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We are confident that all students admitted to the College of Engineering have the academic background necessary to do well in their engineering studies. How well? That depends, as much as anything, on the particular student's desire to do well; his or her maturity in terms of managing time and responsibilities; and his or her ability to develop mature problem-solving skills. Compared to other students on campus, first year engineering students do particularly well. In Fall of 1996, freshmen engineering students earned higher average grades (2.987) than those earned by students in any other college. Female freshmen in engineering did particularly well (3.179). As much as we are encouraged by this success, we know that these grades are not as high as these same students obtained in high school; the chart below [currently unavailable] shows the average high school cumulative GPA for recent freshmen in engineering at the university as a whole. It shows that the quality of students at Madison is increasing, and that freshmen can quite naturally expect lower grades in college. New students in engineering should be mindful that a 3.25 GPA in any semester earns a place on the Dean's List, a distinction that can be considered a major accomplishment. Realize, however, that these statistics can be very misleading for individual cases. Factors such as motivation and determination are as predictive of success in engineering as intelligence and apptitude, but they do not appear in the table becuase they are impossible to quantify. ACT scores, for example, account for only 20% of the variance in freshman grades. Clearly, aptitude counts, but hard work is an essential ingredient for success. |
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