<p>Last year I applied to a lot of schools that, in hindsight, were unreasonable choices. I had decent SAT scores when I applied last year as a senior (CR660 M700 W710) and a lot of average extracurriculars. In the end, I was accepted to my state university: PSU-University Park, but with no financial aid whatsoever. That is a big factor for me and my family so I ended up taking the year off instead. I'm now taking a gap year and I took the SATs again in November with much better results (CR680 M800 W760). I'm also doing an internship at an engineering firm in Germany for 6 months starting in January. In my opinion, I'm an entirely different applicant than I was last year at this time. The problem is that I already applied to the top-name schools that I wanted to go to last year and was denied. Now the question is will it be worth it to reapply to these schools with new aspects to my application? </p>
<p>For reference, I want to major in civil engineering and my final GPA was right around 4. The schools I was denied from last year are Duke, Cornell, Penn and UVA. </p>
<p>Thanks for any and all opinions</p>