<p>I hope this isn't too much to read. </p>
<p>For high school I went to an excellent private school where I just made it through. I excelled in anything hands on and engineering related but never really focused in class. I had like a 2.4 GPA and 1800 or so on the SAT.. </p>
<p>Went to a school that was ranked~ 50th in engineering for a year and dropped out at the start of the 2nd year after being academically dismissed for the 3rd time. Obviously my lack of prioritization and time management skills did not change. I decided not to apply for reinstatement the third time since I lost financial aid and the school was too expensive.
While there I was heavily involved in undergraduate academic research which took up 40 or more hours per week. I essentially worked as the lead and alone since the research was based around my idea. After I left, a grad student continued where I left off. I also was involved as a newspaper photographer for the school and became vice-president of the FSAE club.</p>
<p>After leaving, I went to community college part time and received my associates in engineering. The first 2 semesters were a bit rough with mostly B's, and C's (one F due to an error on my part) but I turned around and got almost all straight A's for the past 6 or 7 semesters (just 1 B+ in Calc 2 after not taking calc 1 in years) to bring my GPA up to a 3.6. I was able to get a letter of recommendation from a professor of an engineering related class who also happens to be the provost. I think I will be able to get another letter of recommendation from a professor in my engineering design class which I did amazing in. </p>
<p>During my time at community college, I worked one job full time where I was promoted from the production floor up to the engineering department as project and manufacturing support. I was recently promoted again to a project and design lead. I also took on many projects such as training coworkers on how to use certain CAD software, designed and developed a tool that helped significantly increase the efficiency of producing the main product the company sells, helped design parts that can be found on numerous Boeing jets, and I'm in the process of creating a plan for the company to fully break into the aerospace market. I can probably get a letter of recommendation from the owner, general manager, or my direct manager but I'm not sure how much weight this would hold in regards to admissions. </p>
<p>I also had another job I worked on and off part-time in as an "engineer" where I was in charge of the design of the units and helped with production. I was on track to becoming an equity owner but found out the owner had lots of liabilities I didn't want to have linked to me. </p>
<p>Anyways I hope this shows how I've changed and progressed over the years and I hope schools will notice. I'm afraid my past performances will kill my chances. </p>
<p>Schools I want to apply to which I think will be a super stretch:</p>
<p>-University of Michigan. I took the school tours and really enjoyed it. My sister and her husband are currently there completing their Post-Doc in Bio-Physics and Physics respectively and I was wondering if that would have any bearing on my admission. They also accept resume's which I think would help my situation.</p>
<p>-University of Illinois</p>
<p>-Georgia Tech</p>
<p>-Purdue</p>
<p>-Virginia Tech</p>
<p>-University of Penn </p>
<p>Hopefully these will be easier to get into:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Rutgers - New Brunswick</p></li>
<li><p>Rowan University</p></li>
<li><p>Drexel - (99% positive I can get in)</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Thanks for reading! If you think I would be a better fit at a different school or I'm just wasting my time, please let me know.</p>