Stanford REA vs Northwestern ED

Hey guys,

I have a conflict. Basically, I love Stanford and Northwestern, and wouldn’t mind attending either school. It’s just that Stanford appeals to me more. So I have to strategize. I would either apply Stanford REA (which is a lottery) or Northwestern ED (which I actually have a chance). My question to you all is should I even bother applying to Stanford? Because I know my stats are low. What would my chance on Northwestern RD be? BTW, my father went to business school at Northwestern so I’m a legacy. I also heard that one should use their legacy status in EA/ED. Help me! Thanks for the feedback!

Major: Management Science and Engineering / Biomedical Engineering
State: Ohio
School: Very Competitive Public
Ethnicity: Black and Asian
Gender: XY
Class: Rising Senior
GPA: 3.99 W and 3.6 UW (Yikes)
PSAT: 1420/1520, track to be commended scholar
ACT: 31 (yikes), retaking in September
Subject tests: Math 2 - 780, US History - 720
AP: AP US History (4), English (4), Economics (4,4), Calc BC (3), AB sub (3), Physics (2) (yikes) (not sending physics)
Awards: Honor Roll, Scholar Athlete, Academic
Medallion, Salute to Excellence, Varsity Letters, Leadership Certificates, etc.

Freshie

Honors Algebra 2 - A
Honors English 9 - B
Physical Science - A
World History - A
Spanish 2 - A
Electives - A

Sophomore

Honors Pre Calc - A
Honors Bio - A
Honors Chemistry - A
Honors English 11 - B
Spanish 3 - B
AP US History - B
Electives - A

Junior

AP Calc BC - B
AP Physics 1 - B
AP Economics - A
AP English 11 - B
Spanish IV - A
Electives- A

Senior

AP Statistics
AP Psychology
AP Chemistry
AP Spanish
AP English 12

As one can tell, my GPA is on the lower end.

EC:

In school

Basketball - lettered sophomore year, won division 1 districts, really big part of my life, takes up LOTS of time
Track - lettered sophomore year, won division 1 districts, takes up LOTS of time
African American Culture Club - Co founder and Vice President,
Diversity Acceptance Program - Vice president,
Youth For Christ - Vice President,
Selected freshmen mentor
S.P.L.A.S.H - Selective program for leaders within my school
Principal Advisory Board
Pre Medical Society

I’m trying to start STEM UP Club in my school, see below.

Out of School

Director at Be The Change Venture - non profit with goal to empower youth by teaching networking skills, I have blogs on our website also
Junior Ambassadors - Volunteered 109 hours at Cleveland Clinic main campus in the summer
Research Assistant - Assisted post doc at Case Western Reserve’s biomedical engineering lab (WHY I LIKE BME), showcasing my research at competitions at case and entering Intel
Marketing Director for DifferentLikeYou.com - summer internship at non profit - website for kids with disabilities
Business Intern at Artificial Intelligence Laboratories - Interned at firm based in San Francisco
Council Member at the City Club of Cleveland - year round
Intern at the Diversity Center of NEO
Discover U in Business at Miami University
Look Up to Cleveland Program
Lifeguard

STEM UP - It’s not official yet, but I’m trying to start a non-profit that educates URMs in inner city schools about STEM careers. Hopefully, this can be done.

With a GPA that is “low” by those colleges’ standards, and a downward trend, you should consider both of them to be super reaches.

Focus on getting your affordable safety plans in place first.

If you want to do engineering at either of these schools you should take a math in addition to stats senior year. It is odd that you rushed through the math sequence to complete BC calc junior year only to drop advanced math altogether. I think you should reconsider this if you really are interested in engineering at any top 20 school. Can you take multivariable?

bump

What did you end up deciding?