Asian female, OOS (New Jersey)
GPA - 3.25 (unweighted) - 3.8 (weighted) (very competitive high school, but my grades are extremely low for my school)
AP Courses in the past:
APUSH- 5
Gov - 5
Art History - 4
Self Study:
Physics C Mech - 4
Physics C E&M- 4
Calc AB-4
4 AP classes this year, 10 total ( Lit, Bio, Enviro, BC Calc)
SAT - 1480 (720 e&w, 760 math)
EC:
President of Quiz Bowl
Nationally medaled at Academic Decathalon in 4 subjects
Captain of robotics team which competes at worlds
Girl scout gold
founded stem summer camp in china
I know I have strong ec’s and test scores, but does my gpa cancel everything out?
Hey there - I’m currently in ECE here as a sophomore.
I hate to be negative, but your scores are very low for the program. Your SAT is decent, but it’s nothing exceptional - chances are, it’s probably slightly below the median. The real deal killer is your GPA, and for the aforementioned reasons, I doubt your SAT will compensate for your GPA. You’ve noted that you attended a very competitive high school - I personally went through one too, and I can vouch that a 3.25 in high school, even at an extremely competitive one, does not reflect well on how you’d do under the conditions of ECE Illinois.
As for the EC’s, the only thing that probably matters at all to admissions is your robotics team experience. Public engineering school admissions are generally pretty straightforward, and they aren’t very “holistic” and loose. I doubt any of my music/debate/non-STEM related leadership experience helped me get admitted at all.
TDLR: UIUC ECE is a high reach for you. Still worth applying to anyway - you miss all the chances you don’t take…