UPenn ED? (Warning: It's a fairly long post)

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

Hi,
Next year I’ll be a senior and I’m very interested in UPenn. I wanted to get some input as to how I might fair in admissions. If there are bad reactions, I’ll consider applying ED to Cornell, another school that I’m very interested in. I do realize that this advice shouldn’t be blindly accepted, but I appreciate others’ inputs (especially those with admission backgrounds!).

Stats:
SAT: 1530 (super scored); 780 math, 750 reading
GPA UW: 3.92
GPA W: 4.355
Class Rank: Top 5% (my school doesn’t get any more specific); while my GPA is lower than many of those on CC, my school is known to grade hard. I’m probably in the top 4 students for GPA W
Background: Caucasian, first-generation immigrant from the Middle East: Yugoslavia
Major: Engineering
Recommendations: Both should be good, probably 7-8/10
Essays: Estimated 8/10, very strong English programs at my school and I’m near the top
Subject Tests: 760 math, 730 bio. I’m retaking them on the 25th and will hopefully get 800 on both. I’m accustomed to not studying and was pretty busy, which is why my scores were a bit on the low side (for UPenn). However, I’m studying now.

Freshman:
W 4.27 UW 4.0
I took the hardest schedule available which included 2 honors classes and 1 advanced class (Geometry, Biology and Spanish)

Sophomore:
W 4.23 UW 3.95
Once again the hardest possible schedule, this time including 2 honors classes and 2 advanced classes

Junior:
W 4.55 UW 3.85
3 APs including AP Bio, AP Stat and AP Lang
2 Honors including Spanish, Pre-Calc
Unweighted classes were Band (I’ve been playing the trumpet for 7 years) and History (I opted out of APUSH)

Senior:
NA, probably same as junior year
5 APs including CSP, CSA, Physics, Calc BC, Spanish
No honors available - other classes will be wellness (mandatory), band, and a normal English class

My School: I go to a fairly small public school, about 1,000 students total. We do have people go to prestigious colleges, and we seemingly are pretty well esteemed. After last year’s admissions, however, I’m not sure. Only one student went to an ivy (UPenn) and had several hooks. Another student from my grade is already committed to UPenn for athletics, so I’m not sure how this impacts me (he will be entering in the class of 2020, however). Also not sure if this is relevant, but niche rates us in the top 5% of public high schools nationally.

ECs:
Founder and owner of 3D printing company: I sell stuff through 3 e-commerce websites (soon with Amazon as well), advertise through 7 different companies, have 1 employee, a website (also does tech reviews in addition to promoting my items), and 2 social media sites that are pretty popular (will have at least 1k followers by November, probably around 2k)

Founder of animal care business: About 15 regular clients, I take care of dogs, cats, ducks, chickens, etc. Makes a few thousand dollars a year

Program Leader and Captain of SafeRides: After some terrible car crashes and DUIs, last year now graduating seniors created a SafeRides program for our school’s town. This year I’ll be program leader and a captain of my own team. This involves me getting sponsorships (currently have about $2k), getting t-shirts, dealing with the parent organization, and leading 15 other teams with 150+ volunteers.

Captain of Sikorsky Challenge: Next year I’ll be captain, last year we won. The company Sikorsky challenges us to build in-depth theoretical models with new tech in old planes. It’s a year-long project and we compete against about 10 other schools, many of them being magnet schools

Lead Council Member of First Robotics: Next year I’ll be on the lead counsel. We made it to the quarterfinals last year for a regional competition, which is solid considering we’re an entirely student-run team with 4 years of experience. I’m on a “council” that tells everyone else what to do (there are about 30 people who participate on the team)

Science Bowl, head of (fuel cell) car racing: I’m involved in science bowl and help run a small team that ultimately builds and races a small model car against other schools at UConn. Came in second last year and I’ll probably come in first this year, although this won’t be in time for admissions

10-time school ping pong tournament winner: I like ping pong, I think this adds to my application because it’s unique. Pretty self-explanatory.

Cofounded Key Club: I co-founded and served a leadership role in Key Club, which is a national organization that organizes and leads various community service events. We needed it in order to establish SafeRides.

