Chance me for Engineering @ Harvard, Penn, Duke, Northwestern, Yale

Chance Me / Match Me
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Intended Major: Depending on the school Computer Engineering or Electrical Engineering/ Computer Science

Hooks: Black female in STEM

Location: Oregon

GPA: 3.99 UW/4.4 W

35 ACT

780 Chem and Math 2

APs: my school has a 3 AP limit and blocked me from taking any more AP Bio (4), AP French (4), AP Computer Science Principles (4)

Senior Courseload: US Government, French Independent Study, AP Calculus BC, AP Statistics, AP Physics 1, English 4, Philosophy

Awards: AP Scholar, Harvard Book Award, Science Department Award in Chemistry, Gold in National French Exam, Bronze in National French Exam

Extracurriculars:

Website for Women in STEM. I created a website and blog geared towards the empowerment of women in STEM. Special features on the blog include coding e courses that I created and an interview series with women in STEM. The site has accumulated about 15,000 followers. (9-12)

Diversity Council. I am the head of our school’s diversity group and also serve as head of our school’s Black Student Union. (10-12)

Since 2014, I have volunteered as a Teachers Assistant at a preschool near my house. (9-12)

I‘ve played piano for 12 years at a music school. I coded a program to graph sound waves for music I have played. (9-12)

Math Team. I am on my school’s math team, and some of our competitions involve coding so I am our team’s software specialist in Latek, Python, and Java. (11-12)

Varsity Tennis (10-12)

Varsity Track (9-12). I’m not good enough to get recruited but I’m good for my school with Top 5 times in school history for all my events.

STEM Outreach Club. (11-12) I started this club at my school to have fundraisers to benefit schools with inadequate STEM resources.

Intern at Law Firm (9-12)

Editor on International Science Site (10)

In the additional extracurriculars section for Harvard I put:

Professional Book Reviewer as I receive books from publishers in exchange for honest reviews.

I publish stories on an online publishing platform with my top-rated story ranking 8th in its genre.

Online coding courses

WAVE builtbygirls mentorship program.

I mentioned how I did debate for 4 years in my common app essay, but I never put it in my activity section idk why, I kind of regret it because I had a lot of leadership in it.

I’m really nervous as I don’t have many extracurriculars that pertain to engineering which is my intended major. Thank you so much for all the responses!

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You will be an attractive candidate at all of those schools, but as you probably know, they all have very low admission rates. If I had to bet, I’d put my money on getting into two. But none is certainly a possibility, so be sure to have other reach/safety schools.

Out of curiosity - those are not traditional engineering target schools, why not MIT, Stanford, GA Tech, CMU, Cornell, Purdue, etc.?

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^^^^^was thinking the same thing even Princeton is more engineering oriented than most of your list.

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@racereer @RichInPitt Thank you for the responses. So I forgot to add but I also applied to Stanford. I chose less traditional engineering schools, because I know that I want to couple my engineering major with another major/minor (not 100% sure yet on which), and so I wanted to apply to schools where I would have more of a breadth of options to choose from to explore other options outside of engineering.

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That’s the kind of thing Yale admissions officers love to hear.

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@tdy123 Yale is on my list for the reason that I would also be able to explore other topics out of engineering, I didn’t know the AOs would like that. That’s good to know.

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As you are probably aware, all of these schools have admissions rates in the single digits. If you’re admitted, there’s a high probability you couldn’t afford them, because private schools aren’t as generous as they like to boast. These are hyper-competitive high-reach schools. You’ll need a good comprehensive list of affordable match and safety schools. If you’re doing computers or technology, then prestige won’t mean a hill of beans. It’s an industry based on practical work experience.

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Private schools (even notoriously stingy ones, which none of these are) can be very generous when they really want a candidate. I know those are all high reach schools, but imo this is a very attractive candidate, I suspect at least one of those schools is going to want her to badly enough to make the money work.

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You sound amazing. Can’t wait to hear where you got in. But yes, they are all top schools and predicting is difficult. Good luck!

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@coolguy40 Thanks for the response. I’ve already gotten into my safeties as I applied to them EA, so I didn’t put them on the list. Also, I’m in a financial situation where I am fortunate to not have to worry about paying for college.

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@chb088 @SJ2727 Thank you!

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Why aren’t you applying to the strongest engineering schools, as long as you are applying to colleges with single-digit admissions? Why aren’t you applying to Cornell, UIUC, Michigan, MIT, Berkeley, etc.

Engineering at Harvard, Yale, and especially Penn is not anywhere near the top, and yet acceptance to any of these schools would be as difficult as acceptance to a top engineering school, like Harvey Mudd.

You are a high stats black woman in engineering. Your chances at any engineering school are better than excellent, so you should focus on the best engineering schools, not on schools which may be famous and popular outside of engineering, but which are far from being top notch engineering schools.

PS. what were your safeties?

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@MWolf I chose less traditional engineering schools, because I know that I want to couple my engineering major with another major/minor (not 100% sure yet on which), and so I wanted to apply to schools where I would have more of a breadth of options to choose from to explore other options outside of engineering.
My safeties were TCU, Fordham, and Lewis & Clark. Thank you for responding!

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Did you consider Rice?

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ABET-accredited engineering majors will require at least 5/8 of the four academic years of course work for the major (1/4 for math and natural science, 3/8 for engineering science and engineering design), but many engineering majors at many colleges will require more than that in specific subject requirements. In addition, ABET-accredited engineering majors will have some general education (humanities and social studies) requirements.

If you want to add a second major, you may have to choose courses very carefully to ensure that enough of your major and general education required courses can help you complete the second major.

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@DCCAWAMIIAIL Yes, I did but the school was a bit smaller than the size I’m looking for.
@ucbalumnus Thank you for letting me know!
@alfredm Thank you!