In my junior year, very unsure of where I stand.

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

Hi guys. I’ve seen plenty of other posts that highlight their very high gpa, leadership etc etc, and I’m just now getting to trying to beef up my application. I only say this because I did really bad in freshman year (2 C’s 3 B’s), and sophomore year was filled with regular classes and still ended up with (4 A’s 2 B’s). I realize how much I’ve screwed up, and high school has certainly been a learning experience for me and didn’t know what I really wanted to do. I discovered my love for aerospace and astronomy in junior year and have tried my best to do what’s needed to be done, although even now I still might end up with 4 A’s 2 B’s with 2 AP’s (APUSH and APCS). I know my current stats aren’t good, but as for SAT testing I’m going to try really hard to get a great score over the next 3 test opportunities. I also have some questions for future classes seeing how I want to be in engineering. I’m hoping to shoot for engineering schools of various levels (safety, reach, dream), but I’m very unconfident about even my reach schools. I’ll highlight my stats below:

GPA: 3.27 unweighted cumulative
PSAT (taking SAT in June, didn’t study for my psat but am for sat; Taking SAT twice next year): 1140
EC’s: Robotics (2 years), Science Olympiad (1 year), Rocketry Club (President, 1 year)
Interests: Aerospace, Astronomy, Programming, Engineering in general
AP’s: Junior - APUSH, APCS; Senior planned - AP Chem, AP Gov, AP Calc AB (will explain below)
Race: White, Indian

Here are the schools I’m looking at:

Safety:
San Jose State
Arizona State
CSU Long Beach
Comm College
(any state school with mechanical or aerospace)

Reach:
University of Texas, Austin
Cal Poly Pomona
UC Irvine
Santa Clara University
UC Santa Cruz
WPI

Dream:
Cal Poly SLO
Stanford
MIT
Cornell

As for classes and balance, I know for a fact I don’t want to go over 3 AP’s. I realize that AP’s aren’t everything and have done my own research on college interest for it. However, for AP Math I want to take Calc AB but I’m in Algebra II right now with an A+ (I seriously want to get out of there). I’m planning to take Pre-Calc and General Physics at my local comm college (to make up for C+ in freshman physics), but I don’t know the entry test difficulty yet. I want to also study hard for the SAT’s in fall semester but I don’t know if I can fit all of that into my summer on top of my own enjoyment for my hobbies (rockets, astronomy, developing video games). I know for a lot of these top engineering schools it’s recommended to take AP Math, especially Calculus so I want to make sure I get that. It’s just a balancing of my time and I’ve gone over it countless times in my head. I need a second voice in this matter.

Anyway, lemme know what you think.

2

I’d like to add that the dream schools listed are my top top schools and I highly don’t expect to get into them.

3

For the Cal States and UC’s, they only use your 10-11th grades in the a-g courses for their GPA calculation. You get 1 extra honors point in the calculation for each semester of UC approved Honors and AP classes takent 10-11th. The capped weighted is 8 semesters and the non-capped is unlimited semesters. Senior grades are not considered in the UC/CSU admissions but your HS course rigor will be considered.

For the Cal states (except SLO), they admit by eligibilty index and major.

First calculate your UC/CSU capped weighted GPA using this calculator: https://rogerhub.com/gpa-calculator-uc/

Then you will need SAT or ACT scores to calculate your eligibility index (EI).

EI= (CSU/UC capped weighted GPA x 200) + (ACT composite x10) or (CSU/UC capped weighted GPA x800) + (SAT Math + EBRW).

I can tell you now just based on your UW GPA that CSULB and maybe SJSU will not be safeties unless you are a local applicant for either.

Until you have all of these stats, it is impossible to give you an idea of your chances.

Get rid of the idea of “Dream schools” since you have already have 2 years down with a Low GPA, is extremely unlikely you can be competitive for any those schools on your list. Your “Dream” school will be the school that accepts you based on your accomplishments so far.

Right now focus on doing well Junior and Senior year, get some good SAT/ACT test scores and enjoy your EC’s. Come back end of Junior year and repost with your stats and then you may get some helpful advice on which schools are possible.

Just some 2017 statistical data for the UC’s using capped weighted UC GPA and major specific. Engineering will much more competitive and will require higher than average stats.

Freshman admit rates for UC GPA of 3.40-3.79:

UCB: 1.8%
UCLA: 2.2%
UCSD: 7.2%
UCSB: 10.1%
UCI: 11.1%
UCD: 16.6%
UCSC: 43.8%
UCR: 63.3%
UCM: 88.7%

Freshman admit rates for UC GPA of 3.80-4.19:

UCB: 12.6%
UCLA: 11.7%
UCSD: 38.7%
UCSB: 53.6%
UCD: 56.5%
UCI: 52.1%
UCSC: 75.7%
UCR: 90.1%
UCM: 96.1%

Freshman admit rates for UC GPA of 4.20 or above:

UCB: 42.7%
UCLA: 47.2%
UCSD: 84.2%
UCSB: 82.0%
UCD: 90.3%
UCI: 94.1%
UCSC: 92.7%
UCR: 97.5
UCM: 98.1%

25th - 75th percentiles for SAT:

UCB: 1280-1490

UCLA: 1280-1500
UCSD: 1250-1470
UCSB: 1210- 1450
UCD: 1190-1430
UCI: 1190-1420
UCSC: 1170-1380
UCR: 1090-1310
UCM: 1020-1230

4

As you said, stats aren’t everything. But it seems like you have real passion for engineering and aerospace.

The difficulty lies in the fact that engineering programs are heavily weighted on GPA and test scores. Your GPA and scores will probably put you out of the running for the big programs. But the good news is that if you seek an engineering career, graduating from any accredited program is what employers will be looking for.

You might want to refocus your list on ABET accredited engineering programs. There are plenty of lower ranked schools that have high acceptance rates.

5

Thanks for the info. I appreciate the honesty and have come to understand my place. I have my transcript in hand right now and it shows 3.44 unweighted 10-11 a-g GPA. Weighted might bump that up a little further because of APUSH and APCS (both sitting at B’s currently).

6

Another thought. Have you thought about 3-2 engineering programs?

These are often less competitive. You spend the first 3 years getting a bachelors degree in liberal arts, then you transfer for the final 2 years at an engineering school. Some of these engineering schools are top notch (Ga Tech, Columbia, RPI, Caltech, etc). The grades needed to advance onto the 2 year engineering portion is doable.

The best part about this is that the engineering schools will look only at your GPA from college years, so your HS GPA will be ignored. Columbia’s 3-2 plan guarantees acceptance with GPA of 3.5.