Science Research: Next year I’ll be participating in independent research with my chemistry teacher

Volunteer Spanish and Math tutoring: I tutor underclassman within our school for free, they are before-school programs that I help out in

Paid Math tutoring - I tutor lower level math students for $

Organized a food drive 3 times at my school: The items went to a nearby pantry in a low-income community

Student Steering Committee: I’m a part of a selective group of about 15 people that has meetings with the principal to discuss current issues with school and how we can improve the school environment.

Mental Health Support Trained - Took a 2-day course that trained me in recognizing mental health issues, and how we should help (as in referring them to an adult)

Some other stuff: 2-time lacrosse JV captain, freshman and JV soccer captain, 3 varsity letters total, future chess team member (although I didn’t participate, we won last year. I’ll be the first table this year), helped Breast Cancer Awareness student-run organization (we raised $20,000), first seat trumpet in band for 2 years, ran a soccer clinic that taught younger players basic skills.

Awards:

  • Nominated for Governor’s Scholars Award (1 per school) and made it to the semi-finals (top 60 out of 800+)
  • Lockheed Martin Engineering Award (chosen by STEM staff at my school)
  • First place Sikorsky Challenge
  • Second place UConn Hydrogen Fuel Cell car race
  • National Honors Society
  • Spanish Honors Society
  • Diploma with Distinction (school award)
  • Ronald Reagan Award (school award)

I’m also full pay, but that shouldn’t make a difference for UPenn I don’t think.

Side note: I was thinking since I had so many ECs that I’d primarily speak to my 3D printing business. Good idea or no?

Thank you to everyone who spent their time reading all this!!!

2

You are a competitive applicant. Your stats are good and your ECs are decent. Write great essays and you could get accepted to any of these schools

3

Agreed Adcoms are weird lol. Granted it was a hook (haitian/american) her stats (not as high 30 ACT), and EC’s not nearly as expansive and she got into Yale.

You just never know. Davidson my daughter’s favorite school had a NO HOOKED white male accepted with a 28 ACT don’t know his GPA maybe he knew someone.

If you are applying ED just pick the one you want to go to most and best of luck!

4

What do you want to study ? Career goals ?

Have you considered any other schools ?

Why Penn ?

Why Cornell ?

5

You are competitive. Agree with picking your top choice for ED and going for it. Have match and safeties on your list too.

6

I do understand that you want to enroll in an engineering school, but am curious if you have a specific major in engineering in mind.

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I’m with @Publisher here: what (besides being “Ivy League” colleges with comparatively higher admissions rates) makes Penn your #1 choice and Cornell your ‘fall back’ if CC feedback says Penn is too much of a reach for you? (are you thinking that a 10.4% admission rate is meaningfully different than an 8.4% admission rate?). They are strikingly different institutions & college experiences, despite the fact that they are in the same sports league.

fwiw, I think it would be helpful for you to consolidate and focus your ECs (some of which are explicitly linked already). A cursory look suggests strands of community service, school leadership, athletics and engineering. Putting a shape on it will help make it clear what’s really important to you.

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Thanks everyone for the great responses, I appreciate it.

As for a specific major of interest, I really don’t know yet. I’ve done research into different fields, flip-flopped a bit, but I don’t have a solid enough opinion to be decisive yet.

Also, I understand the confusion. Saying I want to apply to UPenn ED with Cornell as another possible ED sounds strange, especially when considering their very different cultures. That being said, a lot of thought has gone into this. Cornell actually came into my radar relatively recently after a visit I very much enjoyed. I’ve lived pretty off the grid my whole life, and Ithaca reminds me a bit of that. I also like their looser engineering programs that would allow me to take up until second semester Sophomore year to declare which field I’m interested in. UPenn is smaller, which I like, has strong programs and clubs (which Cornell does too), and I am interested in switching things up and trying the city. There is some other stuff, but that’s essentially my thought process.

I would like to note that I don’t want to do engineering all my life. While I do enjoy it, I would much rather manage a business then do more hands-on work my whole life. Maybe this leads to an MBA, maybe not - obviously it’s a bit early to tell. Both these schools are good for college startups, which is something else I may be interested in.

