Chance me for top engineering schools, and my ED for CMU

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

Objective Material:
Weighted GPA
9th: 3.18 - no weighted credit as an underclassmen, I had primarily accelerated courses.
10th: 3.83 - Honors precalc and dual enrollment Statistics, and other accelerated classes, but no weighting for underclassmen
11th: 4.53 - AP Calc AB, APUSH, AP Chem, Dual enrollment A&P 1-2, Honors physics (mechanics), rest are college prep courses.
12th: 4.7ish - AP Calc BC, AP English lang, AP Biology, Dual enrollment physics E&M, rest are college prep courses.
Unweighted GPA
9th: 3.18
10th: 3.83
11th: 3.87
12th: 4.0ish

SAT 1
Superscore
Math: 800
CR: 710
Writing: 700-10

single composite
M800
CR660
WR-700-10

SAT 2
Chemistry: 800
Math 2: 800

Subjective material:
NHS VP,
March for parks,
Relay for life,
worked at golf course,
Tutor classmates informally,
Shadowing experience with orthopedic surgeon (used in common app essay)

CHANCES: Carnegie Mellon University (I already applied ED),
Johns Hopkins University,
MIT,
Harvey Mudd,
All the Ivy’s,
Caltech,
CWRU,

I was already accepted to Pitt Bioengineering so my safety is set.
*If you have any match schools to recommend, preferably in the mid atlantic, please include them in your chances.

2

bump

3

Scores are pretty good and your GPA is decent. You’re definitely in contention for a good engineering school, but Caltech and MIT are definitely high reaches. I’d say limit your Ivy applications because Cornell, Princeton, and Columbia are the strongest in engineering generally viewed in that order by many people. The others like Harvard, Yale, Brown, Penn, and Dartmouth aren’t as strong, but have good liberal arts reputations. There are definitely better engineering schools, but most of the ones I can think of that you don’t have are not in the Mid-Atlantic.

4

You were smart to apply ED to Carnegie Mellon. Your scores are in their range and they don’t count the 9th grade grades so your gpa is on target. You don’t have any hooks mentioned and your EC don’t show much leadership. But the fact that you applied ED should increase you chances to maybe 50/50, more or less depending on your essays and letters of recommendation.

Your chances for the super reaches are like everyone else, very, very low. I would recommend picking only two or three because their applications are very long. John Hopkins is still a reach but could be attainable if you show a lot of interest in your essay. CWRU is a match and you should get in.

Congratulations on Pitt - it sounds like a great backup!

5

Thanks @kathleen and @IndoorCloud25 , I figured Ivy’s as well as caltech and JHU would be reaches, it good to know I wasn’t alone in that line of thought. My recommendations are top notch, the one from my math teacher saying I was “Easily one of the top three students of my (teacher’s) 27 years of teaching”. Do you think getting into engineering at Harvard, Penn, or Yale would be easier than Cornell and Columbia simply due to ranking of the programs? At this point with my acceptance to Pitt BioE, which is top 25, I’m looking for some high matches and low-mid reaches to apply to as well, just to see. Do you think applying to MIT or HY, Penn or something else you may be thinking of would be a waste of time?

6

Apply to MIT simply because you never know what will happen. I had a friend get deferred then waitlisted then finally got into MIT. As for Harvard, Yale, Penn, etc., their acceptance rates to engineering aren’t going to differ from the overall acceptance because of the program ranking. Instead, I’d find a school better suited for engineering perhaps not restricted to the Mid-Atlantic region since there are so many great ones like Georgia Tech, Duke, UMich, and UIUC.

7

So you think MIT engineering may be more likely to get into than Ivy’s? As for GT, UMich, and UIUC, I contemplated applying to those but given Pitt’s solid ranking as well as how close it is to home, they weren’t really good enough to draw me hundreds of miles from home. Are there any solid low-mid reach schools, lets say in the East to broaden things, that wouldn’t be a waste of time to apply to?

8

@Kylemcgrogan - I disagree about GT. It is top 6 in the country for engineering and more realistic to get in to than MIT or the Ivies. If you were to tour the campus and see their program you would be blown away. We were.

9

@Suzima I don’t know, I haven’t really looked to deeply at GT, it is in a hot area that I am very unfamiliar with. Also I plan to go premed and I know Pitt is big on the medical field.