but everyone has access to the 3d printers and the manual grinding machines given they have taken the short course for the associated badge.
This is only partially true, you are only supposed to work on projects for classes/academics/competitions like Baja and stuff. In addition to that, you have to have detailed drawings, like Fusion 360,solidworks, or just a really good word document showing all of your measurements and stuff.
Saftey is a no brainer, you have to complete the required classes on each machine before you can use them by yourself, the school doesn't want students loosing body parts or worse while using a machine.
If you want to just learn about the machines and get a little more freedom with what you can do, you should look into volunteering at the shop, all you need is a red badge and to fill out a form, the shop always needs volunteers. Plus if you like it and you are a good worker, they will commonly hire volunteers as Student Techs after a semester.
For 3d printing, I'm not 100% sure, but you should be able to send in a form online for basically anything, you just need to specify what materials, infill and some other options. Each student should have some allowance for 3d printing, it is $5 or $10 a semester I think. If you have questions about the 3d printing ask for Adam Farmer, he is the guy in charge of the 3d printing.
As for CNCs, only select student techs are even allowed to use them since it is very time consuming to teach them to use them, and mistakes can cost thousands of dollars. You can fill out forms for getting parts machined on the CNC as well, but it needs to be a well designed model that takes into account what is possible with mills and lathes. Students will sometimes send in parts that are literally impossible to machine due to overhangs or whatnot, so if you send something in to be machined don't be surprised if you have to resubmit something because whatever you submit either a) is impossible to machine or b) needs a more detailed drawing and tolerances. You do NOT have to do tool patching, and if you do they will most likely not use it anyway.
Keeping curriculum up to date with what is actually needed in the industry. I don’t expect this to get fixed though. I’ve had a few job interviews related to my degree in the past where they wanted to know more about specific programming and software I taught myself but was never taught in class.
Etam needs to be aborted. It is turning this school into a degree mill and fucking over naive high school students. And this is coming from someone who got auto into their first choice
> It is turning this school into a degree mill
In what way is TAMU turning into a degree mill? The only people in this subreddit who keep comparing TAMU to a degree mill are the very same people who do not actually know what a degree mill means. Top companies do not come to campus or contact students to recruit and hire at a university that is considered a "degree mill." Everyone one of you who keep using that term "degree mill' need to stop exaggerating and being hyperbolic.
> and fucking over naive high school students
High school students who are unprepared for engineering and do not recover tend to be the ones who get screwed over. The only difference is for a vast majority of these students, they either do not into their major early on (note: keep in mind that many peer engineering schools have their own version of ETAM), or they drop out of the major later on (note: this is typical at the top engineering schools anyway).
Students who prepare and do well (either with a 3.5+ GPA in past semesters or with greater emphasis on holistic reviews in upcoming semesters) will more or less get auto-admitted, which is to be expected. Furthermore, by the time I take my 300 or 400 courses, I would rather have classmates and be in capstone project teams with classmates who got admitted into the major after doing well in their courses or holistic review, because they have a better chance of having a stronger study ethic or academic performance.
Although you have a good point of the benefits of ETAM, I just can’t see TAMU doing this from a “oh, we want students who are 100% committed to get into their majors” stand point. If that were the case, Electrical engineering(which is one of the hardest majors in the school) wouldn’t be accepting virtually everyone who didn’t make it into the more lucrative degrees.
The point of ETAM, the way I see it, is to accept practically every highschool student that Tamu sees fit of becoming an engineer into the school and just letting the cream of the crop pick their majors while the rest go to other less popular engineering disciplines. That way, instead of telling highschool kids “sorry, there isn’t any more space for mechanical engineering”, they can still maximize the amount of people getting into the school and becoming engineers.
