Hello guys, I am a student that attends a public high school in the Los Angeles area.
Desired Major = Electrical Engineering
Desired Minor = Physics
Gender: Male
Ethnicity: African American
School: Public
Stats:
SAT: 1600 , Essay 23
SAT Subject Tests - Math 2 (800), Physics (780), Chemistry (790)
Unweighted GPA: 3.9
Weighted GPA: 4.5
AP Classes and scores:
AP Physics 1 - 5
AP Physics 2 - 5
AP Chemistry - 5
AP World History - 4
AP US History - 4
AP Calculus BC - 5
AP Chinese - 3
Senior Classes:
Marching Band
AP US Government
AP Literature
AP Macro/Micro Econ
Awards:
Gold & Silver Medal at the Science Olympiad
Qualifier for PSAT/NMSQT
Extracurriculars:
President of Math/Robotics club - Coach younger students in those subjects and worked in teams to build robots to accomplish various tasks.
Founder and President of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science club - Hold biweekly meetings, introduce students to the field of engineering, and student conduct their own experiments and have hands on experience with circuits and coding.
Tutoring students who are in need of help with math and science.
Honorable mention on various companies’ Hall of Fame (Google, AT&T, Microsoft, etc.) - Reported vulnerabilities found on websites and was rewarded with bug bounties and a mention on their hall of fame.
Questions:
I will be the first person in my family to attend college and I wanted to know what my chances are of getting into these schools. In particular, I’d appreciate it if you all could give me some idea of the probability of me getting into either Cal Tech or MIT because I am particularly interested in attending these schools due to Cal Tech having an internship with JPL.
Although Caltech allegedly does not consider race in their admission process, you are still competitive there. I think you will get into either MIT or Stanford. You are competitive and your hooks puts you in a desirable applicant pool. If I had to pick out a weakness, it would be few relevant ECs.
Caltech, Stanford, MIT, UCB EECS are generally seen as reach-for-everyone, though you should be a competitive applicant as a 1G applicant with top-end stats (however, remember that difficult-to-observe-and-compare factors like essays and recommendations matter when there are lots of top-end applicants for these schools/programs). USC EE and UCLA ECE not sure, but they are still highly competitive for admission.
Presumably, you have other UCs/CSUs and/or other schools as affordable safeties?
@kjake2000 Thanks for your input, I definitely appreciate it. Unfortunately there weren’t many too many ECs that I could’ve added to my list as there weren’t as many opportunities related to what I plan to major in. I left out some ECs because I felt that they were irrelevant and wouldn’t have made much of an impact.
@Guapo_Trill Thanks for your input, but could you please elaborate further on your statement?
@ucbalumnus Thanks for the response. I had several of my current/former teachers, multiple counselors and advisers, and alumni of my school who attend several of these schools read over my essays and they have said that along with my profile, I am possibly qualified enough be admitted to these schools. As for my recommendation letters, I have a strong relationship with my teachers who I have asked to help write me a recommendation letter, so I can only hope for the best.
To answer your final question, yes I have applied to several other UCs/CSUs and some other schools as a safety in case I am not admitted to any of these schools. It is a dream for myself to be able to attend one of these schools and pursue my passion in electrical engineering, but at the moment the most important thing on my mind right now is to make my parents proud of how far they came to be able to provide for me to have an education like this.
@mynameiswesley you should be so proud of your stats!! You have AMAZING chances of getting into those places. Just get good letters of rec and then you should be great for all those schools… or did you already apply? if so, did you ed anywhere and get deffered? i highly doubt you would get deffered from anywhere lol
You are an extremely competitive applicant. Your stats and ECs are great and your hook is helpful. With good essays I could see you getting accepted by many of these schools
@mynameiswesley yes you have what it takes and have showed your dedication to learning both in and outside the classroom. just make sure to continue to do good in school as these schools often require end of year grade reports
I forgot the password to my original account which is a foolish mistake. However, I wanted to update everyone on my results so far. I didn’t bother to include CSUs in my original chance me post, however I will include them in this post since I did apply to several just for safety.
Accepted:
UCB w/ Regents
SLO
Pomona
Rejected:
Cal Tech
Hopeful for MIT as admissions come out tomorrow, still waiting for UCLA, USC, and Stanford. April 1st is going to be one hell of a day, but I’m optimistic.
Can you elaborate on the gold and silver medal for Science Olympiad? Like was it at nats or states or regionals etc?
You are extremely competitive at all these schools. Your SAT is literally perfect and your GPA is quite nearly perfect. Your extra-circulars are aligned with your intended major. You will be the first in your family to college (congratulations), which colleges really like to see. You have a good chance at getting Regents at UC Berkeley, and will likely get into UCLA and USC. You are without a doubt competitive for Caltech, Stanford, and MIT, and have a better shot than almost anyone I’ve seen on this website at getting in. That being said, it is still difficult to predict your chances since these are the top schools in the nation and are notoriously difficult to get into. I still like you chances at getting in though, it is just difficult to predict. You are qualified and have the statistics and extra-circulars that should merit admission to the nation’s top universities. Good luck!