Hey! Thanks for looking at me first of all.
So, I’ve run into a bit of a brick wall with picking my list of colleges to apply to. I understand that it’s still early for me as a junior, but I like planning ahead 
I’m interested in Mechanical Engineering or Finance, and would (heavily) prefer a large city and a large student body either on the northeast or all of the west coast. A CoOp is one of the biggest things I’m looking for however. A more even distribution of genders would be nice too (I’m looking at you Wentworth - 85% male).
My current list:
Will Apply:
Fits: Providence College, UMass Amherst, BU (Early Decision Application)
Reaches: Northeastern, George Washington University
Safety: Wentworth
May Apply: Purdue, Drexel
Grades:
GPA: 3.35 (3.6 or 3.7 junior year)
SAT 1600: 1390
SAT 2400: 2010
ACT: 30
Extra Notes:
I’m planning on retaking the SAT this weekend and am aiming for a higher grade in math (680 -> 720), and a higher writing grade (620 -> 670), which would give me a 2100/2400 and a 1440/1600.
Extracurriculars:
Sports: Tennis and Cross Country
Clubs: Frisbee and Chess (yeah I know)
Other: Boy Scouts (Eagle)
Coding: Proficient in HTML, CSS, and Javascript (Plan on learning python or C#)
Classes:
All C1 (standard level) freshman to junior year
Senior year I am taking AP statistics, psychology, and micro/macro economics, as well as an honors level online engineering class
Thanks for all of the help!
Your test scores are not bad. The 3.35 GPA is going to be problematic as will the fact that you have not taken honors / AP up until senior year but neither of these will deal breakers at the level of college you are shooting for. WIll you need financial need or not? Are you an under-represented minority? Purdue is a great engineering school. Consider Rose-Hulman in Indiana, it’s rural but engineering undergraduates don’t have tons of free time. Lehigh in Allentown is a great engineering school. It’s not too early either to begin creating your list of colleges, not too early at all
Thanks @Wje9164be I’m lucky enough to not need any financial aid, and as for minorities I’m a quarter Jewish and thats not even a helpful minority 
Allentown looks promising, it’s a little more rural that I’d like but it’s only a hour and a half from NYC and Philly. RH is too far in the middle of nowhere for me though.
As for my GPA, I’m hoping that colleges will see how good my junior year was and how my senior grades are, so I might want to shoot for more reach schools than safety.
Fordham, U Washington. Also NYU but that would probably be more of a reach.
@lalalemma Fordham and NYU seem pretty good! I’m fine with applying to reach schools, especially since I’m totally fine with writing a lot of essays and would rather apply to a lot of tough universities than a few easy ones.
East: Maryland has a solid engineering program, and if test scores rise maybe look into RPI (Renessaler Polytechnic Institute). NC State has a great engineering program and with your stats, if you’re interested, you may qualify for some merit based scholarships at Alabama
West: UCSB is a great tech school and CalPoly is also another one. I know Oregon State has a good chemical engineering program but I do not know muh about the rest of their department, it’s worth looking into.
@Jcannon1023 I’ve looked at Cal Poly, and I’d love going there, but the grades seem a bit… odd to say the least. Their average GPA is a 3.9 but their SAT scores average a 1800, meaning that a lot of the students there have had a lot of grade inflation, the same goes for UCSB.
I’ll have to look at RPI, NC, and Maryland, but I’ll skip on Alabama (because it’s in Alabama).
@jefftaco I did the same with the Alabama option when I was suggested, and yeah I toured NC State and loved it! RPI has high average scores and if you can improve your GPA the other schools become realistic options!
Thanks @Jcannon1023 I’ll have to look at everything you suggested.
Anyone know anything about the UC schools? Their GPA and SAT seem off.