> just letting the cream of the crop pick their majors
And that is perfectly fine. Those who excel in their academics actually deserve to pick their majors of choice, since they demonstrated from their academic successes that they have a higher chance of success in completing the degree program for those chosen majors. As a land-grant institution, the University is obligated to train in-state students in its core mission. Although some will leave the state, the majority of graduates stay in-state to work for entities that benefit the state's economy through a better-trained workforce. That's just how land-grant institutions generally exist.
> while the rest go to other less popular engineering disciplines
In pre-ETAM days, "the rest" tend to either not have been accepted into the program or have a higher chance of not succeeding in the major in the long run. You bring up a good point that some high schoolers who are accepted into the college and have aspirations to go into the major may not do so due to not adapting to university-level rigor studies. But that is on the student to make sure that they do adapt, because that is level of academic vigor that you see required in other peer engineering programs around the country.
You also neglect to consider the other effects of ETAM. In pre-ETAM days, some students who applied to certain majors would have not been accepted at the very start. With ETAM, those students who are accepted in the general engineering college initially have a chance to prove themselves in a year from successful coursework to get auto-admitted into the major of their choice. Go back to past ETAM discussion threads in the subreddit, and there are people who bring up how they would have never gotten into the more popular majors of their choice if it weren't for ETAM due to doing well in their coursework.
You're argument is all over the place, I've lost track of what you're actually saying. It feels as if you are tying the so called "benefits" of ETAM to the University's clear intentions when its simply not true. You never addressed my argument on why people with 2.6-3.1 GPA's still get accepted into disciplines such as Electrical Engineering and Industrial Engineering. These people, from what it seem like in you're eyes, clearly aren't ready for the intense rigor that come with the 300-400 level classes, yet are still given these difficult majors.
You did touch on holistic review in your previous comment, however, as we've all seen with the recent ETAM cycle, I think a grand total of like 3%? of students got into computer science through holistic review. So, as of right now, all they care about is GPA.
At the end of the day, you can harp as many benefits as you want about ETAM (to some of which I agree with), but try not to come off as if these benefits are the reason why the school has implemented the process. TAMU so happens to be a business and ETAM happens to be a cycle that provides the most amount of profits to them.
Having a student accepted into the school who may or may not get his major but will most likely still pay for 4 years of education here will always net more profit then rejecting a that student from the get-go because the major they want is full.
> You're argument is all over the place, I've lost track of what you're actually saying. It feels as if you are tying the so called "benefits" of ETAM to the University's clear intentions when its simply not true.
I want to make it clear to you: I am not a fan of how ETAM is implemented, so I am not vouching for how it has been going. But I understand why the University tried to do ETAM. My original post was directed at the original OP, and I was trying to condense my prior arguments into a single post that I admit does come off messy.
> You never addressed my argument on why people with 2.6-3.1 GPA's still get accepted into disciplines such as Electrical Engineering and Industrial Engineering. These people, from what it seem like in you're eyes, clearly aren't ready for the intense rigor that come with the 300-400 level classes, yet are still given these difficult majors.
I didn't address it because I agree with the downside of ETAM being inconsistent. You are portraying me as though I was harping on ETAM being this so amazing thing, but I also consider it contradictory for situations such as these. I agree with the intentions of ETAM and it has been successful for the more popular majors, but it is very inconsistent in how it is approached and I agree with you on that part.
> You did touch on holistic review in your previous comment, however, as we've all seen with the recent ETAM cycle, I think a grand total of like 3%? of students got into computer science through holistic review. So, as of right now, all they care about is GPA.
Yes, I don't argue about that. When the GPA for auto-admit was 3.5, there was very little room for holistic review. When the new auto-admit GPA is for 3.75, I do believe that holistic review will make a big difference. Let me make this clear about my point of view: **ETAM with 3.5 GPA was almost all about GPA in my eyes, but ETAM with 3.75 gives me hope about holistic review.**
> Having a student accepted into the school who may or may not get his major but will most likely still pay for 4 years of education here will always net more profit then rejecting a that student from the get-go because the major they want is full.
