I wouldn’t say I am the average engineering student as my stats show otherwise. However, after recalculating my UW GPA, without my Freshman Year, it turns out I have a nice 3.95. Anyways, ever since Freshman year, I have shown an upward trend and especially this year, as a Junior, I have significantly increased course rigor. I plan to take 16/19 APs by the end of high school. I am also not a great test taker and am waiting for my first ACT score right now.
STEM Courses (Taken, taking, or will take):
9th - Algebra 2 (A), Biology (B+)
10th - AP Calc AB (A), Chem (B, outrageously terrible teacher but i’m so mad)
11th - AP Calc BC (A), AP Physics C: Mechanics (A-)
12th - Multivariable Calculus, AP Stats, AP Physics E n M, AP Biology
Those are just the courses I have taken in school. The courses I have planned to finish by high school through EdX are Harvard CS50x (Intro to CS), Intro to Aerodynamics, Electrochemistry, Intro to Linear Algebra, and Intro to Diff Eq.
In terms of School EC’s
Calculus Club (Founder/President), Physics Club (Secretary), Science Club (President), Math League, Speech & Debate, National Honors Society (President), NSHSS (Ambassador), Leadership Club (1/10 Elected out of 390), School Student Ambassador, Discussions on Diversity, Track (Varsity), Student Council
In terms of Non School EC’s
Interned for school board re election campaign
Peer Tutor
Founder/President of Youth group
Board Member for extracurricular non profit
I also have some summer stuff planned out like MITE at Purdue and some other stuff like TKS and hopefully some research but I need some guidance. Thank you to anyone who answers.
Without knowing a budget, it will be hard to offer any suggestions. Additionally, tell us more about what you want out of your college experience. What are your preferences with respect to:
Class sizes
Overall size of the university
Urban/suburban/small town/rural
Greek life
Enthusiasm for intercollegiate sports
Regions/states you prefer (or prefer to avoid)
Any other factors that will influence your college search/decision
Colleges in Minnesota that are ABET-accredited for MechE are:
Dunwoody College of Technology
Minnesota State - Mankato
St. Cloud State
U. of Minnesota - Twin Cities
U. of Minnesota - Duluth
U. of St. Thomas
Apart from Dunwoody & St. Cloud State, the other schools are all classified as being primarily residential campuses (as compared to a commuter campus). Your in-state publics are likely to be amongst your most affordable options.
Minnesota also has a reciprocity agreement with Wisconsin publics, where you pay in-state costs to attend a school in Wisconsin.
The Wisconsin publics that are ABET-accredited for mechanical engineering are:
U. of Wisconsin - Green Bay
U. of Wisconsin - Madison
U. of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
U. of Wisconsin - Platteville
U. of Wisconsin - Stout
All of these Wisconsin campuses are classified as being primarily residential.
If it’s above in-state tuition (which is the University of Minnesota) then it would just take more convincing because depending on the school, the budget can be as much as possible. For example, if by the grace of god I got into an ivy league, budget would leave the conversation for them. That is why I was hoping Purdue would be in my reach because they have a relatively lower tuition and it’s really good for their engineering program.
Thanks for answering! Budget would be in-state unless it’s well off like Purdue or something. If it’s a top university, budget is “thrown out the window” according to my parents.
Class sizes (I prefer smaller but all I really care about is whether the professor is nice enough to let me ask questions.)
Overall Size (I prefer a larger university but I also don’t really mind. I just assume that if a university is larger, they might have more resources and research opportunities unless they are like the top of the life colleges.)
I think the most ideal would be college town with a large city near it for me to find opportunities.
Greek Life I do not really care about. (Respectfully)
I also dont really care about intercollegiate sports. (respectfully)
prefer to go to a state with good opportunities for engineers.
I was worried I wouldnt be able to go to the UMN - Twin Cities because their avg gpa is a 3.7 and I fall under that with a 3.6. I think I would actually be devastated if I couldn’t get into UMN. UW Madison is also on my list.
UMN or UW Madison would both be great and hopefully affordable options. Your odds may depend a bit where you are applying from. Your school counselor may have data to get you a sense of odds there. Both engineering programs are ever more competitive. If you really want engineering, you may want to consider one of the smaller in state options in MN or Wisconsin to be on the really safe side.
Milwaukee School of Engineering might be a safer option that could possibly get you to UMN pricing. Urban setting, nice access to Chicago area from Milwaukee.
Thanks for answering. That does make sense but it just really stings that I might not even have a shot at the UMN. Maybe I shouldnt be an engineer I dont even know anymore. I cant believe that my freshman year might have costed me schools that I have been thinking as safeties. Its honestly demoralizing.
