Suggestions for match and safety schools for female, ME/CS?

College Search & Selection
1

Daughter has generated a great list of reach and impossible schools but we are struggling to identify some match and safety schools that are a good fit. I know she really only needs one safety school but since the college admissions process seems so random and out of control these days, I’m concerned that she will end up with only the safety school as an option.

She is interested in studying engineering, likely mechanical engineering (like both of her parents - father is alum of Rice/MIT, mom is alum of UMichigan) with a minor or specialization in CS or robotics… she is intrigued by the intersection of ME and EE which is usually referred to as mechatronics and typically a part of the ME department. She will likely go on to a Master’s degree at some point.

She is interested in smaller (<10,000) well regarded private universities that offer engineering but are not primarily an engineering school like Carnegie Mellon, MIT, RPI, WPI, etc. Preference for location is in a larger city / not isolated and generally anywhere but the south. Interested in undergraduate engineering research opportunities but most places tout them these days. Not super interested in strong school spirit/sports. Likely to be involved with intramural sports. Not into partying.

She has stellar academics and scores… 4.0 UW, 4.9 W, #1 in her class of 350 at an average suburban (not Chicago area) Illinois high school with most rigorous coursework including 6 APs so far (5s in STEM subjects, 4s in History) and taking 5 more APs this year. 35 on ACT, 1530 superscore on SAT (800 in math), 800 on Math II and 720 on Physics subject tests. She is very self-motivated.

ECs are solid but nothing special - president of two honor societies at school, tech captain of her FIRST Robotics Competition team (went to world champs last year), lots of STEM volunteer/outreach, summer job at robotics startup, JV volleyball and JV/V soccer player. I expect essay and recs to be above average but nothing special.

Other random important things: We are Jewish and she would like to find a campus with an active Hillel/Jewish community. She skipped a grade and has an August birthday so will head off to college just after she turns 17. She will be full pay and we will not make a financially driven decision (thanks to a trust fund from a family member). She is independent and ready to go away from home for college!

Top 25%? students from her HS typically attend UIUC, a few each year go to T40(?) private schools and one or two over the past few years have gone to T20 (it’s hard to ignore a top public university in your backyard with reasonable in-state tuition).

Her not very short, short list is below - very reach and impossible heavy:

Brown (maybe ED?) - visited, loved it esp the open curriculum (I think engineering program is too small)
Columbia - visited, loved it but not crazy about NYC
UPenn - tried to visit but got snowed out
Cornell - not sure why this is on her list aside from it has the best rep for engineering among the Ivies
Tufts - drove through, applying for the Voices program
Rice - visited, loved it, father is alum, not crazy about Texas (politics!)
Northwestern - visited, loved it, family friend is an engineering dept head and has offered to write a letter of rec
Wash U - visited twice including an engineering focused day, likes the double major / minor opportunities
Harvey Mudd - haven’t visited, not accepted in their FAST fly-in program, likes the Claremont Consortium concept
Wisconsin - (match/safety?) - visited, too big

Others under consideration:

Boston U - don’t know much about it but she is intrigued by their honors program
Northeastern - don’t know much about it beyond their co-op program
UIUC - in state and she may not even apply as that is the primary place her HS classmates will go

Thank you for reading this far… (I thought it would be short but there are so many relevant nuances). I feel somewhat confident that she will be accepted at at least one of Rice, Northwestern, Wash U, Tufts in addition to Wisconsin and UIUC but who knows!

Any suggestions on matches/safeties that would be a good fit for her?

2

What about Case Western Reserve University?

I also don’t know that I would call CMU a “primarily engineering” school; it has a very good drama/theater/fine arts program, and a well regarding business school. (But I understand where you are coming from.)

3

University of Rochester?

4

Rice seems like a great fit for her, and she would have the legacy connection at Rice. Your daughter has the stats to get in on her own, but the legacy status should also give her a nice bump in admissions chances.

