Appreciate the tips. D will engage in the same exercise of determining which are the most selective from her list of possible majors for each of the CSU’s she’s applying to (in addition to each of the UC’s). I will be asking many questions on the UC and CSU forums in the coming weeks! Again - thank you both!
If she can figure out the consortium schedule that would be bonus
I believe you are able to take one per semester while enrolled at WPI through cross registration. Those courses count as credits at WPI. It gives you flexibility especially with class selection, scheduling and choice of professors. Also WPI is a top STEM school, Holy Cross really strong in humanities for instance. You get a chance to spend time on a different campus and interact with different kids. These are some of the advantages.
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Wuh-staaaaa - The trick is to never look at the actual spelling and have a bite of a Dunkin’ Donut in your mouth 
Also, a plus is the easy train ride into Boston.
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Stanford isn’t harder to get into than MIT. You can’t just look at acceptance rates. They have different applicant pools (even though the two pools overlap somewhat). Either school, though, offers little boost to EA/REA applicants. EA to Chicago (or CWRU for that matter) generally offers no boost at all. You need to seriously rethink your early application strategy if you’re hoping for a boost.
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I went back to OP’s original post, because our kid’s lists are looking very similar for very similar reasons. Yup, we have very similar kids!
Fwiw, he fell in serious like with WPI last year, which had us California parents who had never heard of it really confused. The more I researched it, the more I got the attraction. The acceptance rate is way higher than I expected based on the love it gets here, and while I can’t quite say it is a safety, it definitely is nice to have a higher acceptance rate school on the list that he would be thrilled to attend.
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Probably easier for women to get into MIT than Stanford, the CDS has a 12% for MIT and 6% for Stanford for women acceptance rates. Not sure where the OP is from in CA, but the Naviance data from local high schools show that MIT is easier to get into, especially for Asians. Now that being said, in CA anyway, Stanford does get more of the “let me see if I can get in” apps, so the application pools are probably different, to your point.
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I would not take this route for Cal Poly. I would choose General Engineering. It’s an easier admit than CS, ME, AE and BME, but one of the few where the will not only allow, but expect upstream major switching. It will open the doors she wants to open, with the highest chance of getting in. You don’t want to pick the toughest (CS) just for flexibility and not get in because of it. Every year kids who get into UCB and/or UCLA are rejected from CP for CS. This year a student who got into Stanford, got waitlisted for CP CS. If you want some guidance on how to know the selectivity by major, just PM me.
WPI’s acceptance rate is a little deceiving. They accept a reasonably high percentage of a high level applicant pool. Although not a reach for most top students, it shouldn’t be confused with a 50% admission rate at a third tier LAC. They attract different candidates.
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I agree that one’s gender has an effect on MIT admission and one’s geography has a greater impact at Stanford than at MIT. However, I don’t think it’s easier for Asian Americans to get into MIT than Stanford. Both schools have a lot of Asian American applicants (one because of its stronger STEM focus and the other because of its preferred geography, in addition to other factors).
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I figure its applicant pool is more similar to Mudd than MIT, but not quite a stratospheric stats-wise.
The Stanford v MIT comparison is negligible. It is interesting though, having just poured through a few back years of common data set and other information, Californians have a rougher go at MIT, at least in my son’s particular demographic (white male in private school). There are just a handful of MIT spots for that group. Stanford accepts a lot more Californians. A lot more doesn’t mean a ton. MIT has a stronger preference for public schools. But that might be an artifact because they don’t consider legacies and don’t recruit in the same way as Stanford. Honestly, it is really hard to compare, and they are both ridiculously hard, any difference isn’t significant.
“I also hadn’t anticipated tech schools to be good options for someone who might want to switch out of STEM, but it seems some schools discussed here are more amenable to those students. So we’re now looking at Cal Poly SLO and WPI, etc as possible tech schools with strong liberal arts components.”
I don’t know if these schools have strong liberal arts components or as strong as their STEM majors. I just checked the WPI majors/minors page, they only offer two specific degrees in a humanities or social science, Econ and Psychology.
“Both schools have a lot of Asian American applicants (one because of its stronger STEM focus and the other because of its preferred geography, in addition to other factors).”
MIT’s Asian American percentage is 40%, Stanford is 25%, that’s a big difference. And the OP is from CA, meaning it’s even tougher to get into Stanford. Naviance info in the bay area has the Asian acceptance rate around 2-3% for Stanford, about 10-ish for MIT, which is about 5x. And women will have a higher chance as well for MIT. Anyway if the OP’s first choice is MIT, obviously that’s where she should EA.
