<p>Hi all! I'm new here but I've poked around on this site before and people here have insane stats! I have a 2340 SAT, the hardest course load as possible at my school (mediocre parochial in a competitive area), a class rank of #1, a 4.0 GPA, and I should get good scores on my AP tests this spring (Physics B, USH, and English). I'm president of three clubs at my school, volunteer with computers, and do a cool, obscure kind of martial arts on my free time. However, I'm from a really competitive area, nobody from my school has ever gone to an Ivy (although nobody's ever broken a 2200 either...), I'm not sending a really bad AP score from last year (not in something I want to study though) so I'll only be sending three scores, and I'm a white girl with no legacy ( 8-| ). I want to study engineering at Princeton. I love math and science, although I'm taking AP Calc AB as a senior (school doesn't offer any more... will this hurt me?) and want nothing more than to continue studying these subjects in depth. However, I have no major awards and no extracurriculars whatsoever in STEM. What do you suggest I do? Do I have a shot? How do I make myself stand out? Can anybody tell me anything about ORFE (it sounds really awesome to me but it's different from all other engineering disciplines...)? Does it help to write in essays something like "I taught myself all these programming languages over the summer and designed a machine" or whatever even if I don't have any projects to show for it?</p>
<p>Bump.</p>
<p>Your stats are good so you will be a competitive applicant but it is still a reach school (for pretty much everyone). I’d encourage you to focus on writing very strong essays and to consider how you will contribute to the engineering department at Princeton - this will be helpful in writing a strong engineering essay. Initiative is always a plus so however that is displayed in your life could be a component of your writing. Being female and interested in STEM fields is also potentially a plus. Unfortunately I don’t know much about ORFE (my son is a CEE major) but here is a link to that department <a href=“http://orfe.princeton.edu/”>http://orfe.princeton.edu/</a></p>
<p>Best wishes to you! </p>