<p>sorry i posted this already in the cmu 15 chance thread but i really need more feedback</p>
<p>If anyone attending there right now could inform me if i should apply early decision or regular please tell me. i do really want to go there, but need to know if i even stand a chance in the regular decision pool....</p>
<p>thanks! ( MECHANICAL ENGINEER MAJOR)</p>
<p>Gpa: 3.63 uw// 3.98? 4.0? w(for UC) 4.03w</p>
<p>Shows a upward trend. from sophomore yr. 3.2->3.6->3.6->4.0</p>
<p>Freshman
honors biology
honors english
honors alg 2
symphonic band
spanish 1
PE
health//some weird computer class..</p>
<p>Sophomore
ap biology
honors english
honors precalc
honors world history
PE
honors geometry
spanish 2</p>
<p>Junior
Ap Calculus AB
AP chemistry
AP language & composition
reg us history
spanish 3
copmuter support</p>
<p>Senior class schedule
Ap physics C
AP comp sci A
AP statistics
(some elective not sure yet)
reg gov/econ
reg english 12</p>
<p>AP Scores
Biology - 4
Chemistry -5
Calculus -5
language and composition -4</p>
<p>SAT 1: 2100 (670 CR 720M (T<em>T) 710 W) <-- retaking oct
SAT 2: 770 math 2 640 Chemistry (T</em>T)<-- doubt i can retake.. depending how i do on oct sat</p>
<p>EC:
Treasurer + VP jr/sr year of a club to help out elementary kids transition into jr high
Interned at dental offices out of country ( got over 200 hrs from it)
Cross country ( 1 yr)
Track(polevault) (2yr)
California scholarship federation (4 yrs)
Guitar (5 yrs) + played at church praise team
Trumpet 4 yrs</p>
<p>any recommendation would help me out a bit.</p>
<p>For starters if you apply early forget about financial aid…
that being said ED can really help CIT become a reality… your gpa is on the lower end of the scale (although it may not be so bad, since they might factor out freshman year…)</p>
<p>Weird that you have no engineering/math/sci/compsci ECs, that will hurt you.
I think ED will make a difference for you, it’s going to be pretty hard to get in regular CIT… especially since your tests (read: SAT IIs) are subpar… but good luck!</p>
<p>The stats are misleading because a vast majority of ED applicants apply to the colleges in CMU that are harder to get into (like SCS and Tepper). You don’t see many ED applicants to H&SS.</p>
<p>Under ED, CMU will meet your entire financial need as calculated by their finaid department. However, usually they’ll kind of skeeze around and give you things like ‘unsubsidized loans’ and ‘work study’ to match that 100% need instead of actual grants or scholarships.</p>
<p>If you apply RD, then you can use finaid offers from peer schools to bargain with CMU. If you fax them a copy of an excellent finaid offer from, say, RPI or RIT or Penn State Honors, then CMU will almost always raise the grant amount they are offering you.</p>
<p>Hence, it’s more financially sound to apply RD if you need aid. I applied ED, needing aid, and got pretty screwed.</p>
<p>Probem is, I’m being recruited athletically and don’t have any peer schools that I will likely get accepted at. Is there any way I can try to leverage them now? They already gave us an early estmator that does include 8k in loans and some work study. The grant is $4k higher for ED than for RD, though.</p>
<p>ED favors the school. For athletes, the School (any) gets to have a committed student from ED and a picked team, rather than taking selection chances in RD. Game theory. </p>
<p>You can certainly try ED but continue your college applications into RD closing day. Besure that your advisors and know that you will still be making applications. RD lets you compete for FA amongst schools, where ED does not. </p>
<p>I don’t understand about the peer schools? If you are not likely be accepted at the peer schools, why is your qualification better at CMU? </p>
<p>Your qualifications seem to be inline and appears from your schedule that you are able to budget time and efforts (very critical).</p>
<p>Longprime, I don’t think you have seen my qualifications:
1820 SAT, 25 ACT, 4.0 weighted GPA, 6 AP classes. I have recently retaken the tests, but may not be a whole lot higher. Maybe you were looking at superslinky’s above.
Is this in line with CMU?
