I am a junior who wants to go the Dwight school of Engineering(for mechanical or Civil Engineering). My family income is 90 k. Iwant to go to tamu but I doubt I will getany finacial aid. I’m curious if I might be able to get Merit Aid at tamu. no official SAT, ACT, or NMF results yet. here are my stats
classes
AP English Lang
DC / AP US History
AP Physics 1
DC PreCalc
IB Comp Sci 1
H Academic Decathlon 3
IB Film 3
Color Guard / Jazz Band
Acameics
Class Rank - Top 25%
GPA. uw3.47 w 3.67
SAT - practice exam - 1380 680m 700cr
ACT - Practice exam - 31 31m 30r
Clubs / Leadership
3 years Reel Owl Cinema - Song Writer
3 years Book Club - Vice President
2 years Technology Student Assosiation - Vice PRESIDENT
6 years Academic Decathlon - President
2 years Color Guard - officer
4 years Church Youth Group - Founder / Fundraiser / President
National Honors Society Next Year
Community Service - 600 hours
Talents
songwriting for Film and color guard
Artistic story telling (Film and Book Club)
Advanced Placement in math (Calculus Senior Year)
Engineering Design (Dragster, Structural, and Architect)
Color Guard
More info
1st generation immigrant
African American Male
I brought up a bad 2.8 GPAFreshman year because of trama with my granparents dying . Directly after my grades increase significantly.
Do I stand a chance of getting some good merit aid? Should I join the University Honors? am I a somewhat competitive applicant ? what do you recommend I do this year, to improve my chances for scholarships Next year?
It is too early to answer most of your questions. You haven’t taken any official tests yet. If your practice tests are representative and your rank holds, you will qualify as an academic admit. Get your application in as early as possible. Majors are filled first come first serve.
As far as Merit aid, you’ll have a good shot with your leadership, ECs and the fact that you are an under represented minority, but you need to score higher on your tests if possible.
You still have time to improve your rank. You should be spending this year nailing down grades and prepping for those tests. Definitely don’t let the rank drop.
December- June- Plan to take the SAT and ACT and then whichever one you do best on a second time. Try to be done by June. You are in color guard so September and October are terrible times to be testing for you anyway. Send your scores to A&M. They use your best scores and ignore the rest.
February - order a transcript and check for errors. Get them fixed while counselors and teachers are around
April- applyTexas essay prompts are available. Start thinking about what you will write. Create an expanded resume.
May- Ask your teachers for letters of recommendations. Some will want the resume to help them.
June - write your essays. Have someone review them.
June/July - order a transcript. I would get a hard copy and order an electronic one sent to A&M. Review your essays again now that you haven’t looked at them in a while.
You can, but you can also upload it to A&M’s admission portal once you have applied and gotten a UIN.
At this point, you should be focusing on your rank, your SAT/ACT and your leadership positions. (And enjoying high school).
If you can, you should talk to your parents about what they can afford for school. If A&M is going to be too expensive without scholarships, then you need a financial back up.
@marie122 Sorry that is what my counselor says to put, since I’ve been apart of the USAD organization for 6 years (including octathlon and pentathlon… and 8 years if you count Lone Star) and since its official name is United States Academic Decathlon, I though I should put the entire thing
@lessonwitch2 In my school, Decathlon and Octathlon are two different organizations. I don’t really know but maybe if you want to combine them all together like that, try mentioning all of them in the description.
I don’t know much about this, but I can state the near-obvious:
You will likely get some minority scholarships, but I dont know much about them (I’m not a minority haha).
If you make national merit, that will lead to the NM Recognition and PES scholarships which are a combined of near $5,000 a semester.
University Honors I didnt find to be particularly meaningful. You can apply to the engineering honors program and put in much less effort to get the same benefits honestly, which isn’t very impactful either. After all, a unique and impactful undergraduate engineering experience will come from projects outside of class(Research or maybe Aggie Challenge program projects, to name a few.) As such, you should apply to these programs but don’t worry too much about them.