al6200

I'm a sophomore student at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) and I've been thinking about transferring to a school with a more general, less engineering focused curriculum for my junior year. Do you think I have a chance at the engineering schools at the following universities:

Johns Hopkins
U. Penn
Dartmouth
Cornell
Brown
U. Maryland

With these stats:

GPA: 3.79 (will probably be slightly higher by the time I apply)
In EE Major: 4.0
SAT: 2170
SAT IIs: Math 800, Physics 740
President of a few clubs, fairly involved. Debate, some volunteering.

HS GPA: 3.4, ranked near the top 20%
Very few ECs.

If you don't think that I would be competitive in the admissions process at those schools, are there any other schools that you might suggest for an engineering student looking for a more balanced university?

SSK 91

I think u have a good shot at UMD and may be Cornell

al6200

Hmm. So I guess that means that UPenn, Dartmouth, and Hopkins are reaches? That was to some extent what I expected.

Any other suggestions for schools in the range of Cornell? I have to say, though, that I'd want a school in that range to cost less than 30k after financial aid.

I would consider state schools like Georgia Tech, Berkeley, or UNC Chapel Hill; but I don't know if they would provide enough financial aid to make it an economically wise decision to transfer. I can only get in state status in Maryland.

jim1980

Most top schools have space problem when it comes to transfer.

Cornell, due to its relative larger size, offer some spaces. So that's realistic possibilities.

Since you have limitation of fund, maybe Cornell (top choice), Maryland (safety) and a couple of other schools (Ga Tech, John Hopkins) you like and see what happen if you can get funding. I won't apply Brown and Dartmouth. Both have very small engineering department and it is almost impossible to get in anyway.

melonbread91

Hopkins is also fairly competitive for engineering I believe. Then again, their admit rates are quite low (around 10%) and often unpredictable. In recent years, I think there has been a year where they didn't accept any transfer students.

TheMan777

I think Georgia tech is supposed to be like 25k with everything included (not sure - I checked very briefly a while back when deciding to apply). There are some also great engineering schools like University of Illinois - Urbana Champaign and University of Michigan - Ann Arbor, which have some of the best engineering programs, in many categories for that matter (this of course is in addition to Georgia Tech, which is a top engineering school).

All schools that I mention have high acceptance rates with great education (by great - I mean almost all of their engineering majors rank in the top 10 in multiple categories - meaning that since you are a general engineer, you could decide and still be at a great school for what you want to do)...

al6200

Here are the admittance numbers for the schools that I'm thinking about applying to. It seems prudent to have one safety, two targets, one high target, and then one reach. I don't want to pay to have to apply to more than five schools:

U. Maryland: 58% (safety)
Georgia Tech: 37% (target)
U. Penn: 16.8% (high target)
Brown: 12% (reach)
Johns Hopkins: 9.8% (reach)
Dartmouth: 6.9% (reach)
Cornell Engineering: 6.5% (reach)

I wonder if Cornell admits so few engineering students because admissions are actually that competitive, or if they have an issue with students coming from non-engineering schools applying without the proper background to begin an engineering education.

TheMan, I have thought about applying to other state schools. I think that I would really enjoy going to Berkeley or UCLA, but they are both out of my price range. I also wouldn't want to transfer into a school that isn't much academically stronger than WPI, because there are inherent social, academic, and extracurricular costs to changing schools.

al6200

How likely is it for an OOS student to get 10k of aid at Georgia Tech? I don't know anything about financial aid probability for out of state students.

CCillinois

Cornell's engineering acceptance rate was near 5% this year for transfers.

Their overall higher acceptance rate is mis-leading.

al6200

Right. My only speculation is that there are students from 2-year schools applying to Cornell Engineering who don't have the right background, which would make the acceptance rate among qualified students somewhat higher than 5%.

al6200

Hmm. If Brown and Dartmouth are too difficult into and have too small of engineering programs, than this might be a good list:

U. Maryland: 58% (safety)
Georgia Tech: 37% (target)
Northwestern: 22% (target)
U. Penn: 16.8% (reach)
Johns Hopkins: 9.8% (reach)

NEU2NU

@al6200, those number represent the percent admitted for all majors right? Or are they just for engineering?

al6200

Those are all overall numbers.