Chance me! Northeastern + WPI + RPI EA 2024

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

Hello! I was wondering if anyone could chance me. I applied EA 1 to WPI and Northeastern. I applied regular decision for RPI through the Candidate’s Choice application. I also submitted a supplemental portfolio for both. I assume Northeastern is more of a reach school for me, WPI is my target.

Major: Interactive Media and Game Design (BS) @ WPI, Game Art (BA) @ Northeastern, Games and Stimulation Arts + Sciences (BS) @ RPI

Background: Asian female from a small (primarily white) town in NH, both parents born out of the country but still went to college

GPA: 3.73 (Strong incline: 3.3, 3.7, 4.1)

Senior grades: Received all A’s but a B+ in AP Physics, planning to maintain that throughout the year

Course load:

  • Freshman Year: All CP classes w/ exception of honors writing
  • Sophomore Year: All CP classes
  • Junior Year: All honors/AP classes w/ exception of math (AP Computer Science Principles, AP US Gov., AP Studio Art, Honors Chem., Honors French 4, Honors Band, Honors World Lit.)
  • Senior Year: Mostly all honors/AP w/ exception of math and economics (AP Computer Science A, AP Comparative Government, AP Physics I, Honors Engineering, Honors College Writing)

AP Scores: AP Studio Art (Drawing) - 5, AP Computer Science Principles - 4, AP US Gov. - 4
SAT Score: 1360 // 690 (reading), 670 (math), 22 (essay)

EC’s:

  • FIRST Robotics Team - CEO/Chairman’s Lead (10/11/12): Was on presentation team + received Chairman’s Award at a district event
  • Art Club - President (9/10/11/12)
  • Tri-M Music Honors Society (11) - Was unable to continue due to schedule interferences w/ my band class + was forced to take other classes in order to fulfill graduation requirements.
  • NHDL Debate Team - Secretary (11/12)
  • Political Campaign Volunteer (11/12)
  • Asian Culture Club (11) - Club was discontinued due to monitoring teacher being let off
  • ELO Internship (12) - Intern for an American humanities class at my school
  • Art Lessons (10) - Lessons/mentorship under NHIA professor at a local studio

Honors/Awards/Galleries:

  • Renaissance Award (10) - Basically a school award for being likable amongst staff + the community.
  • Scholastic Art Awards Silver Key (painting) (11)
  • 2016 National Award of Merit for PTA Reflections
  • NH Scholars (STEM + Arts Emphasis) (12)
  • Tri-M (11)
  • Concord Youth Arts Show (11)
  • Pop Up Art Gallery in my town (11/12)
  • UMass Lowell Regional High-School Exhibition (12)
  • Presented for + received school board funding through a competition at my school to go through w/ a prototype/research for a product that dealt with quantitative light-induced fluorescence + bacteria (12)
  • High Honor Roll (10/11/12)
  • Honor Roll (9)

Community Service: 90 hours

Recommendation Letters: Letters from art teacher, guidance counselor and humanities teacher I’m interning for. I believe I got strong recommendations from all, maintained good grades in their classes and had a connection w/ all of them

Essays: Very strong. Wrote about learning to follow my own path in life through life-drawings of people in the city (reviewed and edited by teachers/peers). For the WPI supplemental essay, I wrote about robotics competitions at the university. For the Northeastern supplemental essay, I wrote about my childhood w/ video games and how my abilities in communication/public speaking would benefit me in the game industry.

Portfolio: Very strong portfolio. Included traditional, digital 3D work and more digital paintings. (I can send my portfolio through direct message but I would prefer not to post it on this page as it contains some of my info.)

2

Your GPA may be low for NEU and also there is no supplement for NEU.

3

Alright, thanks! My major requires a supplement because I’m applying to the Arts and Design college

4

You list your latest GPA as 4.1. This would indicate that you are talking about weighted GPA scores. As secondary schools often use different weighting systems. Your unweighted GPA would be more helpful. The average unweighted GPA at WPI is 3.9. Weighted would be somewhere over 4.

One the plus side:
For this major, your artwork should carry more weight;
The steady solid growth in your GPA works for you;
Female probably still helps as they work toward a 50/50 ratio.

Unweighted GPA is probably the most important piece of data, but not the entire picture. Remember, WPI is not coop and is a four year program for most students.

What would your second and third choices be for a major?

5

My school doesn’t give us our unweighted GPA’s on our transcript. I’m assuming my unweighted GPA is around a 3.5 which is very low, I hope colleges look past my freshman year GPA which weighed that down quite a bit. Also hoping that the supplemental portfolio will help me a bit with that part as it is listed as optional on their website, and the fact that I do FIRST robotics because I heard the college loves students who participate in the program.

When applying, WPI and Northeastern did not prompt me for a second/third choice major on the Common Application, not sure if I did something wrong with that but there was no area prompting for it.

6

I only asked the question about a second or third major to better understand the possible range of your interests. It is not unusual for students to switch majors after the first year. This exercise will help you explore the scope of options available to you after matriculation at a university.

By way of example, would an art major or minor be and option? Do you have an interest in the engineering aspects or robotics? It is not just about getting admitted… it is about the right match for you. Hunt around https://www.wpi.edu/academics/departments to review the range of options available at WPI. Arts and Sciences might also include options of interest, see https://www.wpi.edu/academics/arts-sciences

Your strong suit is the constant improvement in your grades. Congratulations and keep it up.

It might be good to add a safety candidate for admission.

7

If you are looking for a safety, Clarkson is strong in game design and offers a lot of merit to female applicants. I know several current students and grads (several females) who all love the school.

8

I’m interested in CS and Architectural Engineering as well, I applied for Interactive Media as I felt it would be a good blend of the arts and computer science and could help me in either going into game design or UI/UX design. But I’ll look into other majors as well. I didn’t even know that WPI had an arts undergraduate program! I’ll definitely look into that if I get accepted and feel iffy about my major. Thank you!

I applied to UMass Lowell and UNH as safety schools for CS, I believe I have a good chance of getting into those schools so I didn’t put them on my post.

9

You have some very sound safety choices. Good job!

As you probably know, WPI does have architectural engineering. See https://www.wpi.edu/academics/departments/architectural-engineering. There are very few LA majors at WPI, the few they have are almost tutorial. I graduated with a BS in economics over 50 years ago. There were only three of us, but we really received a lot of attention. the range of options has grown since then. Two went on to graduate school in economics. I do not know what the third did.

See https://www.wpi.edu/academics/departments/liberal-arts-engineering.

I would argue that it is a great place to study technical writing! They actually have a very large Humanities department and are strong in undergraduate psychology and business for the mathematically inclined… Dig in the garden and see what else interests you at each of these universities. You might want to check out the flexibility available in program design.

10

Update: Accepted at WPI with 24k/year!