Questions and Answers

The UIC undergraduate admissions office has a Discover UIC website for interested students. That is a great place to start—as are the websites of our six academic departments:

• Bioengineering
• Chemical engineering
• Civil and materials engineering
• Computer science
• Electrical and computer engineering
• Mechanical and industrial engineering

To succeed in the engineering program at UIC, you will need to take at least three and a half years of high school math and at least two years of high school laboratory science, such as biology, chemistry, and/or physics.

Ideally, students will have taken four years of math and four years of lab science, including some courses at the Advanced Placement level, if that is offered by the high school.

Absolutely! Some students do not decide on their future path until they are already in college. If you are already at UIC in another college (for example, if you start here in the College of Liberal Arts or the College of Business), you can complete what’s called an inter-college transfer to change over to the College of Engineering.

Another option is to begin your undergraduate education at another institution and then apply to UIC in a later semester as a transfer student. You can use UIC’s online transfer guides to help you determine the courses you will need and what will be expected of you if you’re admitted to UIC at a particular point in your education. If you choose the transfer path, we encourage you to let us know so that we can help you along in your courses and schedules. You may be at a different school, but if you are planning to attend UIC Engineering, we still consider you a part of the family and want to get to know you!

Application deadlines are set by the UIC admissions office and vary based on what kind of applicant you are (for example, a first-year applicant, a transfer applicant, an international applicant, and so on). All application-related deadlines are on the admissions office website.

You can find information on housing deadlines—and the application you need to submit—on the UIC Housing website.

UIC has moved to a standardized-test-optional admissions model. Instead, acceptance is based on information provided through other required documents, such as high school transcripts, GPA, and essays.

If you do choose to take the ACT or SAT, we prefer that the test scores be sent directly from ACT or the College Board, but we will accept a test score printed on the official high school transcript.

If you submit scores, the admissions office will use the highest ACT composite score or SAT total score (from a single test session) that is on file when the admission decision is made. If you have taken the SAT, verbal and math scores will be added and converted to reflect the ACT equivalent.

We use a formula to convert a student’s class rank to a percentile. It is:

[(class size – class rank) / class size] x 100

If your school does not rank its students, your school can enclose a note to that effect with your transcript. If your school supplies two ranks based on weighted and unweighted grades, we will use the higher rank.

Applicants who rank below the 30th percentile are not eligible for admission regardless of their standardized test score.

The UIC Engineering curriculum is designed to be completed in four years. This can be accomplished if you take heavy course loads and/or attend summer semesters, or if you have AP credit that will help you place into higher courses as an incoming student.

The average time to graduation for most of our students, however, is five years. Unlike other majors that require 120 hours of coursework to graduate, the College of Engineering requires 128 hours. We also understand that many of our students maintain jobs or internships outside of school, or that they want to take fewer courses to concentrate on earning higher grades, either of which may extend their expected graduation.

No matter what, we are happy to work with you to make sure you succeed in a time frame that makes sense for your schedule and goals.

Minimum course requirements for transfer admission currently include completion of at least Calculus I with a grade of C or better. For transfer applicants who plan to major in computer science, completion of a computer science course equivalent to CS 111 is also required prior to admission.

While not required, it is highly recommended that you complete the following courses prior to starting here as a transfer student:

• English Composition I and II
• Calculus I, II and III
• Differential Equations
• Physics I and II (calculus-based)
• Chemistry I (or, for computer science applicants, one course in either Biology of Cells and Organisms, Biology of Populations and Communities, or Introduction to Earth Science I or II)

The reason we recommend these courses is that many of them are prerequisites for other engineering courses you will take as part of your program. Completing them before you begin as a transfer student at UIC is very beneficial.

Please note that admission requirements are subject to change based on the number of applications received or the capacity available in individual majors. In addition, courses in which grades of D or lower are earned will not be applied toward the degree.

Prerequisites are courses that lay important groundwork for the upper-level engineering courses you will take in the future.

