Chance Me At My Reach Schools! Engineering w/ Good ECs, Weak Tests (Berkeley, UIUC, GTech, etc.)

Chance Me / Match Me!
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Hey everyone! Just got done with college apps so I would really appreciate it if some of you chanced me for my reach schools. Nothing too crazy, pretty typical list of reach schools for engineering. Warning: provided lots of info below in order for you to get the best picture.

Schools - Major: Mechanical Engineering, Alt (If Available): Aerospace Engineering
• UC Berkeley, UCLA
• University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• Purdue
• UT Austin
• University of Southern California
• Georgia Tech (Legacy)

High School and Demographics
• Hispanic male, somewhat affluent (upper 10% income bracket)
• 1st generation American
• Relatively rural public school in Michigan
• Ranked 1st out of 387 students
Comments: Honestly don’t think my ethnicity and race will factor too much into admissions. High school is fairly mediocre, but they’ve sent some students to Brown, Stanford, and MIT over the past couple of years.

GPA and Tests
• GPA: 4.5 (Weighted), 4.0 (Unweighted)
• SAT: 680 (Math), 780 (Critical Reading + Writing)
• ACT: 31 Composite - 34 (English), 29 (Math), 34 (Reading), 26 (Science), 10 (Writing)
Comments: Weak math and science scores relative to other engineering applicants. I’ve never been a great test taker to be honest so I’m hoping my GPA, class rigor, and ECs offset this.

Classes
High School (AP Test Score if applicable):
• Science: Honors Biology, AP Physics I (3), AP Chem (4), AP Environmental Science (In Progress), AP Computer Science A (In Progress)
• Math: Honors Algebra, Honors Geometry, Honors Algebra II, Honors Pre-Calculus, AP Calc BC (In Progress)
• English: Honors English 9, Pre-AP English 10, AP Lang (3), AP Lit (In Progress)
• Social Studies: AP Human Geography (5), AP US History (3), AP Gov (5)
• Foreign Language: German (3 years)
• Other: Varsity Band (Saxophone)

Community College:
(4.0 GPA)
• Intro to Chemistry, Computer Applications, Intro to Engineering and Design, Principles of Engineering, Principles of Macroeconomics
Comments: Received A’s in all classes, but I’m worried if colleges will perceive this as grade inflation. I’m a lot more comfortable in the classroom. My persistence in engineering classes should help indicate my interest in my major.

Work Experience
• Product Development Engineer Intern at Herman Miller. I started this position in June and worked nearly 40 hours a week in the summer, currently work 17.5 hours a week during the school year.
• General Chemistry I & II Tutor at local community college during my junior year. I also worked one-on-one with a special needs student at his home. 7 hours a week.
Comments: I feel that I have very strong work experience, will definitely stand out with my internship.

Activities
• Science Club (President)
• Chemistry Olympiad (Captain)
• Rotary Club (Member): Worked with city planners and director of local energy company to implement a machine learning program to maximize street budgets.
• School District Improvement and Advisory Committee (Student Nominated Rep.): Helped implement professional mentorship opportunities for less fortunate students. Set long and short term district goals.
• Others: Mock Trial (Captain), UNICEF Club (Vice-President and Co-founder), Varsity Soccer (three years), saxophone in band, National Honor Society

Volunteerism
• ~1500 hours at church as vacation bible school mentor, play music at mass, clean church during vacation
• ~400 hours tutoring ESL students in STEM since my sophomore year
• Misc. volunteerism for Blessings in a Backpack, Salvation Army, middle school Lego Club, middle school Mock Trial

Awards and Scholarships
• President’s List at Community College
• AP Scholar with Honors
• High School Science Scholar (Machine Learning Capstone and Service Project)
• Leadership Scholarship - National Youth Leadership Council (Won regional scholarship among a pool of over 100 students)
• Outstanding Attorney - Mock Trial Regional Meet (2016, 2017)

Essays
Common App: Described the steps I took to help a student with Asperger’s while tutoring at my local community college. Talked about how he became more confident in the classroom as we worked together. He told me at one of our last sessions that he became confident enough to start going to school on his own and applied to transfer to a university. He started attending in the fall. I also described how close we got and how much we shared in common. We started hanging out and we loved to play video games. Whenever he’s home we still make some time to play Mario Kart together.

Overall I thought most of my essays were pretty solid: 5/7

Letters of Rec
Glowing letters of recommendation from my employer, college chemistry instructor, TAG teacher, and counselor.

Concluding Thoughts
I know my test scores will knock me down a peg or two, but I think my strong ECs, especially my work experience, will keep me somewhat competitive. Sorry, I know this is already a huge wall of text, but feel free to chance me if you want. I’d greatly appreciate it! Good luck to everyone applying!

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Why are you interested in engineering when math and science are your weakest subjects?

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@Deaston You have to be a bit naive to think that two standardized test scores dictate what I find myself interested in. Reading and writing come easily to me and I excel at them, but I’ve never found them to be the most engaging or most interesting, whereas math and science have always been. I’ve worked hard in my classes at school, have built up a portfolio through my hobbies in science and math, and currently work at a Fortune company. Test scores don’t paint the whole picture.

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Included AP Physics.

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You asked people to chance you–no need to be rude in your reply. I think @Deaston has a good point. Anyway, of course test scores aren’t the only thing that colleges look at, but they are still an important factor in admissions. For engineering you would’ve wanted at least a 700 on the SAT or 30 on the ACT. It does look strange that those scores are your weakest. You say you’re not a great test taker, but your scores for humanities subjects say otherwise. I think your chances are solid, but I don’t know a lot about these specific schools.

