Is this a sufficiently balanced list for an engineering major?

College Search & Selection
1

<p>SAT I (breakdown): 2390, 790W; one sitting
SAT II : 780 Biology, 800 Math II, planning to take French and Chem
PSAT: 233 (National Merit Semi-Finalist probable)
Unweighted GPA (out of 4.0): 3.96
Rank (percentile if rank is unavailable): School does not rank, but gives out ranges of GPAs in school profile
AP : APUSH (5), Chem (5), Lang (5), Euro (5), US Gov (5), Stat (5), Calc AB (5), Psych (5, self), Bio (5, self)
Major Awards (USAMO, Intel etc.): Nationally ranked in French contest since freshman year</p>

<p>Extracurriculars</p>

<p>Debate: Varsity debater since sophomore year, but not particularly good at it. Won two awards at one tournament.
Newspaper: Layout editor sophomore year, Co-Editor-in-Chief junior and senior year. Dedicated a lot of time to this.
Math team: Not particularly good, but might be captain next year.
Volunteer Ambulance: About 70 hours, but the EMT class took up 300+ hours during my junior year in class time and studying
Physics club: President junior and senior year, but didn't do anything</p>

<p>I'm learning about programming and algorithms on my own, so it doesn't show up anywhere official. Can I put this in activities, or should I just leave it to the essays?</p>

<p>Job: Worked as Kumon grader and private French tutor</p>

<p>Summer Activities</p>

<p>NY Math Circle as rising sophomore
NJ Governor's School of Engineering and Technology as rising senior</p>

<p>Senior Year Schedule
AP Physics (B class, but C exams)
AP French
AP World
AP Lit
MCP Humanities (course is alongside local university)
Multivariable</p>

<p>Should I take an elective in C++? I am unsure to because I know that I am going to be way ahead of the class, but I haven't been able to take any other Comp Sci type courses.</p>

<p>Other
State (if domestic applicant): New Jersey
Country (if international applicant): USA
School Type: Public, small
Ethnicity: White
Gender: Female
Income Bracket: 150,000+
Hooks (URM, first generation college, etc.): White female going into engineering?
Intended Major: Electrical/computer engineering</p>

<p>College list</p>

<p>MIT
Stanford
Caltech
Columbia
Cornell
UC Berkeley
Carnegie Mellon
U of Michigan
U of Texas-Austin
Purdue
Rutgers-New Brunswick (in-state)</p>

<p>I know, tons of reaches.</p>

2

<p>Where’s Rice, Georgia Tech, TAMU, or University of Maryland?</p>

3

<p>Thank you for the suggestions! Would those schools be considered safeties or matches?</p>

4

<p>I’d apply to UMichigan (and any other rolling school) early so you know you get in by December. If you want another school kind of between UT and Purdue maybe consider URochester.</p>

5

<p>Is your family willing to pay the $45K+ for an OOS public U (Purdue, UMich, UCB, UT)?</p>

6

<p>How much can your family pay/yr? If you don’t know a specific number you need to ask your parents. OOS publics may not be as affordable as you may think.</p>

7

<p>It is probably worth looking for some schools with good merit aid. As a woman in engineering, you will have decent odds for getting merit aid at schools that offer merit aid and your stats are above their 75th percentiles. How about RPI, Case Western, Northeastern, Stevens Tech, USC?</p>

<p>Because admissions are very selective schools are unpredictable, regardless of how good your stats are, you will want to apply to a relatively large number of reach schools. So you might want to throw in a few more “reaches for everyone” schools, such as Princeton, Penn. </p>

<p>Rice, Georgia Tech, and Maryland are good suggestions. </p>

<p>Do any of your schools offer EA? If you get an early acceptance, you can know to concentrate on reaches rather than safeties.</p>

<p>NCES College Navigator provides separate data on male and female acceptance rates. You might want to check those out to see where you would have the biggest admissions advantages.<br>
<a href=“College Navigator - National Center for Education Statistics”>http://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

8

<p>Make sure you know what your targets like, need, and want- that means from their info, not from other kids. Make sure your essays, short answers and LoRs are on target and relevant to a college admit review. (Not sure learning programming on your own is the right use of the essay.) Make sure, for engineering at a highly competitive, that you have at least one LoR from an upper level math-sci teacher who will write more than “nice kid, did all the problem sets.” You are qualified to apply to that list. Cut comments like these from your thinking: “not particularly good at it…Not particularly good…but didn’t do anything.” Any robotics or anything focused on that sort of problem-solving teamwork? I suspect you have other ECs you omitted, thinking they aren’t relevant-? </p>