Prerequisites include:

• English Composition I and II
• Calculus I, II and III
• Differential Equations
• Physics I and II (calculus-based, covering mechanics and electricity/magnetism)
• Chemistry I (or, for computer science applicants, one course in either Biology of Cells and Organisms, Biology of Populations and Communities, or Introduction to Earth Science I or II)

You can take these courses at any accredited two-year or four-year college or university, which may be the institution you are transferring from.

If you do not complete these courses at your first undergraduate institution, another option is to take them at UIC through the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. After you have completed these courses in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences with the necessary grades, you can complete an inter-college transfer to the College of Engineering.

UIC works with a service called Transferology that helps students to determine which courses taken at their home institution will be accepted at UIC. All you need to do is visit the Transferology website and create a free account to use this service. The website will walk you through a comparison of the courses you’ve taken at your current school and the requirements in place at UIC.

Students who have completed a course equivalent to Calculus I, English Composition I, and Physics I do not need to take a placement test in those subjects.

Students who intend to take chemistry at UIC must take the chemistry placement test. This includes students who have not studied chemistry previously and students with any amount of transfer credit in general chemistry or other area of chemistry.

Students who intend to take a foreign language course at UIC should contact the college office to discuss whether a placement test is necessary.

UIC Engineering considers your math and science course grades a priority. Even though humanities and social sciences are extraordinarily important to your development as an individual, your math and science grades give us the critical information we need about your potential to succeed in engineering coursework.

Therefore, in math and science, as well as cumulatively, we look for a GPA of at least 2.5 on a scale of 4.0 (or a GPA of 3.5 on a scale of 5.0).

If you transfer to UIC from a community college, you should plan to spend two to three years completing requirements at UIC to graduate with a degree in engineering.

If you transfer to UIC from a U.S. four-year college and have completed significant study in upper-level engineering courses that are comparable to ours, the minimum amount of study required at UIC is 30 semester hours.

For all students, the minimum number of semester hours required for an engineering degree—including transfer courses that are accepted and courses you take at UIC—is 128.

Due to the challenging nature of an engineering degree and the plentiful opportunities for UIC engineering students to obtain co-ops and internships, many students elect to extend their undergraduate study beyond the traditional four years that many people consider as the time required for a college degree.

Adding a course

Continuing students register for the next term during the early enrollment period. If you want to add a course to your schedule before the term begins, you may do so on a space-available basis until the Friday before the term begins. After the term has begun, adding a course is subject to these deadlines:

• Fall semester: Friday of week 2
• Spring semester: Friday of week 2
• Summer session: Friday of week 1

Beginning with the Monday of the second week of the fall and spring semesters, students may only add a course with the approval of the instructor. Beginning with the Monday of the second week of the summer session, students may not add a course at all.

Exceptions to these deadlines are sometimes possible, but the request must be presented with written approval from the instructor to the College of Engineering undergraduate office, which will make the final decision. The undergraduate office may elect to deny the request even if the instructor has expressed support.

In general, adding a course after the term begins is not recommended. You will have missed several days of instruction, you may not have the syllabus, you may have missed an initial assignment or quiz. Some students seek to add a course after the start of the term because it may seem to be the only way to get into courses that are in high demand, but it still may not be in your best interest.

Dropping a course

Continuing students register for the next term during the early enrollment period. If you want to drop a course from your schedule before the term begins, you may do so up until the Friday before the term begins. After the term has begun, you may still be able to drop a course by following these deadlines:

• Fall semester deadline: Friday of week 2
• Spring semester deadline: Friday of week 2
• Summer session deadline: Friday of week 1

Students who drop a course before the deadlines listed above will not have the course reflected in their record and will not receive a grade for the course. Students who drop a course after these periods receive a grade of W in the course in their record, but grades of W are not included in the calculation of a student’s grade point average.

Exceptions to the add and drop deadlines

As noted above, engineering students may drop a class through the Friday of the second week of the fall and spring semesters and through the Friday of the first week of the summer session without any penalty. In addition, all undergraduate students receive four opportunities over the course of their entire UIC enrollment to drop a course without penalty between the third and 10th weeks of the fall and spring semesters or between the second and fifth weeks of the summer session. These four “late drops” will be approved, regardless of the circumstances, provided that the student submits a Late Drop Petition Form to the COE front office (123 SEO) within the designated period and that the student has not exceeded the four-opportunity limit.

