My dream school is Vanderbilt. I will be applying there next year. I have been looking at all the people accepted/wait listed/rejected stats on the forum, and it just makes me feel so discouraged for next year. It seems like the people who got accepted did something practically impossible, like being nationally recognized for some feat and taking instrument classes since age five. Getting accepted just seems so rare that it’s unreachable.
I mean I have done plenty of great things (national merit finalist, class president for 2 years, starting a service learning project, 34 ACT, and 11 top average awards, just to name a few), but I haven’t discovered a new element or something crazy like that.
Thoughts? Is it as unattainable as it seems? Is getting into the engineering school any easier than the CAS?