<p>The Essentials
Current School: Fairleigh Dickinson University
Major: Electrical Engineering
Classes taken:
Pre Calculus, Calc I, II, III - All A’s
Chem I - A
Phys I, II - A
Etc…
Current GPA: 4.0
SAT: 2250/2400 (780 Math)
Extracurricular Activities: Alpha Sigma Pi member, played in various intramural sports offered. </p>
<p>High School
Crashed and burned and graduated with an average GPA (3.3) due to terrible teachers sophomore and junior year and essentially lost motivation and confidence.
SAT: 1980/2400
Extracurricular: Double black belt in two styles of karate, played tennis in the USTA circuits locally, French Club senior officer, Latin Club member.</p>
<p>**Other info: **
Applied to close to eight colleges (including Ivy’s -.-) during high school and failed to get into everyone of them and refused to enroll at Rutgers due to my great dislike of their engineering program. I entered Fairleigh Dickinson as a Spring Freshman. I am now in my second semester at FDU.</p>
<p>Used to be undecided but realized that mathematics flowed for me and I was able to grasp complex topics and absolutely love the competition in the world of engineering. Chose electrical engineering because it is one of the most difficult and prestigious degrees in engineering.</p>
<p>Ultimate Question:
Do I have a chance to be accepted into the engineering programs at Columbia, Duke and UPenn?</p>
<p>Though your extracurricular activities in college are a little bit weak, I would say that you have a shot at the schools you are looking at. Yet remember for almost everyone, those are all reaches, so it is hard to tell what exactly your chance is. Good luck!</p>
<p>YOU screwed up in high school, stop trying to blame it on anyone but yourself. I’m just letting you know how immature it sounds to blame your bad grades on anyone but yourself, especially the teachers. For the love of god don’t put that as an excuse in any of your essays.</p>
<p>You should also really broaden your horizons and stop looking only at the very elite schools which you seem to only have an interest in due to their prestige. I’m not saying you won’t get in because miracles do happen sometimes but don’t set yourself up for disappointment.</p>
<p>Don’t worry about your high school record. I too had terrible teachers my Junior year, and it most definitely effected my grades. That said, you have obviously moved on and are finding success at FDU. You have a shot at all of those programs, it does not hurt to apply. Good luck with the application process.</p>
<p>Yeah, do yourself a favor and don’t say, “well, all my teachers in 10th and 11th grade were terrible, and so I crashed!” Really, ALL of your teachers (I’m assuming you have like 7-9 teachers per yr) for 2 years straight were terrible? 14-18 terrible teachers in a row?! Which caused you to have a low gpa? No admission’s officer would buy that, ever. </p>
<p>anyway to get to the point I think you have a decent chance at those schools - 4.0 gpa is impressive, plus your SAT is very high. EC’s are nice.</p>
<p>If you don’t mind me asking, how did you end up at FDU? Surely you didn’t just apply to all super-elite Ivy type schools and FDU as one safety? you must have had at least one good safety/target school? Just thought that was weird because people with 2250’s usually don’t go to FDU.</p>
<p>Whoa, calm down guys. I only had two terrible teachers. They failed me for my attitude in class and I managed to persuade my guidance counselor to give me B’s for those classes. All that… drama really affected me and I lost motivation and did not do well in my classes. I take the blame for my poor performance and do not blame anyone else. I only regret taking all the hardest classes junior year because of the incompetency of the two teachers since I had absolutely no time to talk to them due to how demanding my courses were.</p>
<p>I’m applying to those three schools because the prestige part is extremely important to me and I believe that its competitive student body will challenge and make me push myself harder. I know I can get a 4.0 gpa in college. Brand name matters to me. FDU is almost a no name and on top of all that do not have a competitive student body. It has absolutely fantastic teachers but the student body is absolutely poor. I see FDU as a “trampoline”, if you will, to act as a difficult litmus test of my competency and commitment to my academics when these reach colleges look at my transcript and question the rigor of my courses.</p>
<p>I ended up in FDU because I basically had Rutgers as my safety and in the end refused to go there and I got rejected by colleges that ranged from UNC to Tufts because of my grades during sophomore and junior year. I was at a complete loss and applied to FDU since it was close by and they have a good electrical engineering program. I didn’t go to NJIT because I didn’t like the atmosphere at all. </p>
<p>I want to get into Columbia, Duke and UPenn badly. I would love to hear some suggestions to enrich any part of my application. Would more extracurriculars help? Does applying to the engineering schools increase my chances? or lower them because they have high retention rates of students?</p>
<p>You’re really naive to think that you can get a 4.0 no matter what, but that’s fine it’s just inexperience, I used to think the same thing. </p>
<p>The fact that you are applying simply for the name-brand is incredibly bone-headed but I’m not hear to argue ideology with anyone, the fact still remains that you have an extremely small chance of getting into any of those schools. How do you know that you need to be go to the very best schools in order to be sufficiently challenged? Nothing you have done so far has shown that you are able to handle work on that level so how in gods name do you get such an inflated ego? I’m not saying you can’t do it just that you have done nothing to prove it, which is going to be an issue for not only you, but the adcoms. </p>
<p>I think he was just trying to point out it’s very hard to get a 4.0, although everyone who comes to these boards and posts a chance thread says they are expecting a 4.0. You’re going on about how smart/competitive you are, but your HS record says otherwise, and you put the blame on 2 bad teachers.</p>
<p>Anyway if you can get a 4.0, more power to you. Also, some academic EC’s might help, since playing sports and joining a frat doesn’t show your interest in Engineering. Maybe you could try for an internship, or at least join a club in your school for Engineering/science majors? EC’s help you stand out more.</p>
<p>My bad. I didn’t really read into other posts and realized that my original post sounds like every “egoistic” potential transfer student thread on here. I apologize if I come across as that. I should have been more straightforward with my question and removed the unnecessary detail.</p>
<p>Alpha Sigma Pi isn’t a frat… -.- I was an intern at an engineering firm for two summers but that was during high school. I’m part of two clubs on campus but they’re not that active… so I don’t think it’s going to reflect much but I guess the more the merrier…</p>
<p>oh sorry I guess I just assumed it was a frat.
by the way, if you’re a female it might be slightly easier for you to get into Engineering programs, since women are like URM’s in areas like Engineering…just a thought.</p>
<p>yep, I reccommend you have your ding-dong removed
while you’re at it, get cosmetic surgery so you can pass for native american, preferably a tribe that only has 25 remaining members</p>