<p>I had straight A's in freshman and sophomore year in honors classes. I then changed schools and in junior year, I had four B/B+'s in major academics and an A- in the fifth major academic. My elective, health and gym were all A's. Now it's senior year and I'm taking 5 IB classes and a science elective. Out of those, I have 5 A/A-'s and one B+. My best ACT is a 32 and my SAT 2s are 700, 710 and 740, but I plan to take them again in December. I've done sports and clubs all four years, and lived internationally for seven years. What are my chances of getting into Harvard, Princeton and Columbia's Engineering School? My junior grades messed me up, but since I improved senior year, would colleges assume that I did badly because I was adjusting?</p>
<p>I’d say all three of them are reaches. Try getting SAT/ACT up. </p>
<p>But remember, these three are a flip of a coin for everyone</p>
<p>Good Luck:-))</p>
<p>Could you chance me please?</p>
<p>For ucb, ucd, ucsd, cal poly
Intended Major = Computer Science
ACT = 28
SAT = 1810(540/660/610)
GPA(UW) = 3.8
GPA(W) = 3.9
AP’s = AP Physics B(4)
Senior year Courseload = AP Calculus BC, AP Computer Science, AP Physics C, Art, Govt, English
EC = 4th place state level in open source software development, Robotics, Karate</p>
<p>Moved to USA from India for Junior year therefore absence of AP classes</p>
<p>Why you wanna go to those bad engineering schoos.</p>
<p>Best chances of getting into Columbia, but not that great.</p>
<p>They’re all reaches.</p>
<p>I (sort of) second Peter. If you want to apply to an Ivy for engineering, apply to Cornell. Harvard and Columbia may be fairly good at engineering fields, but I don’t think any ivy education could match that of Cornell’s College of Engineering.</p>
<p>@javacompsci, make your own thread; don’t hijack someone else’s.</p>
<p>All reaches.</p>
<p>Boost your ACT to a 33+,and you will have greater chances.</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/1575443-chance-me-my-ed-ea-hyp-mit-please-will-chance-back-4.html#post16626660[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/1575443-chance-me-my-ed-ea-hyp-mit-please-will-chance-back-4.html#post16626660</a></p>
<p>Thank you, guys!</p>
<p>If anyone else has any other thoughts, I’d love to hear :)</p>
<p>@Truust I did. Just asked for a chance back.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, all reaches</p>
<p>Princeton is far from a bad engineering school.</p>
<p>I do agree with some of the points made above though. If you’re taking chances at Harvard/Columbia for engineering, you might be better served by looking into great engineering schools with similar admission patterns. Stanford, Cornell, MIT, CMU, Georgia Tech, Michigan and UC-B come to mind. Right now, HP and Columbia are reaches due to your test scores.</p>
<p>If you really want to engineer go to an engineering school…</p>
<p>@java, if you want him/her to chance you back, just copy-paste a link to your thread. It is much cleaner and will be less confusing.</p>
<p>I don’t think Princeton is bad either. But you could find similar/better schools that are much easier to get into. Just from the schools mentioned, for example, it’s more reasonable to apply & go to CMU, Mich, Georgia Tech or Berkeley than a school like Princeton for Computer Engineering/Science simply because he’d have a much better chance of getting in AND the education there would likely be equally good if not better.</p>
<p>I do think, though, that Harvard/Columbia engineering isn’t as good. No one is impressed if you say you went to Harvard Engineering just because it’s difficult to get into. People would more likely be impressed by a Georgia Tech engineering degree or something similar - even though these schools are easier to get into than Harvard.</p>
<p>@OP, Harvard/Columbia/Princeton are fine to apply to, but I agree in that you should be looking for actual engineering schools to apply to as well.</p>
<p>@truust sure</p>
<p>For transparency, I go to Cornell. Cornell is simply regarded as the best ivy engineering school with Princeton closely following. Below, I have listed the national prestigious well-rounded universities that you should look into applying.
-Duke
-Cornell
-Stanford
-Princeton
-Columbia
-Penn (if BME)
-Northwestern
-Johns Hopkins (if BME)</p>
<p>If you decide you want to apply to places more technical, I would look into:
-Carnegie Mellon University (yes, I know is a university, but kids there are super techy)
-Caltech
-MIT
-Harvey Mudd
-Cooper Union</p>
<p>Your goal right now should be to determine which of the two groups of colleges you want to chase after. After that, you can narrow down everything further. </p>
<p>Just to give some insight, at Cornell, we see Stanford/Princeton oftentimes as our most direct peers in which we share the most with. However, Stanford has a huge focus on graduate, not undergraduate education and is in California (much warmer than upstate new york…) in silicon valley (quite opposite than the financial-concentrated NYC).</p>
<p>Princeton has a much more traditional campus than Cornell and way smaller of a student body. There are so many differences that you have to look into. </p>
<p>If I were to give 1 piece of advice, I would cut the whole prestige factor out at this point. I got accepted into MIT and Cornell and chose Cornell since it was a good fit (and MIT would have been miserable). You need to look into these schools and determine what exactly you are looking for in your college.</p>