I will check and see if I can continue with RD applications after acceptance ED at CMU. I have several apps out there.
I want to play my sport in college, and only CMU and Vassar have shown enough interest to support me. And they both say I need to do ED to likely get in.
Input is appreciated.</p>
<p>Your situation is somewhat unique so it’s very possible you could lobby the finaid office for more aid if you took the ED offer. It’s true that you don’t have much of an option, as they seem to have been goading you into applying ED, and your stats are below average for a typical CMU applicant. (You’ve already posted a chance thread I think, haven’t you? I remember seeing your stats before somewhere.) </p>
<p>I would take your ED offer if you get one and then pressure them into more aid if your family needs it. They will probably cave in your case. Be persistent. They’ll likely help out, they’re not entirely soulless demons.</p>
<p>You made an application knowing the conditions of offer and acceptance. The school apparently made an offer in the exact amount of financial aid that got you to matriculate. You feel that you were ‘screwed’ because you think you could have been accepted: on RD, with a larger aid package.</p>
<p>Actually… I really don’t think I could have been accepted RD. You can check out my chance thread on the Cornell forums in my post history. I wasn’t exactly a rock star applicant. I knew CMU was where I wanted to be, and I would have figured out a way to be here even if I had gotten no aid at all. </p>
<p>I feel it’s only fair to warn other ED applicants who think that they’re going to get a nice $40k grant in their lap because they applied ED and come from middle-class situations where they can’t afford the school’s cost. It’s been proven continually that they mostly hand you loans and work study wherever they can and then give you a grant for the rest, which is the opposite of how most higher-endowment colleges work. </p>
<p>Why the sudden irritation? I’m only explaining a phenomenon that has been documented dozens of times and is all over CC, let alone this board.</p>
<p>You apparently did better than what could be normally expected. </p>
<p>Your explanation makes post 7, much more clear. everyone is happy: You got into a school with more than expected financial aid and that you very much wanted The School got a student that it wanted for a only a bit more in FA than it needed to matriculate you.</p>
<p>Not really fair-- a strong and highly coveted ED applicant gets a solid package. There are Presidential Scholars that are good friends with my D who have full rides to CMU and they were ED.
CMU is open about their approach to financial aid.
The only reason ED packages are “perceived” lower than RD is because there’s no opportunity to bargain.</p>
<p>With all due respect to HSS students as a whole/on average - this is not CMU’s strength of programs --nor are the strongest students in the applicant pool in HSS (and in fact the stats for the HSS applicant profile are significantly lower than others at CMU with the exception of art (which is a nationally ranked program)) and as such, it’s not really clear that an HSS package would have been any stronger in RD. CMU does not have to spend it’s money to attract HSS students and is going to spend its money to attract the best students it can in other programs.</p>
<p>To CMU’s credit-- higher endowed schools such as Cornell also max out loans, work study and summer work in their package. – Yet, unlike CMU, Cornell’s package ADDs these amounts on top of the EFC – it’s called “student self help” which you don’t realize unti you see the package and the glossy brochure which comes with it.
example…if the family FAFSA EFC were 25,000 – on top of that add $9500 - -for an EFC 34,500. They max out the student loans, require max work study and require summer work. What’s different here is that this total amount doesn’t come off the parents’ contribution or EFC. It’s more money to the family as a whole and less to Cornell. It’s not like the parents are cut a break from student self help-- it’s the school that gives less aid. Loans should always be an option - not a requirement - -but that’s not how Cornell sees it and they have a huge endowment (as do all the Ivies). Remember, the Ivies are NOT CMU competitors - -other than Cornell Engineering.</p>
<p>Alas. I was just trying to express my own personal situation and that of many, many ED posters who were accepted and later came here to gripe about their bad finaid offers. Sorry that you both felt the need to jump at me.</p>
<p>Seems like I get nothing but attitude these days from the other frequent posters here, who-- sad to say it-- are mostly moms. The other students are mostly inactive.</p>
<p>For that reason, I’m pretty much peacing out of this forum. I’ve got other things to do with my time than sit around and get berated and talked down to. The rewards don’t really outweigh the suck factor of a bunch of hens pecking at me anymore.</p>