<p>I’ll keep this brief: I’m highly drawn to both Union College(NY) and WPI.
Problem: I have a high need. I’ll can pay upto $25-30k. Both are need aware.
But, Union’s ED2 notification is on Feb 1, and CSS deadline is also Feb 1. So I believe Union becomes need-blind for ED/ED2 applicants. Even otherwise, Union gives a lot more aid, even to international students. So I need to know if I have a better shot at WPI to decide whether I need to apply under ED2 to Union or not.</p>
<p>Me: International(Indian) student.
Major(sure of this): Computer Engineering.</p>
<p>Curriculum:
9th and 10th - English, PCM, Computer Applications.
1st and 2nd PUC(11th and 12th) - English, PCM, Electronics.</p>
<p>9th: 80%
10th ICSE Boards: 90%
11th: 65% (I had a genuine reason. Counsellor has explained this. Curriculum, board of education, examination type changed. And it’s fairly common here in India.)
12th Mid Year: 81.33% (PCM and Electronics have significant improvement.)</p>
<p>(Please don’t convert and compare to GPAs. American and Indian edu systems are very different.)</p>
<p>Essay: Pretty good. Not stellar. But interesting and good.
LORs and Counsellor Eval: Epic! They gave me a fair idea about what they had written. Computers teacher said she wrote a 2-(PDF-)pages’ letter.</p>
<p>SAT I: 1960 (CR - 570, Math - 720, Writing - 670)
SAT II: Math L2 - 750, Physics - 730</p>
<p>ECs: </p>
<p>We don’t have the concept of student clubs. Most schools don’t here. So these are just activities.
I’ve sent them a resume which has all the below stuff, along with links to the actual apps and docs and stuff.</p>
<p>(Misc., unrelated to major. Counsellor and recommenders have put in good stuff about these skills.)
- Playing guitar since 7 years. Lead Guitarist for school bands for all 4 years of HS.
- Gamer; Gaming contests.
- Sanskrit Literary Contests.
- Community Service: 90-100 hrs. Trained poor kids at a local NGO in Computers(using computers, internet, MS Office.)</p>
<p>(Related to my interest)
- Lot of inter-school programming contests.
- Unpaid internship at a startup. Built their Android app and backend stuff.(Which is impressive, considering that I did the whole thing myself and has some advanced programming used in it. Hope they’ll see it.)
- Winner of Google Code-In 2012.
- Built a Android-Phone-Bluetooth-controlled Quadrotor. Have submitted a good PDF documentation of this, with pics and videos. (I think this will be significant to WPI, since they value Robotics talent a lot.)
- Knowledge of lot of programming languages/skills, which I’ve put in the resume and about which computer teacher has also talked about in her LOR.(If this holds any significance.)
- Some more computer and electronics projects, which are also pretty good.</p>
<p>I’m so grateful that you’ve spent your time reading this. Thank you so much! Any prediction/chance-ing appreciated!</p>
<p>P.S: I’ve applied to WPI under EA2.</p>