You’re a great (future) engineering student. You should be proud of your stats, particularly of the upward trend in your grades! In fact, you’re such a great student that you’ll see that most of the schools I’m suggesting below are in the extremely likely bucket.
They were selected due to a combination of their reputations and/or the number of students they’re producing in engineering, used as a proxy for the strength of the department. In the extremely likely bucket I also wanted to point out the branch campuses that I thought would be strongest for your interests.
Extremely Likely (80-99+%)
Iowa State: About 25k undergrads, super well-respected, and about 40m from Des Moines
Kansas State: About 15k undergrads and in surveys the campus typically rates as having one of the happiest student bodies.
Marquette (WI): About 7500 undergrads in Milwaukee
Missouri Science & Technology: About 5500 undergrads and also very well-respected, but not exactly near a big city.
U. of Cincinnati (OH): About 30k undergrads and there’s a big co-op culture here, since you seem particularly interested in getting more hands-on experience.
U. of Minnesota – Duluth: About 8800 undergrads
U. of St. Thomas (MN): About 5900 undergrads
U. of Wisconsin – Platteville: About 6k undergrads and 25-30m from Dubuque
U. of Wisconsin – Milwaukee: About 18k undergrads
Likely (60-79%)
Milwaukee School of Engineering (WI): About 2600 undergrads
Rose-Hulman (IN): About 2200 undergrads and one of the top engineering schools in the country for schools that don’t give doctorates.
Toss-Up (40-59%)
U. of Minnesota – Twin Cities: About 39k undergrads (really a guess, and might be leaning towards a likely)
Lower Probability (20-39%)
U. of Wisconsin – Madison: About 36k undergrads (really a guess)
Low Probability (less than 20%)
Purdue (IN): About 39k undergrads
And if being near a city doesn’t really matter, also consider Michigan Tech (about 5700 undergrads).
Iowa State will let you use weighted GPA for their automatic merit awards, which brings the price down to a pretty reasonable price point even though it is out of state. I think anything over 4.0 qualifies for their largest automatic award. My D22 is at Iowa State for Food Science and having a great experience! There are a lot of MN students at Iowa State, which is great for carpooling home on breaks!
Oh you CAN be an engineer, don’t let crazy admissions get you down! Your academics are more than enough to be highly successful in college and upward trend is really great to see. I was a first gen student and I was able to shine much more in a college setting than in high school. I actually graduated from CSE at the U of MN back in the dark ages lol (ski-u-mah!). Crossing fingers for you! Depending on your school/area of MN, your counselor will hopefully be able to shed some light.
You’ll find a good academic and financial fit! Where there are engineering programs, smart students will gather. Iowa is another great option and can be affordable for OOS students.
Just saw this after I posted. Your upward trend is amazing. Getting an unweighted 3.95 over the last 3 years with the rigor of your classes is awesome. A projected ACT of 30 is way, way, way above the national average. It’s the 94th percentile. So if you get a 30 composite ACT score, you will be performing above 94% of other test takers. That is something you should be proud of.
Additionally, what your grades, coursework, and projected test scores are telling me is that you’re going to be prepared to do well in an ABET-accredited mechanical engineering program. No matter where you attend, the courses are going to be very challenging. But you have clearly shown that you are up to the challenge.
Additionally, engineering is one of the disciplines that is very meritocratic. Graduates from MIT will be working alongside students from Little-Known-U and from Big State U. Graduates from Cal Tech will be working FOR students from Little-Known-U and from Big State U. And many of those Big State Us (or some of the other programs I mentioned) are known for having stronger programs than some of the Top X schools (like most members of the Ivy League). When you talk to engineers, they will be impressed if you get your degree from Iowa State or Missouri S&T or Michigan Tech or South Dakota Mines (which I forgot to mention above). These schools have great outcomes. They may be easy or easier to get into, but they are not easy to graduate from. You will be working your tail off with many other incredibly bright students.
Plus, please do not be put off by any chancing buckets (from me or anyone). We have students who will come here and say they have a perfect GPA, perfect test score, tons of leadership and awards and people here will put Purdue in the low probability bucket for them. Is it because they’re not a great applicant that Purdue would be lucky to get? Absolutely not. It’s just that there are so many amazing candidates applying that the odds are just lower. Some schools are more popular than others, and the chancing reflects that. It does not reflect the quality of the different programs. Additionally, just because a school’s in the low probability bucket (less than 20%) doesn’t mean it’s impossible…it just means that odds are against an acceptance. But odds are against lottery winners too, but there WILL be lottery winners. It’s the same situation here.
If engineering is what you want to do, PLEASE, do not give up.
I rarely suggest this for OOS students, but if prestige would throw budget out the window for your parents, you might consider doing the UC application. The UC system doesn’t count 9th grade in their GPA calculations, so your stats would look pretty great - use this calculator to compute your unweighted, weighted-capped, and weighted-uncapped UC GPA’s: GPA Calculator for the University of California – RogerHub They’re also test-blind, so ACT would be a non-issue.