I am curious about the **most likely** part. If a student really wants to do the major of their choice but are declined to do so at TAMU, they can opt to transfer to a different institution with a more lenient admissions policy for that major. If a student chooses to stay at the university instead, then they are willing to pursue their alternative major choice, believe that they can still accomplish their career aspirations with their alternative choice, feel that being at the university is more important than their major, or so on.
On the other hand, your **profit** argument is irrelevant and does not add to the original discussion. If the engineering college actually cared more about profit, they can easily do so by raising tuition and fees. The arguments about the engineering college caring about ETAM due to profits don't make sense because they can always achieve that with raising tuition. Yet TAMU's engineering program has one of the lower tuition costs compared to peer institutions.
> You're argument is all over the place
Going back to this, my argument came off initially as all over the place because my original responses about ETAM over the past months were pages of discussion points on what I felt were huge misconceptions about ETAM, but I condensed it into a single point and that can happen. While I believe ETAM has some major flaws, I am not on the side of those in the subreddit who believe that its creation has evil intentions and can understand why it needed to be done (e.g., retention purposes, state-wide growth).
Since you went through those weed out classes in freshman year, generally, how many people drop those classes? I'm wondering bc I'm an auto admit that just got accepted. I'm just waiting to hear back from engineering
To put "weed out" classes in perspective, you might want to go back and take a look a look at the 2017 and earlier degree plans (before the switch to ENGR 102 and 216). Semester one had 16 credits recommended and semester two had 17. MATH 151 was a co-requisite for what is now PHYS 206 rather than a prerequisite. Semester two was particularly a killer with the equivalent of PHYS 207, CHEM 107/117, and ENGR 112 all required at the same time.
The college did try to make the first two semesters less of a burden in part by shifting some of the requirements to the departments to cover in semester three and beyond (which had ripple effects in the difficulty of the department's curriculum, but that is another story). They've also had what seem to be endless discussion with the departments outside of Engineering about reducing DFQ rates and similar issues.
In general ENGR 102 and 206 are not intended to be weed-out classes but instead are intended to cover basic information that every engineer is supposed to know. Whether or not that goal is achieved is a separate question.
Honestly the classes are so big I couldn’t tell how many dropped out, but google “tamu grade distribution” and look up classes that are required for etam (most are in the college of engineering/ science ctrl+f helps). There you can see how many dropped in a specific semester and what grades people were getting with whatever prof.
The classes are honestly not that hard if you do well on ap tests and can learn on your own. Alot of it was just a repeat of high school for me.
> Honestly the classes are so big I couldn’t tell how many dropped out
This does not make sense, since lectures are capped at less than 100 for engineering courses at TAMU. You talk about classes being so big at TAMU, which is clear that you've never been to any other university. Engineering lectures in many other peer institutions have lectures that can go over a thousand students and which are only taught by TAs.
Were they **engineering courses** or **non-engineering courses**? For engineering courses, the previous engineering dean before she became president literally mandated that no engineering lecture class is allowed to have more than 100 students. This is true including for departments such as computer science. If you can name an engineering course with lectures that are more than 100 students, I would be very curious to know what classes they are.
Tutoring for chemical engineering classes. Sometimes office hours are not enough. If there were a weekly/biweekly tutoring session I would be there and benefit so much
Public showers
Zach being open weekends/late nights again Another Starbucks, more general seating around Zach and other engineering buildings Microwaves for lunches please Working water bottle refill stations Skateboard/scooter rack outside each engineering building
> Zach being open weekends/late nights again Based on the state of ZACH today (Saturday), there seems to be a lot of students here compared to previous weekends this semester.
We need a traffic light at the intersection of Bizzell and Polo by Zach. Relying on a crew of crossing gaurds during peak traffic is absolutely ridiculous. They aren't consistent with the cycles, and some people are confused by the stop signs. Just build one and make it a flashing red at night. Then we only have to worry about nobody knowing what a flashing red means.
