<p>Hey, I am currently a freshman Occupational Therapy student at Ithaca College, and after some soul searching, I realized that my major was all wrong for me, and what I should be doing is engineering. </p>
<p>As you can probably surmise from my username, I am a female, and as I realize that it is too late to transfer for fall semester, I was looking to transfer for spring to Cornell for engineering. I'm not positive what field yet, but I am leaning toward mechanical engineering, and maybe considering a minor in biomedical engineering. </p>
<p>So basically, I have a slew of questions to ask that I figured would be most likely to be answered here. First, is it possible to transfer into the program for the Spring semester, seeing as I'll have spent a full year at my current institution? Second, will general courses (such as intro to physics, calculus, etc.) transfer to Cornell? Third, would I be better off taking a gap semester, or staying at my current institution and taking courses that are geared more toward engineering? Third, will my previous major of occupational therapy and my relatively recent discovery of wanting to be an engineer hurt me in the application process? Will they see this as a lack of passion, or just simply not having known my direction previously? </p>
<p>Now, I am also curious if I have a realistic chance of actually getting into the program. </p>
<p>High school:
-102/100 weighted GPA
-Rank 3/200
-National Merit Finalist
-SAT: 730V:680M:690W -> 1410/2100 (I know the math isn't as high as it should be, but my lame excuse is that the desk was tiny and everything kept falling off of it. Should I consider retaking?)
-AP US History, Bio, Chem, Lit, Government: All 5's (Didn't take calculus because the only teacher was a drunk - bad high school)
-Two years of school musical, peer mediator, student gov't rep (1 year), french tutor (1 year)
-Took 2 credits of technology classes: basic woods, furniture construction, car care</p>
<p>Summer work experience:
Legally exempt day-care provider for two kids - one is special needs.</p>
<p>College:
-First semester GPA: 3.947
-Dean's list
-Member of Honors program
-Will present as one of 12 freshman at college-wide research symposium
-Activities: Honors Advisory Board, RHA, ICSOTA (this is the OT club, though, so might not help application)
-Occupational Therapy major
-Close mentor relationship with one professor (for honors seminar), noticed by other professors but not significantly, in terms of recommendations
-Taken (including current): two honors seminars (probably won't transfer), freshman enriched math (intro to mathematical modeling and chaos theory), general psychology, intro to sociology, occupations and you (major specific), critical health issues, computers and information technologies, cultural anthropology, bioethics </p>
<p>I'm really sorry to throw all of this information at you at once, but I don't even know anybody who knows the first thing about engineering, let alone engineering admissions. I also am really unfamiliar with the admissions game because I really sold myself short senior year and applied to all safeties, being a first gen college student and not really knowing what I was doing. I guess I'm mostly concerned with when I can transfer, whether I can get in, and also whether my current curriculum will hurt me or if I can fix this by taking courses more in the right direction for the semester before I transfer to somewhere. I'm definitely going to transfer somewhere whether it's Cornell or not, but Cornell is my first choice at the moment.</p>