<p>The app is a self-presentation, pull yours together wisely. </p>

9

<p>Thank you so much for all the advice! I have discussed finances with my parents, but they, unfortunately, are stuck in the mindset that I am going to an extremely elite college and the degree will be worth the loans I’ll take out. They are completely divided about whether they’re going to contribute any money at all. I’ve already looked at the prices of all the colleges I’ve listed (crazy!), but since my parents won’t give me numbers, I’ll just apply where I want and not get too committed to any one school. Regardless of where I get in, I will probably end up going where I will get a lot of merit aid–which I’m fine with.</p>

<p>I am definitely applying EA to at least two safeties/matches.</p>

<p>Lookingforward, I want to clarify that I’m not using the Common App essay to discuss programming. I understand what you mean about not wasting an essay, but where do I show that I have some experience related to my major? I’ve tried to get robotics, olympiads, etc, started at my school, but without any success. I took state science tests and did fairly well and am attending Columbia SHP (completely forgot about those), and that’s it for my science/math activities. My other ECs are just NHS and the like.</p>

<p>No worries, I am definitely not phrasing my applications like I did my post! :slight_smile: My LoRs are going to be good, so I’m not worried about them.</p>

10

<p>I’m probably going to throw out several schools if the expected contribution is really high and I can’t rely on merit aid.</p>

11

<p>You will not get any merit aid at the first eight schools on your list. If your parents will not contribute, you need to drastically reevaluate your list. Affordability should be your first consideration. You could get substantial merit aid quite easily, but you would need to drop down a tier of schools. Look at University of Rochester and Lehigh, and if you are MechE, check out the Drake Scholarship at Berkeley.
Figure out exactly how much your parents will be contributing NOW.</p>

12

<p>The OOS publics on your list will be just as expensive as privates and Berkeley and Umich at least give little to no merit aid.</p>

13

<p>If you are considering schools on the West Coast, look at Harvey Mudd College as another reach engineering school. One distinguishing feature: it’s smaller than most of the schools you are looking at, except the undergraduate portion of Caltech. It takes a liberal arts approach to science and engineering with a broad science core curriculum, and for hum/ss, you would have access to the other Claremont colleges.</p>

14

<p>OP, you can put the self-learning programming as one of the last lines on the EC list. You can also make a brief note in Addl Info. Many interested kids do teach themselves aspects of programming, so you want to consider how to best phrase this. List the languages- but how is your progress or skill actually measured? Think about it. You can also comment (very briefly) that you tried to get other activities started. Could your math or sci LoR mention this? Because it does sound like you have tried to use your energies and ideas wisely.</p>

<p>About ECs, lots of things can count, when they add to your picture. Anything with your religious group, culture or some summer job? It’s not just hs or pre-professional.</p>

15

<p>“re stuck in the mindset that I am going to an extremely elite college and the degree will be worth the loans I’ll take out”</p>

<p>?:?</p>

<p>Absolutely NOT worth it. Companies do NOT pay engineers more just because you went to an elite school. </p>

<p>Your parents may be wrongly thinking that you will start at a much higher salary, but you wont. </p>

<p>BESIDES…do your parents realize that they will have to QUALIFY AND COSIGN those loans? And, do they realize that if anything happens to you, they still have to pay those loans back?</p>

<p>Include 2-3 schools where your stats will get you large merit.</p>

16

<p>Although UT and TAMU would be automatic if you were in state and your school could vouch that your class rank is above the automatic admission threshold (even without stating the actual class rank) - you are out of state and UT might not be guaranteed even with those scores and it doesn’t seem to offer as good merit money as some other state schools (no National Merit $$ e.g). And even if you were admitted UT fills most slots in some popular majors surprisingly early with early in-state applications. Also I am not sure it is worth applying to many out of state publics with scores that high unless you are looking for a total free ride somewhere. Georgia Tech, maybe UVa or Illinois as safety schools also make sense. TAMU has good merit money (might go for free with scores like that, especially as National Merit) - and if you are strongly considering Engineering might be interesting safety school.</p>

<p>The usual national merit schools could be considered (see the National Merit annual report) if you want to focus on merit money (see <a href=“http://www.nationalmerit.org/annual_report.pdf”>http://www.nationalmerit.org/annual_report.pdf&lt;/a&gt; for the list of which colleges enroll the most National Merit Scholars):
Vanderbilt, Chicago, Northwestern …</p>

