bio or EECS white girl, west coast, chances at everywhere?

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

<p>Don't worry, I won't be applying to ALL these schools, but I need help cutting it down. Which are reasonable, which don't fit, which are safeties/matches/reaches?</p>

<p>Amherst
Boston U
Brown
Carnegie Mellon
Davidson
Emory
Harvard
Harvey Mudd
MIT
Pomona
Stanford
UC Berkeley
U Southern California
U Washington
Vanderbilt
Wellesley
Williams
Yale</p>

<p>I'm interested in bio/neuroscience and electrical engineering/CS. I go to a small public school.</p>

<p>GPA:
3.937, UW, all hardest level available classes
3 A- in foreign language
B+ english
B+ history</p>

<p>Rank: 15/300 after 5th semester, don't know it now, probably lower :-(</p>

<p>SAT high scores:
R 800
M 740
W 750</p>

<p>bioM - 750
math2c - 760
lit - 770</p>

<p>Athletics:
-4 years HS swim team - lettered all years so far, and qualified for districts every year
-3 years rowing</p>

<p>Academic Junk:
-4 years science olympiad - 2 state medals, will be secretary this year
-4 years Knowledge Bowl
-placed 2nd at DECA (marketing competition), but not in a super cool oral presentation event
-ISEF finalist
-employed on school district's TV show, answering called in science questions on air
occasional hospital volunteer, but <100 hours
-captain of our school's first science bowl team</p>

<p>Church:
-acolyte, layreader for my church
-first youth elected to the church's 9 person governing council thingy
-elected to the diocesan (large group of churches, ours covers half the state) youth council 2 times
-represented the diocese at the provincial youth council, for the western US</p>

<p>Summers:
after 9th - took Oceanography at nerdcamp
after 10th - went to Germany on one month exchange
after 11th - went to MIT's Women in Technology EECS program</p>

<p>Awards:
-barely an AIME qualifier
-Bausch and Lomb Science Award
-National Merit something, don't know yet, but I got 230 on the test</p>

<p>I don't do any musical instrument or anything artistic like that.</p>

<p>So what do you think? Amherst, Williams, and Davidson don't have engineering, but they seem so cool, and then UC Berkeley wouldn't give me any $$$, and are CMU/BU/USC not worth it when you combine UW's engineering + so much cheaper?</p>

<p><3. message me if you want to chat.</p>

2

<p>Hey, you're like me. I was interested in biology and engineering (computer science) then I got to college and was interested in EE then CS again. In any case, I'm a Biomedical engineer @ JHU with a concentration in biocomputation (which is for all essential purpouses, bio+medicine+math+engineering+cs) there is also a instrumentation option which is essentially bio+medicine+ee and other options. You might want to look into BME/BE as a possible major, that way you don't have to chose between biology and engineering :)</p>

<p>I don't want to say anything about your chances but they are obviously good, I wish you lots of luck. Except that if you're a CA resident your chances @ UCB are great.</p>

<p>You should seriously consider how much you want to do engineering, if you're really into it, avoid schools with out engineering programs so as to keep your options open.</p>

<p>good luck</p>

3

<p>Reaching:</p>

<p>UCB: Slight Reach (out of state, Engineering)</p>

4

<p>thanks for responding, and yah, I am definitely looking into bioeng :-).</p>

<p>does anyone have perspective on the east coast schools? I'm not terribly attached to UCB, and I'm trying to narrow the list.</p>

5

<p>Don't apply to Boston University if you want to go into engineering.</p>

6

<p>Don't <em>absolutely quote</em> me on this, but look into it if the possibility concerns you...I think that if you decided to do engineering at Pomona, you'd have to do 5 years of undergrad.</p>

<p>As for some schools not being worth it given cheaper options, I wouldn't worry too much about that at application time. Maybe pare one of those off or something, but you never know what kind of scholarships or financial aid you'll be able to get to make your decision a little simpler.</p>

<p>Your choices span the whole country. If you give a lot of thought to location, you might be able to cut a few off your list ("I'd probably rather stay on the west coast, but if I got into XYZ, I couldn't turn it down..." = keep west coast schools, keep those that would definitely pull you east, and cut out those that wouldn't). Same with size...you have some huge universities and some tiny LACs. You don't need to make the ultimate decision now, but if you know you'll <em>probably</em> prefer one, then you can take a few of the other off the list.</p>

