<p>-Weighted GPA as of sophomore year: 99.475
(This will go up significantly, as my school has not recalculated the GPAs and ranks of my class to include junior year. Junior year, I had a weighted average of 107.8.)
-14th out of a class of 396 at a public school in upstate New York
-SAT: 1940/2400 or 1340/1600
-ACT: 33
-SAT II in Biology freshman year: 700
-Senior year schedule: Enrolled in a program called New Visions Engineering located off of my high school campus. The program is made up of AP Calculus A/B, SUNY (State University of New York) English, SUPA (Syracuse University) Economics, Mercy College Physics, and a college-credited Engineering lab. I also take College Experience and AP Statistics at my home school.
-At graduation, I will have completed 5 AP courses: AP Biology, AP Chemistry, AP Language, AP Calculus A/B, and AP Statistics. In May 2010, I earn a score of 5 on Biology, 4 on Chemistry, and 4 on Language.
-I have nearly 300 hours of community service with 4-H as a Teen Action Group Leader, helping run various family oriented events throughout the community.
- I have over a years worth of work experience as a cashier at my local grocery store. I worked an average of 20 hours/week during the school year. I do not work currently, as I wish to focus more on school.
-Received a perfect score of 100/100 at the 2009 NYS Fair for my project A Comparison of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Hypnotherapy on the Treatment Success of Patients Suffering from Psychogenic Nonepileptic Seizures
- Officer of 3 clubs for multiple years, involved with my schools mentor program, and a member of the National Honor Society
- Currently on a robotics team registered to compete at the FIRST Tech Challenge in January 2011
- My essay is about the first time I spoke up at a Nar-Annon family meeting. It doesnt talk about how much I hate my life, it talks about how my perspective changed once I was free to say how I felt without disapproval or judgment. I wrote it for AP English Language last year, and my teacher graded it in front of me. He was literally on the verge of tears by the time he finished reading it.
- I predict my recommendations will be good. My teachers approached me, asking if I wanted them to write me a recommendation, so I assume they really like me.
- I've visited RPI twice</p>
<p>AFAIK the major you declare on the application doesn’t make a difference on your acceptance status as you are free to switch around to whatever you want when you get here (exception of anything-> architecture).</p>
<p>Then I guess you could have 500 ME’s no EE’s or CE’s in the incomming class. Where are they going to get the facilities and professors to teach them. Of course your major matters.</p>
<p>It does not work that way. If your son took a tour at RPI, he would have learned that everyone switches their major around a few times (heavily mentioned even in the President’s address). One may only assume that if this is true (which it is due to great overlap between engineering courses), admissions pays no heed to the declared major on the application. The only exception I see to this may be it’s relation to the applicant’s personal essay which may possibly reflect their decision to matriculate to RPI.</p>
<p>Your situation is not plausible, thus there is no need to read any further arguments. You seem to gloat about your son’s GPA, however claim that it was not his fault that he was not granted an acceptance letter. Rather, your son simply:</p>
<p>a) Did not have quality extracurriculars
b) Was not consistent in extracurriculars
c) Had no “shining” items on his resume
d) Was plain unlucky</p>
<p>Better luck next time on it, but in the future realize there is no need to act smug online and claim there was no negative aspect to your son’s application. Spreading misinformation on a public forum is bad.</p>
<p>Yes we toured RPI. Every school has a lot of students switching majors. I am not gloating about statistics. Everyone on these boards seems to want statistics to compare with. Let’s chalk my son not being accepted to “bad luck”. There were a lot of students with very high statistics in ME with “bad luck” I guess. A lot of students with much lower statistics with very good luck.
The facts are that you have over 11,000 applicants for 1,300 slots. There will be a lot of disappointed students with “bad luck”. These are then divided among male, female, foreign and urm. So figure out what the chances are from there.