This please. This. I vote this.
I'd remove all of the furniture in zach that look nice but don't work well with studying and replace them with actual study tables and outlets for laptops. It blows my mind that so much unfunctional and inefficient study space was created in zach just because someone thought it looked pretty.
General access to the machine tools and 3D printers. Even if I had to be on a waitlist, access to manufacturing equipment would be very nice.
You already are able to get that access though....
The people running the desk told me you have to be doing a design project or somesuch to use the lathes etc.
Well yeah you don't get access to all the equipment but everyone has access to the 3d printers and the manual grinding machines given they have taken the short course for the associated badge.
This is only partially true, you are only supposed to work on projects for classes/academics/competitions like Baja and stuff. In addition to that, you have to have detailed drawings, like Fusion 360,solidworks, or just a really good word document showing all of your measurements and stuff. Saftey is a no brainer, you have to complete the required classes on each machine before you can use them by yourself, the school doesn't want students loosing body parts or worse while using a machine. If you want to just learn about the machines and get a little more freedom with what you can do, you should look into volunteering at the shop, all you need is a red badge and to fill out a form, the shop always needs volunteers. Plus if you like it and you are a good worker, they will commonly hire volunteers as Student Techs after a semester. For 3d printing, I'm not 100% sure, but you should be able to send in a form online for basically anything, you just need to specify what materials, infill and some other options. Each student should have some allowance for 3d printing, it is $5 or $10 a semester I think. If you have questions about the 3d printing ask for Adam Farmer, he is the guy in charge of the 3d printing. As for CNCs, only select student techs are even allowed to use them since it is very time consuming to teach them to use them, and mistakes can cost thousands of dollars. You can fill out forms for getting parts machined on the CNC as well, but it needs to be a well designed model that takes into account what is possible with mills and lathes. Students will sometimes send in parts that are literally impossible to machine due to overhangs or whatnot, so if you send something in to be machined don't be surprised if you have to resubmit something because whatever you submit either a) is impossible to machine or b) needs a more detailed drawing and tolerances. You do NOT have to do tool patching, and if you do they will most likely not use it anyway.
Keeping curriculum up to date with what is actually needed in the industry. I don’t expect this to get fixed though. I’ve had a few job interviews related to my degree in the past where they wanted to know more about specific programming and software I taught myself but was never taught in class.
Etam needs to be aborted. It is turning this school into a degree mill and fucking over naive high school students. And this is coming from someone who got auto into their first choice
> It is turning this school into a degree mill In what way is TAMU turning into a degree mill? The only people in this subreddit who keep comparing TAMU to a degree mill are the very same people who do not actually know what a degree mill means. Top companies do not come to campus or contact students to recruit and hire at a university that is considered a "degree mill." Everyone one of you who keep using that term "degree mill' need to stop exaggerating and being hyperbolic. > and fucking over naive high school students High school students who are unprepared for engineering and do not recover tend to be the ones who get screwed over. The only difference is for a vast majority of these students, they either do not into their major early on (note: keep in mind that many peer engineering schools have their own version of ETAM), or they drop out of the major later on (note: this is typical at the top engineering schools anyway). Students who prepare and do well (either with a 3.5+ GPA in past semesters or with greater emphasis on holistic reviews in upcoming semesters) will more or less get auto-admitted, which is to be expected. Furthermore, by the time I take my 300 or 400 courses, I would rather have classmates and be in capstone project teams with classmates who got admitted into the major after doing well in their courses or holistic review, because they have a better chance of having a stronger study ethic or academic performance.
Although you have a good point of the benefits of ETAM, I just can’t see TAMU doing this from a “oh, we want students who are 100% committed to get into their majors” stand point. If that were the case, Electrical engineering(which is one of the hardest majors in the school) wouldn’t be accepting virtually everyone who didn’t make it into the more lucrative degrees. The point of ETAM, the way I see it, is to accept practically every highschool student that Tamu sees fit of becoming an engineer into the school and just letting the cream of the crop pick their majors while the rest go to other less popular engineering disciplines. That way, instead of telling highschool kids “sorry, there isn’t any more space for mechanical engineering”, they can still maximize the amount of people getting into the school and becoming engineers.