The OOS cost is very high - mid-70’s, so more than double the cost of UMinn Twin Cities. It’s a little hard to argue that it’s worth that cost differential for an engineering degree, purely in terms of ROI. But if your folks would pay 90K for an Ivy, maybe they’d also happily pay 75K for Cal, UCLA, and maybe some of the others? It really depends - some families would say, “Why would we pay that much for an OOS public?” whereas others would pull out their checkbooks at the mere mention of the UC’s. Just running it up the flagpole, as you sound like a very viable UC candidate.
I do not believe that your freshman year of high school is going to stop you from becoming an engineer. Your sophomore and junior years of high school are going to be way more important for university admissions. Whether they will consider mid term grades from your senior year will depend upon the university, and might in some cases also depend upon how close you are to the cutoff for admissions.
Some universities (schools in Canada come to mind) will not care about your freshman year at all as long as you passed your classes. However, I think that your chances in-state or in Wisconsin are likely to be pretty good, and Purdue is another excellent alternative.
Your upward trend is likely to help you quite a bit.
Agreed; even schools that technically consider freshman grades will typically consider a strong upward trend and not let a weak 9th grade disqualify you.
It’s one of those unanswerable questions, on CC, whether schools that officially don’t count freshman grades really give you a significantly stronger chance than ones that will take a big-picture view even though they officially do consider those grades. But it can be reassuring to have some schools on your list that officially use your post-9th-grade GPA for their stats. In addition to the UC’s, as I mentioned, and the Canadian U’s, as DadTwoGirls mentioned, I believe Carnegie Mellon is another that doesn’t consider 9th grade. (And engineering there, while very competitive, isn’t as stratospherically competitive as CS.) Again, the question is whether CMU would make the “worth full pay” cut, in your parents’ view.
A “B” isn’t a bad grade, but if your standards are that you should be getting “A” grades then you got to own this. I’m not disputing the teacher was bad. But there are so many resources online these days to learn HS material including complete AP courses that people do as self-study. If you wanted an “A” you could have earned one, bad teacher or not.
I don’t want to come down too heavily about this, and I understand you are probably just 16-17. What I want to do is suggest you rethink your approach when things aren’t going as well as you’d like. Another example is in this thread where you wrote in response to some disappointing advice “Maybe I shouldnt be an engineer I dont even know anymore.”
Being an engineer can be an enjoyable career. Getting to be an engineer is tough. While a lot of the people around you are seemingly having the time of their life in college, engineers are spending 30+ hours a week outside of class on homework, studying, and labs. The material is challenging, and not all of your profs are going to be wonderful teachers. There’s a reason that nationwide half of those entering as engineers drop out of the major. It will take drive and determination to get thru undergrad engineering, and being easily frustrated will not make it any easier.
If you are interested in Purdue, you might look at the Purdue Data Digest, here: https://www.purdue.edu/datadigest/. The links to “Applications, Admits, and Matriculations” and “New First-Time Beginner Profile” may be helpful to you in seeing how you compare to recently admitted freshmen at Purdue, and give a general idea of admissions chances.
You might also look at Western Michigan University, in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
That makes sense. I apologize that was pretty unprofessional too. I think the teacher making the subject “not interesting” kinda make it hard for me to really care much as I’ve ramped up discipline mainly this year. Either way though, I am mad that I didnt work harder. I will 100% take accountability for that.
Also, it’s just, I dont want to be selfish as I know many people are going through the college admissions process, but every time I seem to think that I have a good chance or that things are looking up, I get a big smack in the face and after dealing it with for a year (which yes, I know isnt that much) it’s just a little hard.
A big dream of mine is to go to Purdue, and hopefully I will be able to go to their campus this summer for their MITE program. Purdue has such a great engineering program and I would do anything to go there. However, the reason I said “Maybe I shouldn’t be an engineer anymore” is because if I cant even handle junior year of high school without almost losing it at times, then maybe I’m just not cut out for anything that requires hard work. Idk. I am probably just being childish though. So again, I do apologize.
Thanks! I have tried looking at that and I feel like I might have a good chance but then again, some people say I do and some say I flat out just dont. I mean someone said that I probably just have a 20% or lower which I trust them on and it kinda just sucks I guess.
Man. I knew Purdue was a low acceptance rate and difficult to get into but dang. Maybe I’m not competitive enough to even shoot for Purdue anymore. Maybe I will be a lottery winner. I hope so.
Also just wanted to point out that the last words “do not give up” were ironic because it’s part of the speech I gave for my school yet sometimes I can’t even follow my own advice. (That is good advice though thank you! <3)