I wish all college applicants the best of luck for all their applications. Just be sure you have a realistic safety that you would be happy to go to.</p>
<p>To the best of my knowledge, the acceptance rate is ~30-40%, which would yield ~4400 slots. The 1300 are the students who decide to matriculate.</p>
<p>RPI gets a lot of stereotypical smart kids, but no one wants a kid who doesn’t do anything but work. They’re simply no fun.</p>
<p>Wow- people. Come on. I remember how stressful this time of year- actually the entire Senior year was for us- folks come here for help and venting. Lets try not to take it so personally.</p>
<p>My daughter is now a junior at RPI. She went in as Undeclared Engineering- and JG is right there is so much overlap in classes that almost all the Engineering kids are together regardless of major during that first year. </p>
<p>I wish I could figure out how they decide on who they admit. Sometimes I look at who my daughter is in class with and understand completely why she’s there and think she fits in perfectly and sometimes I think it’s way above her head. There are kids there so smart it’s mind boggling and other I wonder how in the world they filled the application on their own.</p>
<p>I can only chalk it up to the school is really looking for a well- rounded student body in many ways. How they figure that out I don’t know. Guess it’s a highly guarded secret and what you do to get in is do the very best you can that you think will get you in !!</p>
<p>Touring the school and talking to the admissions officer are a couple of the things I recommend highly. They really can indicate in person what the school is looking for and you can’t get that on paper. IF you can interview- do it !! :) It can not hurt.
Good luck to everyone. Things work out for a reason.</p>
<p>I have also heard that mechanical engineering is the most competitive area in admissions office. It is the largest major and they want to balance out the class more. Still, kids can switch majors as needed once they are admitted. </p>
<p>Janeyyet, who started this thread, has a pretty good chance of being admitted IMHO, though nothing is guaranteed. They did turn down some really good students last year. I think applying early decision increases the acceptance chances quite a bit but I don’t have statistics on this handy.</p>
<p>I have two kids at RPI, both love it and are doing well. One is a mechanical engineer but for the admissions process, she was told to go through the Design and Society Product Design program as her primary major with Mech Eng as a secondary major. Hard to tell which is more competitive since there were only 14 admitted to the PDI program last year (since there were so many transfers into it from current students who had to make up missing studio classes).</p>
<p>How any admissions department would look at a 4.2 GPA strongly depends on where you attended. I know someone who graduated with a 4.0/4.0 unweighted from high school and is having major difficulties here (in a reasonably… relaxed… major, mind you). Another acquaintance of mine barely pulled a 3.0 in high school and is doing very well. I’m sure RPI has knowledge of what exactly GPAs mean.</p>
<p>2200 SATs are probably fine (I’m guessing that’s in the top 35% here or so?), but of course there’s a huge difference between 800M 700W 700V and 600M 800W 800V as far as RPI’s concerned.</p>
<hr>
<p>As for OP: I’m not terribly good at chancing people, but I’d put you at either a match or slight reach. Your rank, classes, and GPA look good (again, I don’t know much about what your GPA means), but your SATs look slightly dangerous (how was your math score? did you take a SAT II in math?) Your ECs and community service look fine, and it sounds like your recommendations aren’t going to be a weak point ;).</p>
<p>When I visited RPI, my tour guide personally reconsidered her major several times before settling on general chemistry. Plus, I don’t believe I indicated an anticipated minor, so RPI probably doesn’t even realize I’m interested in ME.</p>
<p>Thank you sandpit and cached for the advice. I earned a 690 in math on the sat - low for RPI applicants, I know. I scored much better on my ACT math section with a 33. I’m hoping they’ll realize my potential when they review my transcript and see that I’m doing exemplary in both AP calc and AP stats this year.</p>
<p>fravish - I think I didn’t make myself clear, my daughter would probably have been accepted as a ME just fine (an RPI medalist,etc etc, legacy, etc), but for the PDI program, she had to put down PDI as first priority since that was the most limiting aspect of admissions and it is the rule for the program, nothing to do with her personally. It is more tightly controlled since they limit studio classes to 30 or so students at a time, thereby giving a maximum to the # of people with PDI major a year. It is actually difficult to transfer into this major once at RPI for this reason as well. This year’s studio is half sophomores who switched and half incoming freshmen. This program is one of the new jewels of RPI, we are thrilled she’s in it. Only Stanford seems to have a similar program.</p>
It can not hurt.