<p>Now that I've caught your attention with the silly acronym, I'd like someone here to give an indication of what my chances of getting into RPI are.</p>
<p>What has me a bit worried is, at its core, Rensselaer is still a predominantly polytech school focused on disciplines in the sciences and engineering. I'm an artistic person - my strongest points are academics in the humanities, and very creative extracurriculars. Don't know if that will help or hurt. The thing is that I'm applying for their game design program, so I wonder if that'll have any profound effect on how they weigh my stats. Anyway:</p>
<p>Demographics
Half white, half Asian
Lower middle class income</p>
<p>Extracurriculars
Head of my newspaper's layout/production staff; also editor of 2 sections
Council member on the philosophy club
Consistent computer club participant</p>
<p>I've also done a lot of hobbywork over summers and the like - websites, game mod projects, portfolios for others. I intend to send in an impromptu portfolio website with my application, although I don't know if they'll even consider it. I have a very strong passion for playing games, and have consistently enjoyed modding them as well as far back as third grade. On a technical level I'm skilled in most Adobe programs, HTML/CSS, rudiments of Java, and can do texture design and modelling.</p>
<p>I'm mostly riding on the hope of a truly passionate essay and a wide body of interests/applications for my hobbies.</p>
<p>Of course, for all I know they've already admitted most of their Class of 2015 and it's becoming too close for comfort.</p>
<p>I guess I’ll be the lone soul to answer your post. I myself was accepted into GSAS through ED I just this December, and with lower academics than you at that. I’ve seen rejects at 2100+ SAT’s, yet I managed to wiggle in with a measly 1740.</p>
<p>However, I think I was accepted more for the person that I am, not the student. I displayed an incredibly unique persona in my essay, and demonstrated my passion and skill with technology where I could squeeze it into my application (USE THE ADDITIONAL INFO AND PERSONAL STATEMENT BOXES ! ! !)</p>
<p>I didn’t list off a crazy amount of EC’s containing what everyone else usually does (NHS, Service hour person, HFH, Debate club, student body prez, etc) I had something like School band, afterschool gaming club, freelance programmer and web administrator.</p>
<p>The last two being the two to pop out more than anything. The web administration job I described as my management and leadership over a web (forum like this) community which was around 25,000-30,000 members at the time. Something like this just pique’s their interest and makes them say, I WANT YOU. I didn’t pick up trash around my community, teach guitar lessons, or try to change my school through student council like everyone else.</p>
<p>I hoped that applying to the rather obscure major of GSAS would help me, but it turns out for the few that do apply, it’s very competitive as it’s a fairly small class sized program.</p>
<p>I think your chances are decent as long as you expressed yourself outside just your academics. Good luck, and hopefully I’ll see you on the other side ;).</p>
<p>Looks like someone’s hard at working keeping the RPI forum afloat!</p>
<p>Anyway, I’m quite skilled in several technical fields and over the years have worked on various game mod teams and online collaborations, as well as my own personal projects. Most of which fail horribly, but I do have a fair bit to display for them and I’m hoping that, at the very least, touches them.</p>
<p>I emailed the admissions office earlier in the week regarding how much weight they give to previous experience GSAS applicants may have with the field, and the response was:</p>
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<p>I’m curious as to just how many people for GSAS send in work, considering that I don’t actually see any place on the website that makes mention of portfolios (save for architecture and I believe electronic arts?). We’ll just have to wait and see - kind of wishing I applied ED at this point, but oh well.</p>
<p>Exact same goes for me - sadly I didn’t really find the opportunity in my application to mention or explain specifically my passion in reverse engineering games. I did show however that I could do just about anything and everything with a computer, even if it required me to make my own program to do it for me. What I failed to mention is my game development based side… things like how I did 3d Modeling work back in the days of Halo (Custom Edition) map making as I worked for CMT. Not sure if you’ve ever participated in the H:CE scene, but CMT is about the best and widest known mapping team there is. Either way I’ve always loved modding games and twisting them into my own creation; it’s simply a different way to enjoy the games I guess.</p>
<p>I could have technically submitted a portfolio of some of my 3d Work, but I ended up not doing it. I was a bit confused as to whether GSAS actually fell under the “Electronic Arts” genre in which they require a portfolio, but apparently not. In my time scouring the net back in the fall, I stumbled upon a blog or post by a former RPI admissions officer. He said the one thing they love looking at and really puts you out in front of everyone is if you can submit a portfolio of some kind with your application. A picture’s worth a thousand words, right?</p>
<p>Hope this is helping because I know people like us are few and far between ;p</p>
<p>Curses. I should have made references to my school newspaper position in my essay: during which, I completely overhauled the layout, re-organized the production schedule, blah blah blah, oh and managed to negotiate full color printing, something we haven’t been able to attain for well over ten years. Again, I’m kind of relying extensively on my portfolio - academics are something, well, not something I’m bad at, but something I’m not particularly passionate about. It’s hard for me to ramble about school experiences but I can write entire stories about my game projects. :P</p>
<p>Just how competitive do you think their GSAS is? At least judging by the Princeton Review ranking, it’s pretty much the best program out there alongside WPI and Digipen. Would you say that GSAS applicants are reviewed by a different body of people than the engineering/architecture fare?</p>
<p>My friend mentioned that it was pretty competitive, I didn’t really ask him to specify why though. He did happen to say that they’ve got GSAS wrapped tight enough that you’re not allowed to transfer in from a different major. So don’t try applying for Engineering and swap in once you’re accepted :P.</p>
<p>Also, to put it in perspective for you, there’s only about 110/5300 undergrads in the GSAS program. So that’s maybe a group of 25-30 acceptances per YEAR for it. And considering RPI gets about 12,000-13,000 applications at this stage, and a conservative guess of atleast around 200/13,000 (1.5%) are applicants for GSAS specifically. Could be more for all I know.</p>
<p>WPI, Digipen, and RIT were my fallbacks for RPI. WPI is a smaller school which I like, but I didn’t really know anyone there, and I was unsure as to how good their program really was. Digipen is a for-profit trade school essentially, and I heard it’s reaallllyyyy tough, but you learn a lot, and REALLY fast. But you miss out on the college experience because there’s no dorms/campus and all you do is school work 24/7 when you get back to your apartment that you’d have to be renting somewhere locally.</p>
<p>Anyway, you should PM me your aim/msn, I’d be interested to talk to you more.</p>