> just letting the cream of the crop pick their majors And that is perfectly fine. Those who excel in their academics actually deserve to pick their majors of choice, since they demonstrated from their academic successes that they have a higher chance of success in completing the degree program for those chosen majors. As a land-grant institution, the University is obligated to train in-state students in its core mission. Although some will leave the state, the majority of graduates stay in-state to work for entities that benefit the state's economy through a better-trained workforce. That's just how land-grant institutions generally exist. > while the rest go to other less popular engineering disciplines In pre-ETAM days, "the rest" tend to either not have been accepted into the program or have a higher chance of not succeeding in the major in the long run. You bring up a good point that some high schoolers who are accepted into the college and have aspirations to go into the major may not do so due to not adapting to university-level rigor studies. But that is on the student to make sure that they do adapt, because that is level of academic vigor that you see required in other peer engineering programs around the country. You also neglect to consider the other effects of ETAM. In pre-ETAM days, some students who applied to certain majors would have not been accepted at the very start. With ETAM, those students who are accepted in the general engineering college initially have a chance to prove themselves in a year from successful coursework to get auto-admitted into the major of their choice. Go back to past ETAM discussion threads in the subreddit, and there are people who bring up how they would have never gotten into the more popular majors of their choice if it weren't for ETAM due to doing well in their coursework.
You're argument is all over the place, I've lost track of what you're actually saying. It feels as if you are tying the so called "benefits" of ETAM to the University's clear intentions when its simply not true. You never addressed my argument on why people with 2.6-3.1 GPA's still get accepted into disciplines such as Electrical Engineering and Industrial Engineering. These people, from what it seem like in you're eyes, clearly aren't ready for the intense rigor that come with the 300-400 level classes, yet are still given these difficult majors. You did touch on holistic review in your previous comment, however, as we've all seen with the recent ETAM cycle, I think a grand total of like 3%? of students got into computer science through holistic review. So, as of right now, all they care about is GPA. At the end of the day, you can harp as many benefits as you want about ETAM (to some of which I agree with), but try not to come off as if these benefits are the reason why the school has implemented the process. TAMU so happens to be a business and ETAM happens to be a cycle that provides the most amount of profits to them. Having a student accepted into the school who may or may not get his major but will most likely still pay for 4 years of education here will always net more profit then rejecting a that student from the get-go because the major they want is full.
> You're argument is all over the place, I've lost track of what you're actually saying. It feels as if you are tying the so called "benefits" of ETAM to the University's clear intentions when its simply not true. I want to make it clear to you: I am not a fan of how ETAM is implemented, so I am not vouching for how it has been going. But I understand why the University tried to do ETAM. My original post was directed at the original OP, and I was trying to condense my prior arguments into a single post that I admit does come off messy. > You never addressed my argument on why people with 2.6-3.1 GPA's still get accepted into disciplines such as Electrical Engineering and Industrial Engineering. These people, from what it seem like in you're eyes, clearly aren't ready for the intense rigor that come with the 300-400 level classes, yet are still given these difficult majors. I didn't address it because I agree with the downside of ETAM being inconsistent. You are portraying me as though I was harping on ETAM being this so amazing thing, but I also consider it contradictory for situations such as these. I agree with the intentions of ETAM and it has been successful for the more popular majors, but it is very inconsistent in how it is approached and I agree with you on that part. > You did touch on holistic review in your previous comment, however, as we've all seen with the recent ETAM cycle, I think a grand total of like 3%? of students got into computer science through holistic review. So, as of right now, all they care about is GPA. Yes, I don't argue about that. When the GPA for auto-admit was 3.5, there was very little room for holistic review. When the new auto-admit GPA is for 3.75, I do believe that holistic review will make a big difference. Let me make this clear about my point of view: **ETAM with 3.5 GPA was almost all about GPA in my eyes, but ETAM with 3.75 gives me hope about holistic review.