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@sciencenerd123 @Deaston I’m very sorry if I came off as rude, that was not my intention. I honestly don’t know why my SAT and ACT math are so low. I guess it’s just one of those things I have to accept as one of my weaknesses. Thank you for your feedback

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Also you’re OOS for UCs so no financial aid. And race cannot be taken into consideration for UC admissions.

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Crazy to think that we live in a time where a 31 ACT is considered weak; you have some great scores and an amazing GPA!! Really excellent extracurriculars as well! Here’s my word of caution: take everything you hear from this site with a bolder sized grain of salt. There’s a lot of selection bias so you will see some very inclined and capable students post here-- BUT they are not the majority! I personally disagree with @Deaston @sciencenerd123 I personally was accepted at UIUC’s CS program with only a 30 (keep in mind this was 6 years ago and I was in state), but I had some great extracurriculars and some great essays. I was miserable in biology and pre calc but I had one hell of a programming teacher in 10th grade who really kicked off my love for CS.

You have a great shot at Purdue (FYE is pretty gracious to acceptances, staying in is the hard part) and UT Austin. In your other schools, they’re definitely reaches, but you’re still very competitive. If you’re applying to all these schools you’re bound to get into one of them.

But do yourself a favor, get off this forum, and start doing things to help yourself. If you’re done with apps, start studying for finals. If you’re ready for finals, just relax my dude! NONE of us here are admissions officers, none of us can tell the future, so it’s out of your hands now.

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@champaignpapi Thank you for the kind words of encouragement! Great to hear your story! I feel a bit better about the whole admissions process after seeing your comment. Good to hear I have decent chances at Purdue, since they’re one of my top choices. They have a great campus and their students were incredible nice. Didn’t hurt that it wasn’t too far from home either. I’ll also definitely be taking your advice and stay off CC for a while. Gotta finish the semester strong!

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@diosmioleo No problemo! Just noticed that you’re also applying to Georgia Tech. My little bro got in (albeit he was a bit more stats oriented) and I remember at the admitted students tour they really stressed service to the community. Which leads me to say that your senior capstone is a double whammy! Machine learning and analytical programming is a huge focus at Georgia Tech since they believe that’s the direction where comp sci is heading, and the fact that you were able to do something in your community with it is even better.

I also see that you have a legacy at Tech? So even if you initially get rejected they’ll offer you conditional admission. What you’ll be able to do is go to some cheap school for a year, meet the class and GPA requirements (a 3.3 I think) and you’re guaranteed admish. I think the odds might be in your favor on this one. Good luck!

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Have your parents agreed to pay for these schools? Based upon your income and OOS, you will be full pay @ $50-70k per year.

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@Eeyore123 Yes, I’m very grateful and fortunate to be in the situation I’m in. Parents have saved up since I was born to pay for my college, as their parents did for them. It’s just a matter of where I’m accepted and where my family and I feel the most comfortable.

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I think if you a pursuing engineering, especially at your listed schools, your SAT math scores are much too low. The SAT math should be trivially easy for somebody of your background who wants to pursue engineering at the likes of UC Berkeley. That is in my opinion a big red flag in your application.

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@EPFutbol Yeah I didn’t send that score to any of my reach schools. I took it my sophomore year if that means anything. I settled on my 31 ACT hedging my bets on Cal Poly SLO and Purdue. Felt as if my ECs and GPA would help so I decided to apply to my reaches anyway.

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It is interesting that you did not put UMich on the list as it is in state for you and has excellent engineering. If you cannot get in there, you are not likely to get in CAL or UIUC. The poster above got i UIUC CS 6 years ago obviously did not know the competitivemness of the CS programs there in the last few years and the major difference between in state and OOS students.
The school will look at your test scores and even more so your Math score for engineering school. It does not matter what your excuse is.

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None of us know what we are talking about. Stay away from chance me threads as much as you can kid.

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@billcsho fam the only excuse i got was not gettin PAID EARLIER BOI [-(

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Your scores are not bad and don’t let anyone here tell you otherwise. You are, what, 9xth percentile? How is that bad? I think perspectives here are skewed. I would say if your math score was 20 points higher you would be a mortal lock at Georgia Tech (which is kind of ridiculous). But as-is, I still think you would very likely get accepted. And for reference, I know a kid who got admitted to Ga Tech with 1250 SAT and no connections (nor was he a jock). Unusual perhaps, but it happens. Berkeley . . . a bit of a reach, but not impossible, IMO. The others . . . I do not know enough about them and do not know anyone who applied or was accepted there to use as a basis. Good luck!

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@Jawtek82 Thank you for the very considerate reply. It’s probably to be expected that expectations are going to be skewed. My brother, who is my legacy at Georgia Tech, actually was accepted into their CS program back in 2013 with a 29 ACT (he’ll be graduating this month :slight_smile: ). I do realize however that the profile of students has increased quite a bit since then, but it helps to know that he did not have insane stats either. Apart from Berkeley, I feel pretty good about my chances with my reach schools, but then again I have to stay realistic and realize that rejection is a very big possibility at such competitive schools. Again, thank you!

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UCB engineering, UIUC engineering, and UT non-resident should all be considered reach generally (though your #1 rank should help at UT). USC appears to weight test scores heavily, and your 31 ACT is around the 25th percentile of admits there.

At some of the schools (e.g. UIUC and UT), you may be admitted to the school but not the major, in which case it may be difficult to switch into the major later.

Why aren’t in-state UM/MSU/MTU on your list?