The politics in Texas as a whole are very right wing. The statewide leaders are all Republicans, and we have two Republican Senators. However, Rep. Beto O’Rourke is running a strong campaign against Sen. Ted Cruz --so maybe that will change. The City of Houston and Harris County, which encompasses Houston and surrounding areas, went Blue in 2016. Many of the local Houston politicians, including the Mayor, are Democrats. The politics of most Rice students lean left.

Rice has a Hilllel group and a good number of Jewish students. https://www.jewishriceu.com
My daughter’s roommate is Jewish and loves Rice.

Rice has Division 1 sports, but sports do not dominate campus life. Many students are involved in club and intramural sports. I assume she will apply to Rice RD. Rice does not fill as large percentage of its class ED as some of the other schools on your daughter’s list.

5

Luckily your daughter has amazing stats and solid EC’s so I would not call any school impossible for her! From what you’ve described, it doesn’t seem like she wants to go to UIUC, but she should at least apply, after all they are ranked in the top ten for mechanical engineering! I would not consider Wisconsin a safety simply because she is out of state and I have very occasionally seen students with similar stats get turned down due to yield protection. It is a high match though! I second whoever suggested Case Western. It is an excellent university, and I think it would be safe to consider it a match for someone with her stats.

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@gandalf78 Agree re CMU - I just meant that if she decides engineering isn’t for her, CMU might not have the other options she is looking for.

@Houston1021 I think Rice is a great fit for her and I keep reminding her that going to school in Texas doesn’t mean she is committed to living in Texas for the rest of her life! My husband continues to follow some Rice sports so she has always had that connection. He ended up at Rice in the 80s when there was so much oil money available - it was cheaper for him to go to Rice then to stay instate at Wisconsin!

Thank you for the Case Western suggestion… it has been on the periphery for us but looks like it merits more investigation.

7

I am worried about yield protection at some schools - they won’t accept her because they don’t think she’ll attend because she has great stats but then she won’t be accepted by the places those schools think she might be…

8

None of these suggestions are private universities, but are very strong in engineering and strong overall and are close to Illinois: University of Minnesota (urban, very strong in engineering), University of Waterloo (very strong in mechatronics, least urban of the 3), University of Toronto (overall very strong, including engineering, in the heart of a city slightly bigger than Chicago).

D16 was looking for something similar when she applied and I can’t think of any schools that aren’t on your list that tick all your boxes. I can think of more reaches though, lol. It’s a tough requirement to be small and strong in mechatronics.

9

@DCCAWAMIIAIL : Regarding the yield acceptance issue you mention (a/k/a “Tufts Syndrome”), you might look at Section C7 of the Common Data Set for the schools of interest; there is an entry styled “Level of applicant’s interest”, which might give you a clue whether the school wants your daughter to show “demonstrated interest” which in turn helps a school assess potential yield.

Also, I am sending you a PM.

10

Thank you everyone for your comments! @gandalf78 I’ve looked at that line in the CDS for the schools - most say either “Not Considered” or “Considered” - whether or not that is really true, who knows!

11

One thing to note: speaking as someone that went to UIUC with 80 of my high school classmates, you will never see them unless you actually actively seek them out. I ran into more of my high school classmates when I lived near Wrigley Field after college than I did during college (including many that I didn’t even realize that went to Illinois at the exact same time). I can’t emphasize this enough: going to UIUC (and any similarly-sized school) is literally like moving to a school that’s the size of a city.

Now, that size in and of itself might be an issue if you’re a student that wants a smaller school environment, which is a perfectly valid reason to not want to attend a large public university. However, I’d always push back on the “all of my classmates are going there” argument to not attend UIUC (or for any person with respect to their own home in-state flagship, for that matter) - you’re literally not going to see them unless you actually want to do so.

