<p>I am applying at a lot of top petroleum engineering schools such as ut, tamu, tulsa, penn state, wvu, marietta, lsu… and a few other schools for engineering: CMU, pitt, and U of M</p>
<p>I guess my only “reach” schools are CMU and U of M</p>
<p>Oh okay. We seem to be interested in the same type of thing. Petroleum engineering is a good major.</p>
<p>Good luck with your applications.</p>
<p>Many of the top 17 schools for petroleum engineering are not super-competitive for admissions:</p>
<p>Colorado School of Mines
Louisiana State University and A&M College
Marietta College
Missouri University of Science and Technology (Formerly University of Missouri-Rolla)
Montana Tech of the University of Montana (Formerly Montana College of Mineral Science and Technology)
New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology
Pennsylvania State University
Texas A&M University
Texas Tech University
The University of Kansas (Formerly University of Kansas)
The University of Tulsa (Formerly University of Tulsa)
University of Alaska Fairbanks
University of Louisiana at Lafayette (Formerly University of Southwestern Louisiana)
University of Oklahoma
University of Texas at Austin
University of Wyoming
West Virginia University</p>
<p>Yeah I saw that while researching a bit. Although petroleum engineering seems like a good major, I think I prefer chemical engineering, biochemistry, or biomedical engineering.</p>
<p>at ivy leagues(well maybe except cornell)+top 15 schools, don’t even bother with a 590(well, unless you are a. a recruited athlete b. URM c. poor d. have major awards that discredit your score)</p>
<p>A lot of them aren’t super competitive as a school but the particular program is</p>
<p>You asked:</p>
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<p>The answer is “no” unless you are willing and committed in a major way to prepare for the retake. If you are truly committed recruit a talented tutor, someone who’ll help you identify the reason for your weak performance, and follow-up one-on-one with exercises to overcome the weakness. This will likely take a significant amount of your time. The payback hopefully is a least a high 600, and generally better reading comprehension.</p>
<p>Thanks for the responses. For example, would it be hard for me to get into University of Delaware’s chemical engineering program? The school is one that I’d definitely get into, but their chemical engineering program is very good, so is that a lot more competitive?</p>
<p>About taking the SAT again, right now I am leaning toward not taking it again even though I am not happy with my critical reading score. I just don’t know if it is worth the time invested, especially when I have to focus on my college applications process along with my grades the first half of senior year.</p>
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What are you are basing this on? Looking up the top-15 schools I was admitted to with a low verbal on Parchment shows I was far from the only non-URM acceptance with a 800 math + lower verbal. For example, the data below shows rate of acceptance among Parchment apps at MIT for non-URM, male (MIT gives a large boost for being female) apps with a 780+ on math SAT + >=3.8 UW GPA with the listed CR scores ranges:</p>
<p>550-590 : 2 out of 7 (too small sample size for accurate estimate)
600-640 : 11%
650-690 : 11%
700-740 : 15%
750-790 : 19%
800 : 20%</p>
<p>Sure, it’s possible that all of the low scoring acceptances had some kind of non-URM hook, although I’d expect filtering for a score on 780+ math to weed out the vast majority of hooks that have subpar academic merit. The trend suggests that a high CR score boosts your chances, such that a perfect 800 has nearly twice the acceptance rate of ~600 CR. However, the acceptance rate does not drop down to anywhere near 0 at lower CR scores.</p>
<p>Note that MIT looks at far more than GPA and test scores. In the CDS, they rank character & personal qualities higher than either category; and they rank course rigor, essays, LORs, ECs, talent, and interview equal to stats. This fits with the acceptance rate for apps with a perfect 4.0 UW GPA + perfect 800 math + perfect 800 verbal being only 21%. The vast majority of the perfect stat apps did not also excel in the non-stat criteria. I’m not saying that the OP can get into MIT, only that his CR score isn’t low enough to dismiss him from consideration. I’d make similar statements about many other top-15 colleges.</p>
<p>Thank you Data10, your response is very informative and exactly the type of response that I was looking to find. I appreciate it.</p>
<p>While I am not applying to any Ivy League schools except for maybe Cornell, this does open my mind somewhat to more competitive schools. I have been stuck with the mentality that a 590 CR score would ruin all of my chances at more competitive schools, but I guess that is not necessarily the case.</p>