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Mudd is actually MUCH more like MIT than it is like WPI. The SAT breakout is below. Class rank and GPA are missing from one or the other, so they aren’t able to be compared.
Reading 25th 75th Math 25th 75th %in 1400-1600 range
MIT 730 780 780 800 98
HMC 720 770 770 800 93
WPI 630 710 670 760 46
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Believe it or not, MIT has even much greater percentage of Asian Americans among its applicants. That’s why I think an Asian American student (even one from the bay area) can’t assume s/he would be more likely (relatively speaking, of course) to be admitted at MIT than at Stanford.
WPI is more limiting. Cal Poly has 16 departments in the College of Liberal Arts. There are often multiple majors within a department. They’re all linked below.
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If opening day rates prevail, several players would hit 162 HRs per year. Or 324.
Several of the discussed schools have good Statistics programs. Though anyone with even a moderate statistics background that actually looks a tables 1 and 2 would get a laugh over this claim.
Fwiw, a fraternity brother of mined switched to the CMU ECE major way back when. And I had a very collaborative group of classmates in MechE x “cutthroat”mist certainly not a term I would use to describe by 1980s experience, (fwiw today).
Case also dropped off my D’s list after visiting. I can’t remember exactly why, but it was an easy decision, iirc.
It appears that you are misunderstanding what is meant by “If the 2014 age-specific abortion rates prevail”. It simply means that rates for older women are considered to be representative of what the rates for younger women will be in the future. That seems a reasonable assumption. It does NOT mean that the rates for younger woman will remain constant over their reproductive years!
Agree, WPI is attracting a different kid than LACs or public universities with similar admissions rates. So the admissions rate is not an indicator to use here(or honestly many places) because they have a lot of qualified candidates self selecting them specifically, but who may not be able to afford it in the end depending on the financial package. Because they do not guarantee to meet 100% of need, I see many having to choose another option that last week of April.
They know their numbers and have a good handle on how many they need to admit in their different admissions stages to get the number they need in the fall.
I think they have strategies that work for them. As I have said, it is clear they offer females more money. I know they stated a very high percent of students who do their summer program enroll - with Covid that has been virtual I think, so that is tough. They also offer teacher training in PLTW so high school teachers in NE will have a connection to the school and recommend applying there.
Their financial aid package for us was almost all merit which was guaranteed for the 4 years. This helped with figuring out what 4 years might look like financially. Other top schools offered either all need based or those with merit had more need and less merit, so year one might be ok, but by the end we could be close to full pay. She ended up somewhere else, but WPI was in there until the end…I guess she is part of that admission rate you are looking at
The best thing a tour guide said was, “Are you the kid when you are doing a project at school who ends up doing all of the work? Here at WPI, we are all that kid. There is not competition, we all work through a problem together.”
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Ha love it! Will definitely give it a try. 
Would be great if Boston is easily accessible, although google maps says it’s about 1-1/2 hours? Hopefully there are some fun things to do in Worcester too?
That could be really nice if she can figure out the schedule. Since it seems far from Boston, I wonder if the consortium helps Worcester feel like a college town, with walkable shops restaurants etc?
Yes, I’m surprised how much D and I like WPI too, even if we’re never able to pronounce the full name! I see the debate on acceptance rates, but it does seem more a possibility than the other sky-high reaches that the other tech plus humanities schools are (plus they say these kids are happy!). She is still reading up on it, but I suspect it will be on her list soon.
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I know D isn’t doing ED anywhere because Undecided Girl can’t commit. But tbh I don’t really know her EA strategy, or understand how most people approach them if there’s no clear advantage to EA.
I’d read EA might help with Case Western and some other schools that consider demonstrated interest and practice yield protection. MIT says it doesn’t matter at all if you apply EA, and I don’t know about UChicago.
But D wanted to apply RA wherever possible. So I’m not sure REA at Stanford makes a difference either, except like RA’s she’ll get some sort of answer earlier on. Unfortunately, regardless of who’s right in the discussion above re MIT or Stanford odds for an Asian American girl from California, probably not the answer she’d hope for. But she’s preparing herself for that and will at least never regret not trying.
[edit to note my typo: RA=EA in last paragraph]
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The schools that offer both EA and ED (UChicago and CWRU are in this category) don’t really consider applicants who apply EA (not ED) to have demonstrated any interest. They’re very likely to be deferred and then rejected if they don’t subsequently change their applications to ED2.