At the same time, from a pure academic perspective, UIUC is a higher-ranked engineering school than every school on your daughter’s list (both overall and specifically within mechanical engineering). It’s also not a safety even with your daughter’s high stats - the 25-75th ACT percentile range of this year’s College of Engineering freshman class is 32-35 (so don’t let the acceptance rate and admissions stats for the school overall fool you):

https://admissions.illinois.edu/Apply/Freshman/profile

So, UIUC Engineering is really a match here. Your daughter is well-positioned with her stats and the fact that she’s an in-state female applicant, but it’s also not necessarily a guarantee. I’d also say Wisconsin is a match for engineering since its admissions are fairly similar to UIUC. Purdue is another excellent engineering school that would be a match.

Actual safeties for engineering would be more along the lines of Iowa State, Michigan State, Alabama, etc. Of course, these aren’t really the smaller schools that seem to be your daughter is seeking, but the thing is that the larger state schools often punch above their weight in engineering since scale matters for research and resources in that area more than other disciplines.

Northwestern, WashU and Rice are definitely reaches - you can see all of the stories on here of rejections of 4.0 GPA/36 ACT kids at those types of schools (and that’s even the case with UIUC computer science). Casting a wide net on reach schools also doesn’t seem to yield much success. Instead, you’re better off picking one reach school for early decision (assuming that this is your daughter’s unambiguous #1 choice and you’re willing to make the financial commitment) and then applying to a lot more true matches (e.g. the UIUC/Wisconsin variety) and safeties. There are a lot of high stats kids applying to engineering in particular and those programs often have higher admissions standards than other parts of their respective schools.

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@Frank the Tank not the OP, but how do you find out specific admission stats by engineering school or engineering major? My son is interested in engineering and I want to make sure his safety/match/reach are correctly categorized.

13

Individual schools sometimes post their engineering stats (as UIUC did above).

The American Society of Engineering Education also has profiles of engineering programs across the country with Common Data Set-type information (only engineering-focused). This site might be particularly helpful for what you’re looking for here:

http://profiles.asee.org

14

We did a similar search for a male ME/EE/CS and a female CBE. Daughter had a similar university versus eng school requirement. Hopkins and UVA were also on her list.

Brown - also too small for my kids
Columbia - They did not like the engineering student vibe or required Core. ME lab space was a mess. Not enough industry collaboration on projects
UPenn - Both attend. ME due to endless drone and other robotics labs (GRASP); Dean of Engineering’s research specialty; see Ted Talk video. ME curriculum is flexible with opportunities to add CS and EE. MEs start access to la
CBE for easy daily access to hospital research (see CURF for undergraduate research) and One Penn philosophy combining entrepreneurship, medicine and engineering. Philly is a fun city for students with cheap eats and activities. Endless on campus activities, all with a social component.

Cornell - Beautiful but remote, student run competitive clubs seem to replace lab and project based classes, not enough space for ME electives.
Tufts - Eng too small, can see Boston but definitely suburban
CMU - Great interdisciplinary approach to both robotics and bioengineering, student population too eclectic when combining talented fine arts and engineering, Pittsburgh was not a plus.

Boston U - No defined campus, very familiar but not on either list
Northeastern - Focus is co-op not undergraduate research, no green space, did not want to spend 5 years

15

Santa Clara?

16

Smith would be a match. It only has general engineering, but UMass Amherst (part of the 5 college consortium) might offer some more specific engineering classes where her interests lie. Jewish students there, not a party college, and she would likely get some good merit (up to half tuition) with a guaranteed STRIDE research position from the start of first year. Northampton is a small but fun college town. You’d have to investigate whether it would work with her desired specialization, though.

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Except she is adamantly against an all-girls school!

18

Yes, women’s colleges are not for everyone, but I do encourage you to visit if you can. My daughter was also not interested when she started looking, but she is now a very happy junior on a large merit scholarship heavily involved in some great research.

19

Just to followup on this… daughter ED’d at Rice and just found out she was accepted - very excited! She also applied Early Action to the University of Illinois (accepted), University of Wisconsin (expecting decision tonight) and Northeastern. Thanks to everyone for their input!