@jefftaco: Which UC’s and why do their GPA/SAT seem off? UC’s use their own GPA calculation. If you are OOS, you can only use AP/IB classes in 10-11th for their extra honors points. Here is the link: http://rogerhub.com/gpa-calculator-uc/
Also OOS applicants need a minimum UC GPA of 3.4 to apply. If you check the UC website, Freshman stats are listed for each campus for 2014. http://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/freshman/profiles/index.html
UC’s give little to no financial aid for OOS students, so you will be paying around $55K/year.
What about Temple and Pitt?
@Gumbymom I was asking why the GPA requirements are so high, yet the SAT scores are incredibly low compared to other schools in that have the same GPA average. Merced for instance claims a 3.6 average yet their average ACT is a 24 and the average SAT is a 1650. Is there massive grade inflation in the california public schools or something? Because those numbers seem incorrect, the ACT is barely above the average scorer (21) while the GPA is highly competitive.
@woogzmama I’ve already looked at those two and didn’t like them sadly.
The GPA’s listed are weighted with up to 8 semesters of extra Honors points for UC approved Honors/AP & IB classes, that is why the GPA looks higher as compared to test scores. The UC’s have their own calculation for GPA which I posted in the above post. A better representation of GPA for the UC’s are the common datasets which uses unweighted. Using your example above for UC Merced: Average UC GPA is 3.61 , Unweighted would be 3.5 for enrolled Freshman. UC’s are also very GPA focused so the higher the better your chances. UCB/UCLA and to some extent UCSB are more holisitic and will take into account EC’s and essays.
My suggestions would be Fordham, NYU (again, might be difficult), Drexel, and Rutgers. Fordham is great because it is not as selective as NYU but still has the great city location you are looking for. NYU is great because you can’t get much better than Stern. Drexel really appeals to the whole coop aspect. If you work diligently at both your classes and coops, you are basically guaranteed a job upon graduation at Drexel. And finally, I also recommend Rutgers. This is because Rutgers has a wide variety of options. The College Ave campus can feel just like a big city, and when you want to go to an actual big city, just hop on the train and you can be in Philly, DC, or NYC in the same amount of time it would take you to catch a cab from Fordham campus to Times Square with all the traffic lol. Plus, you won’t get B1G Ten football in NYC. Those are just my suggestions
I’m definitely applying to Fordham, NYU, and maybe Drexel now. My only issue is that Fordham’s student population seems really bad, at least from online reviews. I don’t want to hold a bias against it, especially since some of the reviewers were most likely students who did terribly at the school.
Does anyone here go to Fordham?
You may want to notice that Fordham does not have a mechanical engineering major except as a 3+2 program (these tend to be rarely completed by transfer to the “2” school).
@ucbalumnus I would like to pursue a career in mechanical engineering, but a finance degree would interest me too so I’ll be applying to a few liberal arts schools, in case I change my mind. I’m taking AP Econ and Stat next year so I can get a feel of what I like. I’m also taking an intro to engineering class so that’ll help me decide.
Drexel offers full tuition to NMSF, plus a few others.
You’re not competitive for Cal Poly SLO, UCLA, UCB, UCD, UCSD, UCI or UCSB. Your GPA is just too low. I don’t recommend paying OOS tuition for UCSC, UCR or UCM. San Jose State University is a match for you, it has great engineering and business programs, it’s an hour from San Francisco and Santa Cruz, it’s in a city of 1 million people, and it is a lot cheaper than a UC.
Other schools you could consider (I think most of these are matches for you. For some of the schools, your SAT is high, but your GPA is too far below the median GPA to consider the school a safety.):
Ohio State University
CUNY City College
San Diego State University
Seattle University (on the smaller side, so you might not like it)
University of Cincinnati (has a co-op program)
University of Delaware
University of Portland
Virginia Commonwealth University
Reach:
Rochester Institute of Technology (Has a co-op program. GPA might be too low; SAT is fine)
Safeties:
Howard University (you would qualify for a full tuition scholarship)
Temple University
University of Vermont