Is a gap year worth it for me? All rejections

If you’re truly interested in aerospace, Florida Tech is still accepting applications…

And if you’re looking for big state schools there are places like U. of Oklahoma or Missouri still taking apps.

3 Likes

I just assumed they were open to FTF and didn’t read the details. Looks like no FTF at OSU. Isn’t it the Penn State College Park campus when they don’t specify?

When you click the link to the PSU website and then click on “What campuses are still admitting applicants?,” they list the following PSU campuses:

"Currently, we’re still admitting first-year students for the following campuses:

  • Abington
  • Altoona
  • Beaver
  • Behrend
  • Berks
  • Brandywine
  • Dubois
  • Fayette
  • Greater Allegheny
  • Hazleton
  • Lehigh Valley
  • Mont Alto
  • New Kensington
  • Schuylkill
  • Scranton
  • Shenango
  • Wilkes-Barre
  • York"
3 Likes

Two other options:

  1. UK Universities: with 5 scores of AP of 5, you would be a strong candidate. Plus a degree in only 3 years. Downside is that you’ll get almost no financial aid. If your parents can pay in full this should be discussed.

  2. Spring admission 2023: There are some colleges that accept applications for students with a spring start. There are also some UK universities that do this.

3 Likes

You could apply now to Ohio State as a transfer for a spring admission.

What is your budget? Transfers don’t get National Buckeye or other big scholarships, so you would be full pay out of state. Although there are some small ($500-$1200) annual department scholarships you could apply to in future years. They’ve also added an engineering fee $4000/yr (look at what engineering curriculum costs especially at state schools, since most net price calculators don’t include program specific fees).

Ohio State does not admit by major (so put whatever major you are most interested in on your application). Students that meet university admission requirements but not College of Engineering requirements are still admitted as exploratory students and can transfer into College of Engineering later. The Ohio State University Exploration Declare a Major or Pre-Major

College of Engineering students complete an engineering sequence and list 3 majors in order of preference. Admission to Major | Engineering Advising

2 Likes

Your stats are similar to my son, but he applied as a MechE. He was accepted at Purdue, which has a top aerospace engineering program. It is relatively inexpensive, even for out of state students.

It appears that you were trying to stay in California, except for GA Tech and NU. If you are willing to look out of state, you may want to consider Case Western; they are very generous with merit aid. If you don’t mind an isolated campus in IN you may want to look at Rose-Hulman, which is No 1 among schools that do not confer PhDs, ranked higher than Harvey Mudd. Rose is also generous with merit aid. For safeties, you might consider University of Pittsburgh and MSU. I recommend these schools mainly because they accepted my son with similar stats.

1 Like

Very generous with aid, and highly desirable/ranked, don’t typically go hand in hand. This is in no way disparaging RHIT, which is, and has been a very good school for a long time. It’s another data point on how specious the USNWR engineering rankings are. They do rank Harvard #27. Just sayin’. :wink:

You can contact Iowa State (a safety) and see if they are still taking apps for the Fall (they have already started accepting students for Fall 2023). They have excellent aerospace engineering. If they aren’t taking apps for the Fall, you can apply for spring semester.

6 Likes

You also need to decide if you want CompE or AE, unless you choose a school that has a first year undecided program, like Purdue.

Very much agree with this advice. With your obvious academic ability, crush it in CC and you could reasonably shoot for a UCB or UCLA transfer. We know more than a handful of people who got to those campuses via the CC route. A lot of people here in Washington get into UW Seattle that way too.
Obviously cast a wider net and have some more sure-things. But if I’m you that’s 100% what I would do.

6 Likes

Eye, My guess is that RHIT has to be generous with aid to lure students to, as my son put it, “nowhere Indiana”. I have never seen Harvey Mudd’s campus and its environs, but I hazard a guess that it shows better than Terre Haute.

As to USNWR rankings, I agree that they should be taken with a grain of salt. Digging deeper, however, we learned that RHIT had comparable salary and graduate program admissions outcomes to UofM.

2 Likes

We’re you UC ELC? Is Merced an option? High stats shutouts applying to competitive majors are becoming pretty common the last few years in California. I know of a valedictorian from a local school going to Merced because UC ELC ended up being her only option after being denied from everyplace on your list.

1 Like

Suffice it to say…the OP could certainly do worse than Rose. :smiley:

3 Likes

Here is some information on how competitive each UC campus and major is for transfer admissions:

3 Likes

If you want a 4 year experience, you could do Colorado Mesa in Grand Junction. It is a WUE school, but if you are an engineer the WUE only lasts for 2 year. After that, you are in the college of engineering and your degree is from the U of Colorado.

There is also Univ of Colorado Denver which is a very urban and has a good engineering program.

If you do go the CC route in California, I don’t think you can transfer for 2 years (or until you have the pre-reqs completed) so make sure that’s what you want to do. You could, of course, transfer to a non-California school.

2 Likes

It’s shocking and sad that someone with your stats was shut out. Meanwhile, it doesn’t sound as if anything you do this year would change the picture for you. Much better to start at a community college with a transfer agreement to the school(s) you want to attend in CA. With your record, you should be able to sail through CC at record speed taking 6 classes/term. Wish you had asked in May. You could have done a full semester this summer, been at a 4 yr college with your associate’s finished by Sept 2023. You still might be able to, depending upon what was dual enrollment of what you did in high school.

I agree with everything but this.

Assuming the OP can start in Calc 3 with the 5 on the BC AP, they still need to start in Physics I, since they don’t have Physics C. The sequence to finish with Dynamics is pretty linear, and hard to overload, no matter the student. Add to that the bulk of work that will be required in lab courses, and I’d be reticent to rely on that load every term.

2 Likes

Yeah, that’s why it would have been better had he considered this before the summer semester would have begun. But understandably he was hoping for a wait-list admit.

It just breaks my heart, these kids whose qualifications years ago would have gotten them into the best schools, not getting in anywhere highly selective.

1 Like

I agree…heartbreaking! Those stats should have gotten them into AE at UCI, UCSD and certainly SDSU. AE is competitive, but typically not nearly as much as CS, CompE, SE, and even ME at those schools. I can’t help but believe there’s a flaw in the app, unseen by the OP. It might be worth having a counselor comb through it. Nothing may come of it, but I would certainly call and ask each school. @ucbalumnus might have some insight to SDSU at least as some of the CSUs are very transparent about their cutoff points.

I’m not surprised you were rejected since you applied to schools in January with a November deadline.

Yes you’d get into some on your new list but you want that gap year to be productive.

You are better off to go to a comm college or school avail now. Some great ones like Flor Tech and Rose Hulman were mentioned plus WSU.

Or a spring start at a big aid school like Arizona.

Good luck. Yes u knew nothing about the process but for those out there in a similar boat. Step one. Write down the app deadlines of your schools in chronological order.

3 Likes