Chance Me: Top Engineering schools in Northeast

DadTwoGirls
Wed, 24 Aug 2022 17:36:34 +0000

Just my opinion. I think that you are doing super well and have a good list.

The four things I would be most careful about would be ED, fit, safeties, and finances.

You want to do your best to make sure that you are applying to schools that will be a good fit for you, and where you will be comfortable. This is particularly true for your ED schools since you are making the choice to attend up front rather than waiting to get acceptances.

As one example regarding ED, I wonder how you would feel if you get into Northeastern ED2, and the same day get accepted to MIT and have to turn it down. MIT is a “fit” school – it is exceptionally academically demanding and you have to want to work that hard for a full four years for it to be a good fit for you. However, given your excellent results to this point is seems like it is at least possible that you might get accepted.

nick11111:

My GCs just tend to be extremely conservative.

To me this is quite reasonable. Admissions at the top schools (Cornell, MIT, U.Penn level) is indeed hard to predict for the top students. Thus making sure that you are happy with your safeties and that they really are safeties makes a lot of sense, even though you will probably end up at a match or a reach.

I do wonder about adding another SUNY. Otherwise just make sure that the schools that you are applying to are a good fit and that you will be able to afford them.

Also keep in mind that whichever of the very good universities on your list you end up graduating from, ten years from now you will most likely be working alongside graduates from many of the other schools on your list and on the most part no one will care which school each of you graduated from. One reason to attend a top school such as MIT or Cornell is just to prove to yourself that you can do it. It takes a lot of work (over four years of high school plus another four years of university) to do this.