<p>Hi, I am currently a sophomore ECE major at a top 50 LAC with engineering program. My school isn't the most competitive school to get into, maybe that explains why I feel that most of the people just don't care enough academics. I like the school a lot but I don't seem to fit in well. Most of the students here are white, conservative, party oriented and from affluent families. (too homogeneous) They form their cliques early and have the most typical and mundane activities (i.e. football, party). As a somewhat geeky Asian, I feel this is no place for me. I study a lot, but for the times that I don't, I have absolutely nothing to do. I have few good friends, but we don't do anything fun together but study and get good grades. </p>
<p>I am looking to transfer to another better fit college for myself. I dont have the most stellar resume, but I do want to transfer to a highly ranked. For me, its not so much about the prestige, but for the good education, friendlier atmosphere, more diversity, and take college more seriously. Ideally it would have a good ECE and CS department. I much prefer smaller college than public universities. Can I suggestions as to where I might find the school I am looking for that is not impossible to transfer to?</p>
<p>Heres a small run down of my spec:
[quote]
HS GPA: 3.33 UW, 4.2 W (probably higher since I did better on my last semester senior year)
SAT: 1900 (no time to retake it)
College GPA: 3.79
Tech GPA: 3.9+
EC: Not so much during HS, a bit more active during college but nothing out of the ordinary. I have done an internship over the summer in some engineering firm (thanks to family connection), don't know if that makes a difference.
AP: I think I had 6-7 counted AP scores (4 or 5)
<p>Maybe retake your SATs? - top colleges want brilliant kids, especially for engineering, so getting high standardized test scores is important. Also do some engineering/CS ECs in college where you are.</p>
<p>And I think Haverford is good with sciences? And you can take classes at neighboring colleges too (Penn, Swarthmore, Bryn Mawr, etc). I’m not really sure about LACs</p>
<p>Thanks for the suggestion. I don’t think I’ll have time to retake the sat due to my heavy course load. How much weight does high school stuff ( GPA, sat ) have on admission? I am not looking solely at lac but just that large public university 20k+ ppl is a bit too big for me. I am from California. I will apply to few ucs. Ideally I could be in one of the smaller colleges closer to home.</p>
<p>Sorry I forgot to add that I’m currently a sophomore. There’s nothing extra really I can do to improve my chances. I don’t really plan apply to any place with single digit acceptance rate. I just want somewhere with good engineering program with a much more tolerable atmosphere.</p>
<p>Berkeley? Harvey Mudd? UC Davis would be a great fit for you as well. The UCs require you to have 60 units though. Do you want to stay in Cali or no?</p>
<p>Transferring into Mudd as a junior is pretty rare - you need to have already fulfilled their core requirements which most kids at an LAC won’t have done.
Stevens and Rutgers are good ideas. Rose Hulman too. UMDCollege Park has a great engineering school. It’s big and has some of the typical party kids, but you’ll find kids like you as well. Rochester Institute of Technology would be another possibility.
Your changes of getting into an elite school as a junior in engineering are slim.</p>
<p>unfortunately nemom is correct :\ Harvey Mudd seems to be harder to get admittance to even as a junior for engineering than Berkeley. A couple of my friends with 4.0’s and some research have all been denied from Harvey Mudd but gained acceptance to Berkeley.</p>
<p>With a 3.79 GPA, you should have quite a few options. That’s an outstanding GPA in an engineering program. Your HS grades and test scores will matter less now that you’re a sophomore. If you want a smaller, geekier private school, Carnegie Mellon, Case Western, Rice come to mind. There aren’t that many small options in California…you might actually look at Cal Poly Pomona, which isn’t huge as state schools go, and is the furthest thing in the world from a homogeneous, well-off white party crowd.</p>
<p>I have looked at most of the ‘top engineering universities’. Here’s small list of schools I have narrowed down to apply for next Fall:</p>
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</p>
<p>I only have a handful of schools I would like to attend and have a half decent chance of attending (excluding HMC). I am still unsure about Northwestern and UCSD’s ECE and CS program.</p>
<p>I also much rather to be in another Liberal Arts college than a research focus university. I haven’t looked at any of them yet besides the well known. Any more suggestion in this category? </p>
<p>P.S. Do I need a ‘safety school’? I don’t want to be stuck in where I am in case that I got rejected from all the schools I plan to transfer to.</p>
<p>“I don’t want to be stuck in where I am in case that I got rejected from all the schools I plan to transfer to.”</p>
<p>Then yes, you do indeed need a “safety school”. Look at the rest of the UCs and Cal States. Chances are that one of them could serve as your safety.</p>
Is it because HS record is a big part in the transfer admission, or is my GPA not enough to be competitive? From the stats I read, they do have a relatively high transfer acceptance rate (in the 20s).</p>
<p>You may not want to write off big schools too quickly. If 1% of the students are geeky engineering students like you, then a 1,000 student school will have 10 students like you, but a 20,000 student school will have 200 students like you.</p>