<p>It isn’t that you came off as arrogant, I just wanted to make sure that you can’t bank on acing everything to raise your GPA like that. There are always speed bumps along the way, and you rarely see them coming, so its better to assume you are applying with that 3.62, not a 3.85. If you hit the 3.85, then wonderful. You should apply to a few schools that would be a reach with a 3.62 but be a match with a 3.85 just in case you do pull it off, but you can’t neglect the lower ranked schools because you assume you will get that higher GPA. That was merely what I was trying to get you to think about. You know what they say about what happens when you assume things, right?</p>
<p>Anyway…</p>
<p>Many schools, especially state schools (UIUC, Ga Tech, Purdue) have high acceptance rates as well as top notch engineering reputations. That doesn’t hurt their ability to get jobs. Given, ASU is not quite at that level, but the same principle holds. Acceptance rates don’t mean that much. It has been discussed here ad nauseum how most engineering schools aside from, say, MIT or other HUGE named schools are self-selective, and there aren’t a ton of people who apply who are grossly underqualified like what happens at MIT. Therefore, most acceptance rates are artificially high. Really, no one will look at your school’s acceptance rate as a negative.</p>
<p>Party school status really doesn’t have a ton to do with job placement either. Wisconsin, for example, is known as a party school as well, yet it has excellent academic reputation. Just because the school parties a lot doesn’t mean an individual student did, and furthermore, most employers aren’t going to care if you partied in college (in fact most of your bosses probably partied in college too), they are going to care whether you know your stuff and can produce results for them.</p>
<p>Job placement and grad school placement really comes down to two things: your own personal performance in school such as GPA, extracurriculars, research, test scores (for grad school), and internships, and the academic reputation of your school (a much bigger factor for grad schools than most jobs). ASU, while not MIT, still has a respectable reputation in industry and academia.</p>
<p>If you want to transfer because YOU don’t like the party atmosphere, then go for it, I encourage it. You should go where you will feel most comfortable. But don’t think that employers are going to look at ASU and snicker about it, because they won’t. The party school and acceptance rates won’t even cross their mind. I am sure a co-worker or two might ask you about it later on down the road, but that’s about it. If you like ASU, then stay there.</p>
<p>Sorry for not addressing your original question. I thought it more important to address a few misconceptions you had. That said, your GPA (3.62) is actually quite good (higher than my overall undergrad GPA was and I am a Ph.D. student now). You don’t really have enough credits yet for a school to overlook your high school stats though, so the ACT/SAT scores may hurt you a bit there. I would say at the very least you could move laterally to a school of similar caliber. Depending on your major, you MAY be able to sneak into a Purdue or somewhere similar to that as well. I just don’t know how much individual schools will weight your high school stats vs. a very limited albeit good sample of college classes.</p>