Requests to drop a course after the 10th week of the fall and spring semesters (or after the fifth week of the summer session) and requests to exceed the limit of four late drops are not routinely granted unless there are documented exceptional circumstances outside of the student’s control. Such requests require a written petition and are reviewed by the dean. Poor performance in a course is not a sufficient reason to justify approval of a request. Because of the limitations on dropping classes, students are advised to evaluate their academic standing in the course with the instructor before requesting to exercise one of the four allowable late drops.

Withdrawing from UIC

A university withdrawal is a process by which all courses for the term are dropped and an entry of W is made for each course on the transcript. You may withdraw from the university at any time from the first day of instruction through the last day of instruction in each term, conditional on not having earned a final grade in any course. After the 15th week of the semester (or after the seventh week in the summer session), the college requires verification that the conditions for withdrawal have been met. Students contemplating a university withdrawal are advised to meet with an academic advisor.

The rules for academic probation and dismissal are spelled out in the College of Engineering section of the UIC catalog. Here is a summary:

Academic probation

• Any student whose grade point average for any term falls below 2.00 on a scale of 4.00 but whose UIC cumulative grade point average is above 2.00 will be placed on “Probation Level 1” for the following term. The student will return to clear status if a grade point average of at least 2.00 is earned without any grade less than C in the following term.
• Any student whose UIC cumulative grade point average falls below 2.00 on a scale of 4.00 is placed on “Probation Level 2.” A student on Probation Level 2 is required to earn at least one B and no grade less than a C in each ensuing term until both the UIC cumulative grade point average and the total cumulative grade point average are above 2.00 out of 4.00.

Dismissal

• A student on academic probation who does not meet the probationary requirements will be reviewed and could be dismissed from the university.
• A student who fails to make progress toward a degree may be dismissed. Examples of failure to make progress include excessive term deficit points (a total deficit score of -12 or worse in a given term), failure to complete required courses, accumulation of an excessive number of Incomplete (I) grades, failure to earn credit in any semester, and failure to maintain a 2.00 average in the major discipline.
• A student may be readmitted after the first dismissal with petition and presentation of above-satisfactory performance in college-level courses taken outside of UIC. The non-UIC work evaluated for readmission may or may not apply toward a UIC degree. Only in rare cases will a student be readmitted after a second dismissal.

Deficit points are calculated to represent the amount that a student diverges below the average grade for a course, assuming that C is the baseline grade. If the “net” deficit points for any student in a given term are -12 or worse, that student can be dismissed from the College of Engineering for poor academic performance.

For example, assume that a course has 3 credit hours. If the term grade is C, then the deficit points are zero. If the grade is D, then the student has a deficit of -1 (one grade below) the average of C. This deficit is multiplied by the number of credits carried by the course, in this case 3. The math then dictates that 3 x (-1) = -3.

In another example, if the grade is F, the student has a deficit of -2 (two grades below) the average of C. The deficit points would be 3 x (-2) = -6.

On the other side of the scale, grades of A and B contribute positively to the overall calculation for the term. A grade of B is one grade above the average, which, times three credits, yields 3 points. A grade of A is two grades above the average of C, which, times three credits, yields 6 points.

Students whose term deficit points are -12 or worse can be dismissed from the College of Engineering even if they are not on academic probation. For students who are on probation, term deficit points are generally monitored for positive or negative trends in academic progress.

Students who are at risk of probation or dismissal will receive a communication from the college. This communication will lay out terms that are specific to the student’s case.

You should first make an appointment with the director of undergraduate studies in the academic department that oversees your major.

If the issue remains unresolved after meeting with the department director of undergraduate studies and the department taking action, then you can bring the issue to the undergraduate office for consideration.

During the semester before you intend to graduate, you should request a graduation check by submitting a graduation check form. This will give you time to address any issues with degree requirements. We also suggest you view your Degree Audit Report on the my.uic.edu portal.

To declare your intent to graduate, you will need to submit an Intent to Graduate form online at my.uic.edu.

The submission deadline for the Intent to Graduate form is the Friday of the third week of the fall and spring semesters or the second week of the summer session.