<p>Our favorites when we did the college tours for engineering last year and the previous year (in rough order) - but favorites are often based on subjective factors and with scores like that some of your safeties might give you free rides and be better value than the usual.
MIT (easy to see why #1 choice - amazing place)
Harvard (tons of research money)
Princeton (amazing campus and student body)
Rice (the OEDK was great)
Columbia (surprised us)
Naval Academy
Air Force Academy</p>

<p>Among the safeties, Colorado School of Mines (has a whole building for metallurgy, pretty campus) impressed us but for different reasons than TAMU (which was very friendly campus)</p>

17

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<p>If your parents will not contribute, then most of your original list should be eliminated as unaffordable. MIT, Stanford, Caltech, and Cornell are need-based aid only, no merit scholarships. CMU and the out-of-state publics would be very high reach for merit scholarships large enough to bring the net price under $10,000, if such scholarships are even offered. Rutgers would be the only one that would not be a super-reach, due to the [url=<a href=“http://admissions.rutgers.edu/Costs/Scholarships/FirstYearScholarships.aspx]Presidential”>http://admissions.rutgers.edu/Costs/Scholarships/FirstYearScholarships.aspx]Presidential</a> scholarship<a href=“a%20full%20in-state%20ride%20that%20does%20not%20seem%20to%20be%20super-hard%20to%20get%20for%20high-stats%20students”>/url</a>.</p>

<p>For big merit scholarships look at these lists:</p>

<p><a href=“http://automaticfulltuition.yolasite.com/”>http://automaticfulltuition.yolasite.com/&lt;/a&gt; (safeties)
<a href=“Competitive Full Tuition / Full Ride Scholarships - #50 by BobWallace - Financial Aid and Scholarships - College Confidential Forums”>Competitive Full Tuition / Full Ride Scholarships - #50 by BobWallace - Financial Aid and Scholarships - College Confidential Forums; (non-safeties)
<a href=“http://nmfscholarships.yolasite.com/”>http://nmfscholarships.yolasite.com/&lt;/a&gt; (National Merit – Texas A&M is in this list)</p>

18

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</p>

<p>I think it’s a very good list. Given your parents income, it’s important that they clarify what they intend to contribute. Borrowing money is fine as long as it’s THEIR loans beyond the Stafford loans. I might even go borrow a bit more for you go to one of the privates on your list. Perhaps 15K/year. </p>

<p>If they balk, then you need to completely change your strategy. Colleges expect parents to pay for college in this country. The privates on your list award no merit aid. You will probably get some financial aid. </p>

<p>So basically, I would drop Berkeley and Michigan because they are as expensive as privates and will offer you no aid, no merit. </p>

<p>I would add the University of Illinois because they have a competitive full ride scholarship that you might just get. Your stats are off the charts. </p>

<p>I would look into Cooper Union. It’s a fiercely competitive school that used to be free but I think is half priced now. It might even be commutable for you depending on where you live in NJ. If you can commute, it would only cost you $21K plus the cost of commuting. From parts of NJ it’s not even a bad commute. If you live near a NJTransit line that goes into Penn Station, it’s only a few stops down from Penn Station on the Broadway local. </p>

<p>As far as high quality engineering schools that have lower list prices, consider
Rutgers 25K (Clearly Rutgers have the cost advantage here, but you might as well explore other options too if you want to).
University of Minnesota 30K
North Carolina State University 30K
SUNY Stony Brook 32K
SUNY Buffalo 32K
Some Canadian schools have costs in this range. You have to check for specifics. Consider McGill, Toronto, and University of British Columbia. </p>

<p>vs
Purdue 39K
Georgia Tech 41K
Texas 46K
Michigan 52K
Berkeley 51K</p>

<p>These costs are all for Tuition room and board except Cooper Union which is just tuition in light of the half tuition scholarship</p>

<p>As a financial safety, you should apply to University of Alabama where you’ll get a full-tuition scholarship, though I don’t think the engineering is in the same league and it would be unfortunate if cheap parents caused you to go there. But you can apply there and possibly use it as leverage. </p>

<p>University of Pittsburgh also has full rides that you would be very competitive for. </p>

<p>So basically, you should do some research on full-ride merit scholarships at high quality engineering schools and apply even if they are competitive. You have very impressive stats. </p>

<p>Good luck. </p>

19

<p>I have a question, when you already have two subject tests with great scores, why take 2 more? Don’t they only require 2? Anyways, IMO, you have to many reach schools, cut out columbia and put GTech</p>

20

<p>OP - from my reading, U Mich does indeed give merit scholarships to incoming Engineering students, though they are likely very competitive. Caltech and CMU also, though even more competitive.</p>