<p>This is my first post here even though I have been reading for several months now. Anyway, my daughter is a junior in high school and interested in majoring in bioengineering. I was wondering if you could sort of "pre-chance" her to see if it would even be worth it for her to apply to this specific major. I know that engineering, and especially bioengineering, is extremely competitive. I just don't want her to have her heart set on this one major and then be disappointed if she is not accepted into the program. We visited the campus last Friday for an Orange and Blue day and she just fell in love w/the campus.</p>
<p>Since she is a junior, she has not taken the ACT, so I can't provide a score for that yet. We are going to sign her up for one of the intensive courses that begins the end of February, and she will take the test the end of April. We are also going to sign her up for the May and June tests just in case she doesn't get the score that she needs in April.</p>
<p>These stats are through her Sophomore year:</p>
<p>Weighted GPA: 4.26 (not sure how to figure out unweighted GPA)
Class Rank: 14th out of 564 students</p>
<p>Including the classes she is currently taking, she has taken 10 honors classes and 2 AP classes. Her senior year she will most likely take 3 AP classes, BC calculus, 1 honors class, and 1 elective.</p>
<p>Here is a list of her EC's:
-Been playing travel soccer year round since she was 10
-A member of the Community Service Club since Freshman year
-A member of Student Council since Sophomore year
-A member of the high school soccer team since Freshman year
-A member of the high school traveling club since Freshman year
-Been invited to apply to the NHS and has a good chance of being accepted</p>
<p>Her GPA for the 1st quarter her junior year was a 4.45.</p>
<p>So what do you think of her chances of being potentially accepted into the bioengineering program? Any and all feedback would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!</p>
<p>I believe she has a good chance at making it in. Good EC. And since many schools have different scales. Can you say what the 4.26 is out of? 5 I assume? It is still solid. and for U.W. its basically the comparison of As to Bs without taking into account of honors/ap. Still important. I believe A is a 4, B is a 3, etc.</p>
<p>My best advice is that you should just sign her up for any early ACT registrations. Having to deal with the ACT in the summer with college apps and everything else is just stressful. And who knows, she may score better than you expect without any aid. Goodluck!</p>
<p>Thank you so much for your reply. The GPA is off of a 4.0 scale. An A in a regular class would be a 4.0, an A in an honors class would be a 4.5, and an A in an AP class would be a 5.0. Thanks for explaining the definition of an unweighted GPA. I’ll have to go through and figure out her unweighted GPA. She actually took a practice ACT at her high school last month and w/out any studying or preparation she scored a 28. That is part of the reason she wants to go through an extensive prep class so that she can get her score up in the 30’s.</p>
<p>you may not want to pay for a prep course as most are not worth the $$. she can just do as well by using prep books (from local library), and if she didn’t make good enough progress (say a 32), you can then consider a prep class. but let her do what she can first.</p>
<p>Bioengineering is the most difficult major to be admitted to at UIUC. Those usually admitted are top 5% class rank or better and 33 or above ACT. And the problem is that even having those stats does not assure acceptance into the program. Thus, she is on tract but one should never assume a high chance of admittance to bioengineering.</p>
<p>Thanks for the reply. Right now she is in the top 2.5% of her class, so for class rank and GPA she is most likely on tract. I guess it is going to come down to the ACT and how well she scores on that. I appreciate your honesty w/how hard it will be for her to get into the program. I think she needs to know what she is up against, and have alternate backup plans. She is going to apply to other schools that have either bioengineering or biomedical engineering programs, but she really liked U of I. It is only the 2nd school we have seen out of 6 so far that she wants to visit, so she has a long way to go before making a decision. But w/how much she liked the campus coupled w/the fact that it is our instate big 10 school and will be more financial feasible than OOS options, put this school pretty high on her list right now. Thanks again for responding!</p>
<p>Thanks for the reply. We are planning to get her the ACT prep books, and w/the practice test she took through her high school, she has access to online practice tests, ect. that she will start to utilize now in preparation for the test in April. We don’t have to sign up for the prep classes until sometime in February as they do not begin until the end of that month. They have a class that only meets once right before the test all the way up to one on one private tutoring. We were planning for her to take something in the middle. I definitely will be looking at the ACT forum here for advice. I am hoping that she can improve her score of 28 at least into the 30’s, but I don’t know how feasible that would be. She did get the 28 w/out any studying at all, but I have heard that it is hard to raise your ACT score be even a point or two. As a Sophomore, she took a practice ACT at our local library w/out any studying or preparation for it and she got a 22. She was only half way through her Sophomore year at the time and she said a lot of material on the test hadn’t been covered in her classes. It gave her hope that she was able to go from a 22 to a 28, but then again these are just practice tests and don’t really count yet. Anyway, thanks again!</p>
<p>Just note that for any other engineering programs at UIUC (and its application requires engineering majors to list a second major in the event you cannot get into the first one), her current class rank if it continues and an ACT anywhere in the 30s would give her a very high probability of being accepted.</p>