Hey! I’m a junior just starting to think about college. I live in Maine and I can’t go to far away for school, so I’m looking at schools strictly in the northeast, mostly New England. My GPA is a 97.6 weighted. By the end of my high school career, I will have taken 10 honors classes, 1 IB HL class, and 7 AP classes, plus many elective courses in the sciences and some courses at my local community college. I plan on taking 2 SAT subject tests (math II and bio), and the majors that I am looking at are biomedical/biological engineering, pharmacy, and biochemistry. I have excellent extracurricular, and I participate in many science related competitions and science fairs. I also have awards from my state science fair and some state-wide writing awards as well. I was also just inducted into my school’s chapter of the National Honor Society! I think my recs will be pretty good. I got a 1500 on my SAT (first time taking it). As for hooks, I am a girl interested in engineering, and I also immigrated to the USA from Iraq when I was 7 years old.
My preliminary list of colleges (and intended majors for those colleges) can be found bellow.
List:
Brown- Biomedical engineering
MIT- Biological engineering
Tufts- Biochemistry and Biotechnology (College of Arts and Sciences)
Cornell College of Agriculture and Life Sciences- Biological engineering
Northeastern- either college of engineering for bioengineering or college of health sciences for pharmaceutical sciences
Boston U- college of engineering, biomedical engineering
WPI- either biomedical engineering or biotechnology
Endicott- biomedical engineering
Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health sciences- pharmaceutical sciences
Union- bioengineering
NYU school of engineering- Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
Syracuse- bioengineering
Umass Amherst- biomedical engineering
University of Maine, Orono- bioengineering
Also maybe Bowdoin for their 3+2 engineering program (my parents really like it because we live like 30 minutes away)
How do you classify these in terms of reaches, matches, and safety schools? Also, can you name any other schools that you think I should consider? Thank you so much :)!
Looks like a great list with lots of terrific schools, some obviously extremely competitive for anyone and some where it seems you will very likely be accepted, based on the info you provide. I hope you can visit some of them to get a feel of what is most inspiring to you. Northeastern and BU are obviously big city schools and Amherst a quintessential New England LAC. One may feel more comfortable than the other, or perhaps something different.
Maybe you can explore what the female students in some of these programs think about their experiences. I think this can vary a great deal in engineering programs. Amherst and U Mass are part of the Western Mass consortium (with Hampshire, Mount Holyoke, and Smith). That might provide some nice opportunities for you. I’m personally a big fan of the hands-on approach at WPI and love the school’s campus. Please remember, though, there are many, many great schools out there where one can get a great education. It’s now where you go to college but how you go. Good luck.
If you like and can afford all of these schools, I think it’s a decent list. I see typical reach, match and safety/low match schools (for strong applicants…) on the list.
Have you talked to your parents about how much they can afford to help financially? Run the Net Price Calculator (NPC) for these schools to see if they are affordable for you? If not, I’d have that conversation now and do some homework right away before you get caught up in schools that aren’t possible from a financial standpoint. Make SURE you have safety from an admission and $ perspective (I’d guess that’s Orono? )Yes you have a great background but you can’t assume that alone will get you big $ to go to all of these schools.
The curriculum for engineering majors in the US can differ a lot from pharmacology majors because of the ABET accreditation process applied to engineering schools. Massachusetts College of Pharmacy is a very fine school but may make it difficult to head the engineering direction.
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I live in Maine, graduated and worked at WPI a long time ago. U Maine has a fine engineering school and is relatively affordable. Do not hesitate to apply to a couple of schools that you truly appreciate but cannot afford, but be sure to keep interesting and affordable schools on your list. Visit them.
The five year program is a good idea from an exceptional liberal arts college. I read the Bowdoin College descriptor and noted that you actually apply to a participating engineering school after three years of studies upon the recommendation of the Bowdoin faculty. In other words, admission to the college does not mean admission to the selected engineering school.
It is a fine list of schools. MIT is clearly the most difficult to gain admission. I’m not going to get into an academic ranking here as all of them can offer a quality education Based only on acceptance ratios Bowdoin, Brown, Tufts, Cornell and Northeastern are on the more difficult end to gain admission in engineering. Endicott is probably the easiest to gain admission. WPI, Union, Syracuse and BU are about the same in admission competitiveness.
Bowdoin feeds into several different engineering joint-degree programs, including (but not limited to) Columbia and Dartmouth. Not all are 3-2, there is at least 2-1-1-1 (two years at Bowdoin, 1 at the other school’s engineering program, 1 back at Bowdoin to graduate, then a 5th at the engineering program). You end up with two degrees, with the Bowdoin one being something like Physics (a few options). And none are guaranteed so you can’t arrive with the certainty you will get into the program.
I disagree that 13-15 is too many. Programs that admit students with 1500 SATs are very competitive as well as holistic. Engineering and especially bioengineering and especially the schools on OP’s list are even more competitive. Try to get fee waivers for the applications. Now that the OP has most of her list, she can get a head start on essays.