Hello, I am a Junior this year attending Paso Robles High School, in California. I would like to know what are my chances into getting into a Top Engineering School, or maybe a recommendation to an engineering school where I will be likely to get accepted.
I am a Hispanic Male and I have a deep passion for: engineering, math, science, and designing and building robots. I have been in several clubs in my school including Key Club, Lion’s Club, FFA, and Robotics Club. I was the Vice President of the Lion’s and a Green-hand member of the FFA. I am currently Treasurer and Secretary of Robotics and I will be the 2015-16 Robotics President. I have been working since 8th grade and now part own a family business. I spend all my time helping out with my business or building robots. I currently have 124 hours of community service throughout my high school career. Serving in my community is a passion for me and I do it to put a smile on my fellow people. I am also enrolled in AVID which helps me apply for colleges and decides what is right for me. Now I have been taking Honors classes since Freshman year and I am Top 30% of my class. Due to some personal problems in Freshman and Sophomore year, I was lacking in my grades and hit 2 D’s in 2nd semester Honor’s History and 1st semester Honor’s English. My Average Non weighted GPA is a 3.0 and my weighted GPA is a 3.5. My lowest grade for a science or math class was a C+ in Biology. I excel in Math and Science and now have devoted into academics. My First semester of Junior year went rather well and now I am significantly improving with my non weighted GPA at a 3.8 and weighted GPA at a 4.1. I have also taken the PSAT twice and have received an average of 45 on Writing 70 on Math and a 46 on Critical Reading. I have received a total of 11 college letters from colleges all over the country such as Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Northern Arizona University, Santa Clara University, Oregon State University, Seattle Pacific University. I take at least 3 AP or Honors classes every year and now I have been improving. I have done JV Soccer and JV cross country and now this year I am doing Varsity Track and Field. My outside extracurriculars are mainly Mobile Robotics. I compete in VEX and Skills USA, once coming in 11th place in VEX regionals and 5th place in VEX the next year. In Skills I have competed once and won 1st place in Regionals and got 6th place in State. I am continuing Skills this year and I am going to compete in Regionals for Skills USA next week. I have also been honored with an invitation to the National Congress of Science hosted by Buzz Aldrin this Summer. I am also looking forward to attending COSMOS this summer as well. Thank you for your patience !
Without test scores it’s hard to say.
Thank you meriks, I am enrolled for my First SAT in March, so I’ll post the scores later on in the year!
Yeah you definitely need the SAT or ACT (maybe take both, as some students do better on one test as compared to the other). But anyways back to your main point: it depends on what part of the robotics you enjoy more. If you enjoy the programming of the robots I would suggest Electrical Engineering. However, if you like the physical building and assembly of robots, you should go Mechanical. I would suggest you majorly step up junior year because your first two years hurt your chances at a top engineering school. It depends on your scores, but I’d say your best bet is something along the lines of maybe Michigan State? I’m not sure where you’re from or what type of school you’d want to go to, but the schools that I generally think of when it comes to engineering (MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, GT, Michigan) are way out of your reach.
You sound like a student any university would be glad to have. I like how you describe yourself and come across. For instance, you are clear on what your passions are and have generally done EC’s that build on them. Your grades have an upward trend, and you are challenging yourself. Some colleges look at freshman year grades, and some don’t. In your research, you can check on that on the admissions page and slant your list accordingly.
I agree with the other posters that you might consider the SAT and ACT, as you may do better on one of them vs the other. You should consider getting some test prep (hire an older friend who has done well on the test, and/or buy a book of practice tests and actually time yourself doing them) and plan to take the sat at least twice. Once you have your first score, you can focus on just the parts you need to improve on and study over the summer.
You are in California: which universities there do you see yourself attending/think you are a good fit for? There are many good choices! If you give us your list so far, we may be able to suggest similar fits in other regions.
Thank you Cassidy ! Well these are my categories for schools
Dream School: Cal Tech
Roechester Polytechnic Institute
MIT
UCLA
Goals: California Polytechnic Institute aka Cal Poly
UC Davis
Texas A&M
Safety schools that I will get in:
Santa Clara University
University of Colorado
Seattle State
Thank you !
Thank you DM! Yes I know what is out of my reach and is quite disappointing knowing I could have done a lot better my two years, Mechanical Engineering is the career I would like to have! I will look into Michigan State! I am planning to take both since I feel like I would do much better on the ACT. Thank you once again
You should apply to Purdue university, great engineering school, and not that hard to get in.
I’ll look into that as well 
Your list of schools is very on target. The UCs are very competitive for engineering, but ME has better chances than some. Consider UCSB or UCI as well, although I can see you excelling at Davis for sure. And Cal Poly.
SCU and CU Boulder (I’m assuming Boulder for engineering? Or Colo. Springs campus?) have great engineering programs that IMO are on the ascent, and the quality of life at both places is excellent (happy students). This means they may be harder to get in to in the future (CU had a record-breaking number of apps this year, for various reasons).
I’m not sure what you meant in your original post when you said you had received 11 college letters. What did the letters say?
Honestly I think you’re aiming a little high for what you described since engineering is so competitive. It’s definitely great that you’ve been improving that shows good things about your character. But your PSAT score would translate into a 1610 SAT (you add them and multiply by 10) which is very low for what your goals are. Your math score is definitely good but you should try to improve on reading and writing. I know plenty of people with SATs in the 2000s+ and unweighted 4.0s that didn’t get into UCLA or even Cal Poly for that matter. You have a few low grades and lack of AP classes so those might hold you back on an application but I’m very impressed by your extra curriculars so that’s a plus. At this point it seems like your ‘goal’ schools are more of ‘reach’ schools but I definitely think you can turn that around since you’ve been improving and you have a lot of great extra achievements. You just really study up for the SATs (and subject tests) and write some kick ass essays. Btw you should know Cal Poly doesn’t look at what your ECs are at all and there’s no essay; they only know your grades and SATs but as far as I know the rest of your schools do look at ECs and essays.