Howdy guys,
I just went to my NSC as someone skipping ETAM and wanted to share my experience. I could not find any information beforehand about how it would go for those in my situation, so I am posting to hopefully help those who were in my shoes a couple weeks ago.
The Engineering College block began with everyone checking in and getting their nametag. Everyone's nametag had a different room number in Zach for them to go to. Most people are sent to rooms separated by their MPE, but for those going straight into their major you also get your own room (there were about 10 people in the room w me). In that room we went through a slightly different presentation that applied for those skipping ETAM. Some of the presentation is kinda yap, but a lot is actually very useful information so I would pay attention.
The presenter was the head advisor for all engineering advisors that are a part of a specific department (so no general engineering advisors) and sitting in the room with us was one advisor for each engineering department. After the presentation you will get to sit with your major specific advisor basically one on one or like (1:2/3).
Here is some of the info I learned that will hopefully help yall plan your schedules better than I was able to (all this info should be universal, but keep in mind that I am doing electrical engineering):
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Since you do not have to ETAM, you do not have to take a certain amount of beginner courses physically at TAMU. This means that if you want to AP out of CHEM 107/117 or 119/120 and AP out of PHYS 206/7 you could do all four of them. You do not have to take Chem lab, but you still must take physics labs (ENGR 216/7).
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They were pretty lenient with us about taking AP Credits. Beforehand I had heard about how they would pressure kids out of their APs (especially their STEM APs), and although they did slightly warn us against using credit to skip to Calc 3 (MATH 251), they understood our situation and were completely okay with it. (Same deal with skipping PHYS 207, but a little bit stronger of a warning because I am an EE major).
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Since we are able to skip much more, some of the prereqs can be overridden to help us take more classes later. For example, if I study my EE degree plan I must take 4 rounds of prereqs just to take ECEN 214 (basically a gateway prereq for half of the degree plan). If I were to stay on that slow track I could potentially run out of classes to take by second sem sophomore year or at least be taking classes way out of order to dodge the prereqs. So, although its not guaranteed, they were going to let us override the ENGR 216 prereq (it usually requires ENGR 102 completion) and take them simultaneously first semester.
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Do not be an idiot like me: I decided I was just going to wait for my APs to arrive when the free score send releases in July. They will not let you register for classes past the APs unless they have received your scores. So lowkey my schedule is meaningless right now because I had to register for CHEM and its lab and MATH 151 even though I already have credit from BC. So right afterwards I logged into college board and sent my scores. Any day now I should be able to email them asking to fix my schedule with my APs.
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You can take major specific classes now if you want. Most of the intro classes that you still have to take could still be counted as general engineering classes (ex: skipping to CALC 3 or skipping to PHYS 216), but you are also able to go into your major's classes. For example, as an Electrical Engineering major you could try and take CSCE 120 if you have AP credit for AP CSA, or you could possibly go into ECEN 248 (possibly, I didn't ask because my schedule was cooked) if you take credit for AP Physics C E&M (PHYS 207). I am pretty sure this is not possible (for sure for ECEN 248) if you have not ETAMed. Both of these classes are sophomore classes on the degree planner, but should be available to you as an autoETAM freshman.
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You're going to have to delete your shopping cart, it's inevitable. Their filtering system is cooked so even after you go through their process, they are still going to make you manually uncheck sections that are for Blinn or Galveston or have restrictions on them. What should you do? Just take a picture of what classes you want to take so that you don't forget their names during crunch time.
Finally, at 3:30pm (one day NSC) everyone was open to register. I was watching my Apple Watch to see the time down to the second and classes still filled up in front of me (idk how). So you gotta like rush to deselect those sections in your cart and register for another section. For me it didn't matter too much because I know my schedule was already chopped by me not having my AP's, but if you have a solid schedule ready to go, don't get too attached and get some back up courses/sections ready.
I really hope this helped y'all. I was so lost before I went into this. If y'all have any questions lmk and I can answer them.
See y'all on campus and Gig'em.
