<p>Hello, I'm just an average kid looking at some state schools for engineering. I'm not shooting for any Ivy or UC, just some good Midwest schools.</p>
<p>About me:</p>
<p>-Just finished Junior Year
-African American Male
-Chicago, IL
-Aspiring Mechanical Engineer</p>
<p>School:</p>
<p>-I go to a large Chicago magnet school. It's fairly good school (Michelle Obama graduated from there :D) that offers a lot of APs and sends a couple of kids to Ivies and other nice schools.</p>
<p>Grades/Classes/Test Scores</p>
<p>-about 3.3-3.5 UW GPA (our school doesn't tell us unweighted, so I'm not sure)
-4.2 Weighted GPA </p>
<p>-I took AP US History and AP European History Junior Year
-I plan to take AP Physics B, AP Spanish, and AP Human Geography next year
-I don't know my scores for Junior Year, but I think I did well.
-As for my other courses, they're all honors. I only took a few regular courses Freshman year because the school wouldn't take my grade school credits :|
-My school also limits a lot of kids in math, which really upsets me. The highest math available to me is Precalculus. I'd like to take AP Calculus but I didn't have credits coming into my high school and wasn't in my high school's 7th and 8th grade program, so I can't take it. Oh well</p>
<p>-You're also probably wondering why I have so many social science courses for an aspiring engineer. Well, my school requires students to have "consumer education" credits to graduate. These are usually received from blowoff classes like accounting and business, classes that I didn't want any part in. Luckily, AP social science classes also give "consumer education" credits along with social science credits, so I took both US and European history. As for Geography, I've always enjoyed geography, maps, and reading about the demographics of other countries. More Americans should take this in my opinion, because I've seen how poor some children are at geography.</p>
<p>-30 ACT score (E:31 M:29 R:32 S:28). Math was a bit lower than I wanted, but I'm satisfied</p>
<p>-I took the SAT because my mom forced me (grrr) and I wasn't prepared at all, and didn't even really know the test format. I got a lousy 1780. I accidentally sent the score to U of I (the one school I want to get into the most) and I'm a bit worried. Hopefully my better ACT will help. </p>
<p>Extra-Curriculars</p>
<p>-I've played baseball since I was 4 years old and played Junior Varsity Baseball Freshman and Sophomore year. But it began feeling more like a chore than actually being enjoyable, so I didn't tryout Junior year. Not a quitter though. I played out the full sophomore year instead of quitting like some kids I know.</p>
<p>-I applied for a summer engineering program at the University of Michigan. Still awaiting an acceptance/denial letter.</p>
<p>-I don't really have any other ECs. I was thinking about joining NHS or Key club, but I wouldn't really enjoy it and I'd only be padding my app. </p>
<p>Schools </p>
<p>-Northwestern (big reach, but might drop this as their engineering program doesn't match the caliber of some of the others)
-University of Michigan (Reach, but hopefully the summer program I'm applying to will get my foot in the door)
-University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (Hopefully a match. A ton of kids from my school go here. Visited the campus and love it. I really want to go here)
-Purdue (Should be a match. Good engineering program and not too far from home)
-IIT (safety)</p>
<p>If you can recommend some other midwestern schools with great engineering programs, feel free to add them to the list.</p>
<p>So while my ECs are lacking and my unweighted GPA isn't that high (although the weighted is great), I'm hoping that my race (sadly), my ACT, and my high school help me get into the schools of my choice.</p>