Sophomore spring is full of decisions that affect a student’s future at Princeton, from eating and housing options to potential study abroad programs. This includes perhaps the most crucial decision at Princeton: choosing a concentration. In the coming weeks, sophomores must make a tough decision that will deeply influence their course selections and independent work as upperclassmen. Some sophomores, however, have already cleared this hurdle: most notably, engineers. The School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS) requires all B.S.E. concentrators to declare their departments during the freshman spring, a full year before their A.B. peers. The Editorial Board does not support this imbalanced policy, despite the apparent differences between the B.S.E. and A.B. programs of study.
SEAS maintains that the rigor of the B.S.E. degree, including its comprehensive set of prerequisites, necessitates engineers to declare as freshmen so that departmental advisers can ensure that students are pursuing appropriate course loads to graduate in four years. Furthermore, SEAS argues that, by declaring early, freshman engineers are more easily able to integrate themselves into their departments, making connections with faculty and other concentrators. These connections come to fruition during the last two years, when engineers seek team members or advisers for independent work that is often team- and project-based, as opposed to the typically individual A.B. independent work. Finally, it is worth nothing that this choice is not binding: In an e-mail to the Editorial Board, Peter Bogucki, associate dean of the engineering school, explained that students can generally switch their concentrations within the school with reasonable ease.
Despite these apparent merits to the policy, they are nominal and insufficient to justify the policy. With fewer than two semesters under their belts, freshman engineers may not be as equipped to make the same decision as A.B. sophomores, who have almost four semesters to explore their interests and develop new ones. This intellectual freedom, fostered by the Major Choices initiative, is a great part of Princeton’s liberal arts culture and should be extended to engineers. The existing SEAS policy may create artificial barriers for students who wish to explore interests within the SEAS tracks or even outside of the school itself. It may be important for some B.S.E. students to investigate the variety of majors available at Princeton outside of SEAS: the school’s policies should not actively discourage exploration for these students. Though SEAS insists that students may switch majors once they’ve declared, there is an important psychological difference between changing an official concentration and an unofficial one. Students may feel “pigeonholed” into their majors, unwilling to or afraid to break out of it.
The argument that engineers require close departmental advising to ensure they graduate with the necessary prerequisites and courses is well taken. Signing into a department, however, does not solve any problems that could not be prevented by robust advising during the first two years. Some A.B. departments, particularly the natural sciences and math, have similarly demanding prerequisites, yet sophomores sign into these departments and succeed thanks to sound planning and careful advising. Engineering should be no different.
The University prides itself on its liberal arts culture and intellectual freedom, and it should strive to extend this freedom to all undergraduates equally.
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