<p>Computer Engineering. I know my math isn’t terrific but I just have a few small areas in which I do poorly.</p>
<p>Extremely small public high school (avg. 17 people per grade)
Rarely sends students outside of North Dakota (Might have had one ivy in 10 yrs)</p>
<p>My GPA is 3.9 unweighted (as we have no AP classes there aren’t weighted GPAs)
ACT scores are
Composite 32
English 34
Math 29
Science 29
Reading 35</p>
<p>ECs include
Piano for 11 years (attended summer camp 9-10-11)
Mentoring 11th
Varsity VB 11th (lettered)
Speech 9-10-11 (lettered)
Summer Drama 9-10-11
Speech Play 11
Girls State (coming up)
Relay for Life (participated in last year, will this coming year)
Yearbook Staff 9th
Babysitting 9-10</p>
<p>I really am not sure about which schools are Good Matches & which are reaches (or those schools that I have no chance of getting into no matter what)
I’m re-taking the ACT this fall, with more studying and all.</p>
<p>Anyway, what I have right now are
Reaches: Columbia (big reach :/), Carnegie Mellon, Rose-Hulman, MIT, Northwestern (would like to know which I even HAVE a chance in before I try to narrow them down)
Matches (???) : Grinnell, Washington U in St. Louis, Worcester Polytechnic
Safeties: U of Minn, U of ND, Colorado School of Mines (Not crazy about the state schools in my area [ND] but haven’t decided on any elsewhere) </p>
<p>I’m likely going to be able to make only two college trips: one this summer and one during the school year. During the summer we’re taking a ‘family trip’ to Nebraska so I thought I’d take a look at U of Nebraska and hopefully Creighton, if just to get an idea of a private university.
Other trip would be by train and therefore couldn’t be too terribly far… furthest would probably be Indiana (My dad is in love with Notre Dame)</p>
<p>Really?
I don’t want to be given false hope.</p>
<p>Some additional useful info: I will need significant financial aid, and hopefully my living on a farm (aka. BIG property value but very low gross income) won’t warp the financial aid I receive.</p>
<p>My parents told me that they would be willing to pay 5k, which is about what the online estimator I filled out had said (although it was one that took out the equity of the farm if you lived on it)</p>
<p>Other schools I’ve been looking at but don’t yet know how to categorize: Duke, University of Notre Dame, Purdue, Rochester Institute of Technology & Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.</p>
<p>I agree with DukeAlum03, the geographic diversity thing will REALLY help, even at a place like Columbia, and you have the grades/scores to back it up.</p>
<p>Really? I’m not saying my scores aren’t good, but compared to people who’ve been rejected/waitlisted at Columbia, they’re definitely in the lower range.</p>
<p>My SAT II score on a practice test was in the 560 range (Alg II, would have likely been lower in Physics)… I’m getting practice books to study over the summer, but not having AP classes is going to hurt. </p>
<p>3 of 18 is my class rank Not so hot, no. 1 & 2 had likely a single B each all through high school.</p>
<p>First, run the financial aid calculators and talk to schools. I think you’re going to find that getting around owning valuable land is tough. Colleges simply expect you to borrow against it. Make sure you have a good handle on whether you’ll get adequate need based aid before making a list. A lot of people don’t do this and end up at their state school. Keep in mind that as an OOS student state schools can also be expensive.</p>
<p>Your stats aree weak for your reaches, but schools do love female engineers. Try to raise math and maybe take some advanced math this summer.</p>
<p>Bumping this up. I’ll check with Financial Aid at those schools very soon, but if I don’t have a chance of admission anyway, I didn’t think there would be a point to check :)</p>
Not so hot, no. 1 & 2 had likely a single B each all through high school.</p>