Percentage-wise, obviously not a big difference. I guess I’d just try to maximize my chances, even if minimally different. Maybe me saying that was just an element of indecision, I don’t know. I also think more people will be applying to UPenn than Cornell from my school, based off of word of mouth alone.

collegemom3717,
I’ve been worried about my ECs being too loosely related as well. Does consolidating my ECs involve taking those out that are not important to my engineering resume (i.e. cofounder of key club?). While I understand the problem, I have a tough time justifying removing relatively significant aspects of my application. I’ve considered hiring a college counselor for an hour to see what they can do about focusing my application toward my major or even general trends of interests.

9

It’s not a matter of removing things that are relatively significant: it’s identifying what is actually significant to you, and presenting it so that it stands out. That is an exercise that only you can do - a college counselor or adult friend can ask you questions that might help you articulate your thoughts but really it’s about you. Imo, that process of thinking it through- which can be genuinely hard- is one of the few parts of the college application process that is actually useful to the student. I strongly encourage you to work on thinking that through for yourself, using friendly adults as sounding boards. As you do you will not only see ways to collect the smaller things into larger categories so that the theme is clear, but you will also see ways to connect the dots.

Remember also that you don’t have to focus your application solely towards your intended major or your vocational interests- you are applying to college as a still-evolving human, not applying for a job where their only interest is in how well you can do it, so the resume model is not necessarily a helpful approach to applications. Take a look at these posts from the MIT admissions team:

http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/there_is_no_formula
http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/applying_sideways

Also, you might want to look at Notre Dame’s Integrated Engineering and Business Practices Curriculum which is an option within the engineering course (https://engineering.nd.edu/academics/businesspracticesprogram), and Trinity College Dublin’s Engineering with Management course, which is a fully integrated degree (https://www.tcd.ie/mecheng/engman/). I’m assuming you’re already familiar with Penn’s combined options.

10

Cornell engineering for sure would not be any easier to get into than Penn engineering. By the way, are your male or female?

Why do you say you’re from the middle east if you’re from “Yugoslavia,” which has not existed since 1992, before you were born.

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If you are interested in various different things (like Business and Engineering…), Penn is a good choice due to their (i will butcher this…) Total University culture, which opens up essentially the entire course catalog to all students – as I understand it. Also, as a Penn student you would be able to take classes at Swarthmore, Haverford and Bryn Mawr, which would be helpful if you felt like spending some time in a (more) rural environment. Those three campuses are lush and lovely. They would also expand your education simply by virtue of their LACness.

Cornell is also committed to great breadth of education, though i’m not sure if the course catalog is quite as open as Penn’s.

With regard to applying ED, I’m among those who think you should only do that if you have a clear favorite. If you are having a hard time deciding between or among schools, I wouldn’t apply ED.

To that end, I think you just have to decide which environment you’d rather be in (rural vs. urban) and which curriculum would allow you to better explore your interests. They offer quite similar academic quality – that shouldn’t be an issue.

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^^btw: not sure many would concur that the former Yugoslavia was considered ‘Middle East’.

13

collegemom,
Two very good posts. I’m going to take your advice and reflect independently on where/how my ECs fit my personality/story. Also, I am familiar with UPenn’s Jerome Fisher Program/joined business and engineering opportunities, but from what I’ve heard they’re extremely selective. However, if the day ever comes where I have an opportunity to, I will apply.

My Mom came from Yugoslavia, hence why I said I’m a first generation immigrant from there. Clearly I’m not from the country. But yeah, not middle east at all. As is probably clear I don’t have strong ties to the region, and only know a bit about our family history there. However I wasn’t considering this to be a serious part of my post; emphasis on ECs and stats.

prezbucky, very helpful. Taking classes on the other three campus’ sounds great for me. I remember hearing about this a while back but forgot about it, and I would like to have the rural balance (and diverse culture!). I am going to mention that Cornell has 6000+ courses, but both schools have plenty of classes I’d be interested in. I’m going to have to do some more comparison on environment+curriculum, as you said.

14

Cornell students can take classes at any of the undergraduate colleges.