<p>(And I know you're trying to cut down the list, so feel free to ignore this...but Rice stands out to me as a logical addition.)</p>

7

<p>I've looked at Rice and I have an uncle in Houston (I actually have family nearby for all schools except the California ones, and then it's West Coast so I'm close to home anyway. I was just concerned that I might not actually want to live in in Houston, and that Texas might be more conservative that I might like (This applies to Vanderbilt too, I know, but they have other things for them), so I can't really justify it.</p>

<p>My problem is that if I applied to all those schools, I'm looking at probably $1000 in app fees? ridiculous. I'll probably cut out UCB because they are public school at private school prices, and then I have to think really hard about the LACs cuz they don't have engineering.</p>

<p>I don't I would apply to both Mudd and Pomona. Could you tell me more about the possiblity of 5 years for eng undergrad?</p>

8

<p>UCB isn't a reach, in my opinion (I was accepted OOS with similar stats and an awful essay). But I don't really know why'd you want to go there OOS.</p>

<p>And although Harvey Mudd is expensive, you could posisbly get scholarship money for being a girl (they have a diversity scholarship thing. You can also knock off ten grand a year if you bump your math sat score to 750).</p>

9

<p>I've come to the following conclusions after this past admissions year....
Of your list -
Stanford, Harvard, MIT, Yale, Brown, Williams, Pomona, and UCB are reaches for anyone - regardless of how good you look on paper.</p>

<p>Spend some time really looking at Carnegie Mellon, Davidson, Emory, and Vanderbilt. Find one or two of these (or the others on your list) that you could be happy at. Then rejections won't hurt so much. When you visit colleges, go to these first. Give them more attention than you might feel the need to. </p>

<p>Especially since you are a girl - getting into the ivies is really difficult because statistically your chances are much smaller than your male counterparts. </p>

<p>Good luck.</p>

10

<p>UC Berkeley is actually a safety for many people. Myself included. </p>

<p>UC Berkeley would be a very safe match for the OP.</p>

11

<p>If you like Williams and Mudd, you might want to look at Olin College of Engineering. It's only drawback for you is that I think the "bio" end is not really strong, but I'm not really the one to ask about that.</p>

<p>Olin has a curriculum and size similar to Mudd's, and in my opinion is as awesome as Williams. And oh yeah, free tuition.</p>

<p>My choice came down to Williams or Olin, and I finally decided I really like Olin's small size, though at first that seemed like a drawback.</p>

12

<p>I know that CMC, Pomona, and Scripps (probably Pitzer, too) all offer combined 3-2 engineering degrees through various institutions. The engineering major is offered only on Mudd and I'm not sure what the policies are for off-campus students (off-campus majors are normal in most degrees, but the Mudd engineering major is generally known as the most rigorous degree in Claremont...for some reason I feel like the policy might differ). It might be possible, but it would not be easy and I can't say that it's common. </p>

<p>After looking into it a little bit, here are a few things I found:</p>

<ul>
<li><p><a href="http://www.pomona.edu/ADWR/Registrar/catalog/60_Coop%20Acad%20Prog.pdf#search=%22engineering%22%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.pomona.edu/ADWR/Registrar/catalog/60_Coop%20Acad%20Prog.pdf#search=%22engineering%22&lt;/a> --> Describes 3-2 programs with both Cal Tech and Washington USL. One would receive a BA in pre-engineering from Pomona and a BS in engineering from the other school.</p></li>
<li><p><a href="http://www.chemistry.pomona.edu/Chemistry/chem_info.pdf#search=%22engineering%22%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.chemistry.pomona.edu/Chemistry/chem_info.pdf#search=%22engineering%22&lt;/a> --> Says that chemistry students interested in engineering can select a certain track and then participate in a Mudd engineering clinic.</p></li>
</ul>

<p>Okay...after searching a few more sites, I find stuff that backs up that info but nothing new. 3-2 programs are offered through Cal Tech and WUSL and there is a "chemical engineering" track option of the chemistry major (regular 4 year). Beyond that, I don't know. Though I love Claremont, I would add Pomona to your list of "LACs without engineering" (bearing in mind that you wouldn't entirely be killing the possibility) and I wouldn't attend Mudd if you weren't pretty positive you wanted a math/science (if not engineering) degree. But they're great...I still promise they're great ;-)</p>

13

<p>ISEF Finalist? WTP? You're in everywhere.</p>