Chances for Engineering at California Colleges + OOS

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

Hello, I am currently going into Senior Year in HS in California and would like to be chanced at the following schools for an Engineering College(Mechanical):

UC Berkeley
UC Irvine
Cal Poly SLO
San Diego State
University of Washington
Purdue
Vanderbilt

New SAT: 1470 (760 Math, 710 Reading + Writing), 7/6/7 Essay

SAT II: Bio M 690, Math II 770+ projected(omitted 2, confident with most of rest)

GPA: 4.0 UW, 4.33W UC/CSU 4.45 (Took all hardest possible classes at my HS)
Class Rank: N/A (School does GPA weird, but probably shared highest possible GPA with 3-5 out of 120 students)

Community College Courses(33 units by end of summer, 4.0 GPA)

  • Transferable GE’s such as English, Communications, Psychology ect.
  • Credited Courses in Python, Java, Calculus(Not offered at my HS until senior year)

Work Experience:
Internships at:

  • Top 50 space company. working on Reliability Engineering (120 + hours)
  • Top 20 Fortune 500 company working various Electrical Engineering tasks (100+ hours)

Volunteer Experience:
Mentor for First Lego League Robotics team (100+ hours)

EC’S:

Varsity Track 9th grade: 2 school records

Varsity Baseball 10-12 grade:

  • Was the student who facilitated the creation of the team
  • Captain 10, 11 grade

Varsity Basketball 9 - 12 grade

Varsity XC 9 -12 grade

  • Captain 11, 12 grade

Young Leaders in Health Care 9 - 12 grade

  • Treasurer 9 - 12 grade
  • Team winner of Regional Competition 9, 10 grade

FIRST Robotics team 10 -12 grade

  • Vision tracking sub - team lead (11 grade)
  • Programming team lead (12 grade)

Random other things (Various clubs, created arduino kits currently on the marketplace, ect)

I know my SAT’s are low for some of the schools as well, so what scores should I target?
Any other schools I should look at?

This is a repost for added information

Thanks!

2

You look like a competitive applicant for SDSU/UCI and SLO. UCB is always a tough admit especially for Engineering and your SAT scores could be a bit higher.

Good Luck.

3

Definitely play to your strengths (work/internships) in your essays. UCB may be a reach bc little more emphasis on stats, same with Vanderbilt (pretty low acceptance rate as of late). A good target score for SATs if you’re shooting for these schools would probably be 800 in Math (bc youre engineering, many applicants will probably have a perfect score) and 730+ in CR/W. Another good thing may be to retake the bio SAT2 if you have time (maybe if you feel up to it another STEM SAT2). Good luck and feel free to PM me with any questions :slight_smile:

4

For other schools, you may want to apply more widely among the UCs.

5

As a big fan of UMich, I would say you should look into their engineering program. They are very top notch in some fields and you would be more likely to get into the UMich School of Engineering than you would be to get into Vanderbilt (in my honest opinion). You can make SDSU, SLO, Purdue, WashU, and Irvine with those stats but definitely try on the applications. UCB is tough for everyone and your best shot would be try to get the SAT up since you GPA is already solid. Good luck with your applications!

6

You are in the range for those schools. Work on your essays and good luck! You might want to add more UC schools to your list.

7

Michigan can be rather stingy with transfer subject credit from other colleges. If your community college courses are not listed as equivalent to Michigan courses in https://www.ugadmiss.umich.edu/TCE/Public/CT_TCESearch.aspx , you may end up having to retake a bunch of them if you attend Michigan.

8

One of the things that can curtail your admission is meeting the Visual and Performing Arts credits required by California public schools. You have to have 1 solid year of the VPA requirement with grades.

9

@ucbalumnus I actually didn’t even consider that. Good call. If those credits are a must, then I would say don’t apply because they are stingy. Also, realize that some credits might be worthless to engineering schools (like the psychology credits). They wouldn’t need you to take those classes (more than likely) so there wouldn’t be a point to transfer them.

10

@“Dhaval G” Credits are not a must, but it would be nice to get them just as general education units. Psychology for example falls under Social and Behavioral Sciences for General Education which would Transfer to UC/CSU’s. Thanks for the UMich recommendation, I looked into it, and now I definitely think I may give it more thought.