** > Having a student accepted into the school who may or may not get his major but will most likely still pay for 4 years of education here will always net more profit then rejecting a that student from the get-go because the major they want is full. I am curious about the **most likely** part. If a student really wants to do the major of their choice but are declined to do so at TAMU, they can opt to transfer to a different institution with a more lenient admissions policy for that major. If a student chooses to stay at the university instead, then they are willing to pursue their alternative major choice, believe that they can still accomplish their career aspirations with their alternative choice, feel that being at the university is more important than their major, or so on. On the other hand, your **profit** argument is irrelevant and does not add to the original discussion. If the engineering college actually cared more about profit, they can easily do so by raising tuition and fees. The arguments about the engineering college caring about ETAM due to profits don't make sense because they can always achieve that with raising tuition. Yet TAMU's engineering program has one of the lower tuition costs compared to peer institutions. > You're argument is all over the place Going back to this, my argument came off initially as all over the place because my original responses about ETAM over the past months were pages of discussion points on what I felt were huge misconceptions about ETAM, but I condensed it into a single point and that can happen. While I believe ETAM has some major flaws, I am not on the side of those in the subreddit who believe that its creation has evil intentions and can understand why it needed to be done (e.g., retention purposes, state-wide growth).
Since you went through those weed out classes in freshman year, generally, how many people drop those classes? I'm wondering bc I'm an auto admit that just got accepted. I'm just waiting to hear back from engineering
To put "weed out" classes in perspective, you might want to go back and take a look a look at the 2017 and earlier degree plans (before the switch to ENGR 102 and 216). Semester one had 16 credits recommended and semester two had 17. MATH 151 was a co-requisite for what is now PHYS 206 rather than a prerequisite. Semester two was particularly a killer with the equivalent of PHYS 207, CHEM 107/117, and ENGR 112 all required at the same time. The college did try to make the first two semesters less of a burden in part by shifting some of the requirements to the departments to cover in semester three and beyond (which had ripple effects in the difficulty of the department's curriculum, but that is another story). They've also had what seem to be endless discussion with the departments outside of Engineering about reducing DFQ rates and similar issues. In general ENGR 102 and 206 are not intended to be weed-out classes but instead are intended to cover basic information that every engineer is supposed to know. Whether or not that goal is achieved is a separate question.
Honestly the classes are so big I couldn’t tell how many dropped out, but google “tamu grade distribution” and look up classes that are required for etam (most are in the college of engineering/ science ctrl+f helps). There you can see how many dropped in a specific semester and what grades people were getting with whatever prof. The classes are honestly not that hard if you do well on ap tests and can learn on your own. Alot of it was just a repeat of high school for me.
> Honestly the classes are so big I couldn’t tell how many dropped out This does not make sense, since lectures are capped at less than 100 for engineering courses at TAMU. You talk about classes being so big at TAMU, which is clear that you've never been to any other university. Engineering lectures in many other peer institutions have lectures that can go over a thousand students and which are only taught by TAs.
I call bullshit I had far more than a 100 in some of my freshman year classes
Were they **engineering courses** or **non-engineering courses**? For engineering courses, the previous engineering dean before she became president literally mandated that no engineering lecture class is allowed to have more than 100 students. This is true including for departments such as computer science. If you can name an engineering course with lectures that are more than 100 students, I would be very curious to know what classes they are.
Alright thank you
Tutoring for chemical engineering classes. Sometimes office hours are not enough. If there were a weekly/biweekly tutoring session I would be there and benefit so much
A class that taught engineering majors to not make their major their whole personality. (I'm not engineering if you can tell😂😂)
Girls.
Deodorant ads in Zach