I’m a junior having a bit of a dilemma choosing and finding colleges. I recently took my SAT and got a 1300; I’m retaking it later this year and studying like a mad man in the meantime as I’d like a score in the high 1400’s or low 1500’s. My GPA has had a constant upward trend. I had a bad freshman year and a mediocre sophomore year and started massively increasing this year (weighted 3.0 freshman, 3.35 sophomore, and 4.4 Junior): I only recently “discovered” AP classes (My school allows 0 AP classes freshman year and 1 AP sophomore year) and I’m taking 3 now with 1 honors and plan to take 5 AP’s next year. My EC’s aren’t very good: I did cross country for a season and track for a season but I’ve mostly focused on climbing as mountaineering is my real passion; Ive been climbing since age 14 and I’ve summited 2 of the major peaks in the lower 48 + a couple smaller ones, with some plans for a couple more major peaks senior year. I’m a member of 2 clubs this year (Math and Young Entrepreneurs) and been a member in Young Entrepreneurs since sophomore year: This year I plan on starting a climbing club and a physics club. I’m secretary for the junior class and will most likely be re-elected next year. I don’t know if these matter but I’m dual citizen with France (I speak French pretty well and I’ll probably go for a seal of bi-literacy). My volunteering time is negligible at the moment: 5-10 hours, but I’m working on it. I live in Northern California. The only criteria for my college is a good physics/engineering program and a challenging curriculum. Im aiming for an average weighted GPA of 3.85 and an unweighted GPA of 3.5. Any ideas on colleges would be helpful: target schools, reaches, safeties, etc.
What is your college budget/year?
Good Engineering can be found at all the UC’s and many of the Cal States. For Physics, any of the top UC’s (UCB/UCLA/UCSD) along with UCSB CCS and Cal Poly SLO.
I’d be entering college in the Fall of 2019, and my budget is decent enough to where I could afford the vast majority of schools.
Cal Poly
“I’m dual citizen with France”
McGill is a very good university with a very strong reputation, and would be very inexpensive for you. You would indeed find “a challenging curriculum”. As a citizen of France you would pay the same tuition as a Canadian. This is also true of any university in the province of Quebec. Concordia is also a good university and is just up the street from McGill. Depending upon just how strong your French is you might also consider Université de Montréal. In general universities in Canada (including Quebec) won’t care about your freshman year grades which looks like it would also help you.
“Im aiming for an average … unweighted GPA of 3.5.”
3.5 would be marginal for McGill, but if you take your freshman year grades out you would probably be fine. You would need to get your SAT up well over 1300 also, but your mid 1400+ target would be fine.
I also agree with @Gumbymom regarding the UCs.
If you would like to travel to New England, you could practice on Mount Washington in the winter.
The closest private engineering college to Mt Washington is MIT at 163 miles. WPI is 186 miles and RPI is 226 miles. These are the three oldest colleges of engineering in the US. They are all different, but WPI is the most different because of a three part project based education where you figure out what to do with the aid of a mentor and show you can do it with projects completed at over 40 centers around the world. One of the project centers is at ETH (Einstein’s alma mater) in Switzerland. Now we are back to the mountains. These are not overseas exchange programs.
In order of selectivity for admission it is MIT, RPI and WPI. All three schools have outstanding student bodies. MIT is probably the most famous STEM school in the world. RPI is the oldest and the most rural in the group. Boston you know. Worcester is the second largest city in New England will eleven colleges…
Before we had Silicon Valley there was Electronics Row on route 128 in Boston, but somehow we lost that crown to those cleaver Californians. We still produce remarkable STEM graduates and you can’t beat the high winds on Mt Washington in January.
The marked improvement in your grades means a lot when an admissions office tries to project the probability of student success. We also know that students do a whole lot better when they are genuinely fired up by a university’s program.
Your statistics do not prove that you cannot succeed at any one of these schools, but admission may be very challenging at MIT.
You can check out WPI @ https://www.wpi.edu/
You can check out RPI @ http://www.rpi.edu/ :bz