Thank you for taking a minute to read over this and give opinions/advice!
Demographics
US domestic *(US citizen or permanent resident): yes
State/Location of residency: Ohio
Type of high school (current college for transfers): Public
Gender/Race/Ethnicity (optional): Non-binary/female White
Other special factors (first generation to college, legacy, athlete, etc.): n/a
Intended Major(s)
Mechanical Engineering & Design
GPA, Rank, and Test Scores
Unweighted HS GPA: 3.971
Weighted HS GPA (incl. weighting system): 3.585
Class Rank: n/a
ACT/SAT Scores:
1450 SAT
34 ACT. 31 Math, 34 Science, 34 English, 35 Reading.
I submitted both my ACT and SAT to schools.
Coursework
7 Honors Classes
6 APs (the 4 that I have already taken I scored all 4s on the exams)
4 Dual Enrollment Classes
Awards
Xerox Award for Innovation and Information Technology
AP Scholar with Honor Award
Extracurriculars
FIRST Robotics team president (both junior and senior year, led team to be top 75 in the world)
Multiple lead roles in school drama productions
School orchestra viola section leader (requires auditioning)
Head student mentor for middle school FLL robotics team
100+ hours of volunteering through YMCA camp.
2 years varsity field hockey
Multiple different part-time jobs throughout high school (swim instructor, camp counselor, media team, kitchen staff)
A few other miscellaneous club memberships
Essays/LORs/Other
Common App Essay: 8/10. I worked on it with my English teacher and my guidance counsellor, and they both approve of it.
Overall Supplemental Essay strength: 7/10. Im not the best writer, and should have done more editing than I had.(most of my schools didn’t have supplemental essays)
Counselor LOR: 8/10. Not much to comment on here.
Teacher LORs: 9/10. I got letters from my Digital Media teacher and my AP Computer science/ Robotics teacher. I think I got a pretty good letter from the digital media teacher, I had him my sophomore and junior year and he went out of his way to write my letter and make sure everything was set for it before he retired this past year. But I think the best letter is from my Ap comp sci and robotics teacher, he is also the mentor for the robotics team, I just think that over all he know me the best of any teacher at my school and has a lot that he could say positively in the letter.
Schools
Safety
Purdue University (EA)
University of Denver(EA)
Penn State(EA)
Drexel University (EA)
Ohio State University (EA)
Wentworth Institute of Technology (EA)
Target
University of Pittsburgh (Accepted)
Hard Target
University of Rochester(RD)
Reach
Case Western University (EA)
Northeastern University (Applied Early Decision)
Carnegie Mellon(RD)
I was wondering about my chances of getting into Northeastern early decision. I’m also looking for suggestions for more target schools as I will be applying to more schools if not accepted in the early decision pool. Thank you so much for reading! To any other seniors out there, good luck!
Purdue is a reach, not a safety. Pitt was a safety :). Great school though - congrats.
Rochester a reach.
You have Pitt. Unless you don’t like or can’t afford, why do you need more ? You will get into your safeties minus Purdue.
What are you looking for in a school? You list is a bit all over school wise type. Do you have a budget ? That could impact - even the choices you already made.
Hard to make recommendations without.
But I think you are fine as is. If anything, maybe another state school like U Cincy who has a solid program and pushes co op.
I’d lean against NEU but you never know - especially in ED.
Most schools want recommenders from core subjects but NEU doesn’t state that. But a school that does want that - you could be hurt as you have neither. But I think you will have all your safety options except Purdue and I assume you will be happy with all of wouldn’t have applied.
Budget - if an issue - would be your only hurdle. If it’s not you are all set.
Good luck.
Based on your credentials, I am not 100% certain that Purdue would be a safety school for engineering. Last year they had something like a 30% acceptance rate for FYE.
You may want to look at a few mid-size privates like RPI and/or WPI. I see a decent chance of acceptance into either and one of them my throw quite a bit of aid at you to make them cost competitive with OOS publics.
Ok, good to know about Purdue. I haven’t yet visited Pitt but from the things I read and saw online I don’t entirely love it so I’m just trying to find more options.
The things I’m looking for in a school are it being in a city or in a nearby suburb(however that’s not a dealbreaker) & a good engineering program that focuses on experiential learning.
I had a difficult time with the rec. letters as I took 2/4 core classes as dual enrollment and those classes were self paced online, and 2/3 teachers that I did have for core classes 10/11 left my district. It was not an ideal situation.
Overall thank you so much for the advice!
Is budget an issue? If not, and depending on size, you were given two fine recs b4 in RPI and WPI.
It’s late for some but solid safeties with great merit would be UAH and Arizona.
I think for experiential vs theory WPI is a winner. UTK and others including Ohio State partake in the grand challenges program. Of course many schools had early deadlines already missed.
I think you’ve got a pretty good list, too. But if you’re looking for additional schools, then how about these, all of which have industrial/product design majors (assuming that’s the kind of design you’re interested in) in addition to mechanical engineering.
Lawrence Tech (MI)
New Jersey Institute of Technology
North Carolina State
Rochester Institute of Technology (NY)
Syracuse (NY)
U. of Cincinnati (OH) - agree with @momofboiler1 that this seems like a great fit based on your interest in Northeastern and Drexel.
CMU and University of Rochester have ED II rounds, so if they are among your top choices and Northeastern doesn’t pan out (you should know by Dec. 15th), you should consider applying to one of those ED II rather than in the Regular round. CMU obviously a reach.
WPI, which another poster already mentioned above, is big into experiential learning and also FIRST (Dean Kamen, FIRST’s founder, is a WPI alum and the school has some FIRST-specific scholarship opportunities, here: FIRST Robotics | Worcester Polytechnic Institute). They also has an ED II round and pretty good merit aid (as an example, my son, who ended up attending elsewhere for ME and was also big into FIRST, was offered $24,500 per year in last year’s cycle). Not in Boston like NEU but under an hour away; we really liked the vibe.
My daughter is at Pitt for Engineering- she wanted a city school and did NOT want to be stuck on a campus with nothing around. She LOVES Pitt. Merit Scholarship is what got her to go there, but it’s been a good decision all around.
Based on my 2 kids at Purdue, one in Engineering, it’s certainly not a safety and probably not a Match. The average admitted unweighted GPA last year was 3.89.
Hi! I ended up waiting to hear back from all of my EA schools (except OSU) so I just wanted to update with the decisions I received back! I was kinda surprised by both the Penn State and Drexel decisions, but I guess you really never know what’s gonna happen with college admissions.
