Chance/Match a Chem E + Business Rising Senior [MI resident, 3.990 GPA, 36 ACT, 1570 SAT]

I too fail to see why your parents should be disappointed.
You’re doing a lot of challenging things; it’s normal to have things go well sometimes, and to have disappointing results sometimes. This doesn’t look to me like a reason to join the military. (If you wanted a military career, cool, but if that were the case, wouldn’t you be looking at ROTC? For that matter, West Point has ChemE also, though you’d have to get moving quickly if you wanted to become an Academy candidate.)

Do in-state applicants for UMich with these kind of stats and EC’s really get rejected? I’m finding it hard to imagine that you won’t have the option of UMich as a top-tier university which, at in-state rates, will cost less than half of what any of your other schools cost. If you’re really concerned about what you should and shouldn’t ask of your parents, this seems like the win-win option to me. The Ross business minor is open to all students; why not just go for ChemE with a business minor, and get an MBA later? If you want to work in ChemE after you graduate, you’ll be going for the same jobs whether you have a whole double-major in business or not; you’re not going to jump straight into a management role at 22, because of a second major - you’ll need work experience in your technical field of expertise.

The whole thing about your future looking bleak (because USNCO didn’t go well??) seems like a mental health red flag to me. Perhaps you need more support. This degree of catastrophizing from a ridiculously high-performing high school student speaks to some worrisome distortions in your perspective. Take a breath and find a trusted adult to discuss your feelings with. I understand that some things haven’t gone as well as you wanted this year, but your reaction to this seems out of all proportion to what is really happening.

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