If he did Frontiers, this is a likely. Admission to Frontiers students is in the high 90’s (I’ve never heard of someone from Frontiers not getting in).
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Do they share this data anywhere? I remember reading this on CC (and maybe you told me?) but I’ve had nagging feelings of doubt since the summer. We keep getting “visit WPI!” emails from them, as though they didn’t know that he just spent two weeks there…and I wondered if maybe there was more of a typical firewall between the on-campus high school summer program and admissions.
Even though he didn’t accomplish everything he hoped to over the summer, he still did a lot! His senior year sounds incredibly busy with all of his classes, starting a club and joining another one. It’s going to be a great exercise in learning (or hopefully mastering?) time management!
I agree that y’all have put together a very thoughtful list. I think he’ll have a lot of choices come the spring. And though the effort is on culling the list and not expanding, I feel compelled after reading this:
Putting a plug in for Seattle U, here. It would be a likely admit, it’s ABET-accredited for multiple fields, it’s a smaller (4kish) school like most of the targets and reaches, and it’s (ahem) in Seattle. The RD deadline is January 15 with a January 25 deadline for honors (source), so if he’s already got admits from schools he prefers by then, then there would be no need to add the school, but it might be a good one to keep in his back pocket. And I don’t see any requirement to apply EA to be considered for scholarships (source).
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I don’t think they share the data. A friend of mine got the numbers when her son attended Frontiers and was accepted at WPI. I think he was even able to do his interview while at Frontiers. He applied EA and didn’t send in applications anywhere else despite stellar stats.
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I don’t think any of the Cal States (including SLO) require essays or recommendations – at least they didn’t a few years ago. So if he likes SLO (and maybe Cal Poly Pomona?) it should be an easy application. He could also “throw in” a more likely Cal State by the coast, perhaps?
I love seeing how the list has evolved!
If your son makes good use of rolling admissions and EA, the list may get whittled down without as much work as you think. Admission to Pitt, for example, might make it possible for him to say, “I prefered Pitt to x, y, and z, so now no need to do those.”
You’ve been on top of this, so have probably worked through some of these “timing hacks”, but that could be a next tactical step that would relieve some of the application work.
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I think that makes a lot of sense in that I’m pretty sure Wesleyan (not so sure about Bates) would still be looking to meet gender parity goals even after ED1 and 2. It’s just a reality that every year, more girls apply than boys.
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Whew! we’re officially done with the waiting on results – although not done with the decision (which I am finding excruciating).
Thought I would come back and let folks know what happened – especially given how far S25’s goals evolved from the time when we started looking at schools together.
First, props to all the folks who gently nudged us to evaluate whether engineering was something the kid would want to study. This turned out to be prophetic advice.
S25 ended up applying mostly for mechanical engineering/first-year engineering programs. He did apply to a handful of schools w/out engineering, thinking he might still want to do physics there.
EA/Rolling:
Pitt: accepted into engineering school (no merit)
Oregon State: accepted into engineering school (no WUE)
Minnesota: accepted into engineering school (no merit)
CO School of Mines: accepted ($6K merit)
St. Olaf: accepted ($31K merit)
Macalester: accepted ($20K merit)
RPI: accepted ($39K merit)
WPI: accepted ($29K merit)
Union: accepted ($36K merit)
Case Western Reserve (deferred)
RA cycle:
CU Boulder: accepted into engineering school (~$6K merit)
UW Seattle: accepted into engineering school ($3K merit)
UC Santa Cruz: accepted (physics)
UC Merced: accepted (MechE)
UCSB: rejected (engineering)
UC Davis: rejected (MechE)
UCSD: rejected (MechE)
UC Irvine: rejected (MechE)
UC Berkeley: rejected (MechE)
Cal Poly SLO: rejected (MechE)
Cal Poly Pomona: waitlisted (MechE)
University of Rochester: accepted (no merit)
Lafayette College: accepted (no merit)
Oberlin College: accepted ($32K merit)
Case Western: accepted ($31K merit)
Brandeis: accepted ($40K merit)
Purdue: rejected
Some more notes on the selection and application process:
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Yeah, it’s a lot of schools. I think it was a mixture of places we had visited and liked (Oberlin, Macalester, St. Olaf), places I basically told him to apply that hadn’t really been on his radar (Case, Rochester, Brandeis, Pitt, Minnesota, CU Boulder, Lafayette, and Union), and places his friends were applying that seemed cool but that he hadn’t visited (RPI, Purdue, Mines, Oregon State, UW, all the California schools).
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Schools that came off the list: He interviewed at Kenyon but ended up not applying because he’d already gotten into Macalester. We’d taken Oberlin, Denison, Dickinson, and Whitman off the list for similar reasons but at the last minute he added Oberlin back. I’m not sure why he changed his mind about Oxy, but I think the main attraction (aside from being in CA) was a 3+2 program w/ Caltech. (this seemed to both of his parents like an incredibly bad idea – Caltech is a hard enough school when you start as a freshman.) He couldn’t muster much enthusiasm for either Virginia Tech or Madison (and again, none of his friends were applying.) I was pushing Trinity U and he pushed back. On paper it didn’t sound exciting to him and we hadn’t visited. I can’t remember why Lehigh came off – probably supplemental essay fatigue.
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The idea of having some birds in hand was a good one and I’m glad that he applied to as many schools EA as he could. That said, the timing didn’t dovetail as neatly as one would have hoped. The EA notifications come out over a two-month period, some of them after the regular admissions cycle deadlines.
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I was not surprised by the UC outcomes, nor Cal Poly SLO. I think S25 was a little because he’s a natural optimist and wanted to believe in miracles. But oof, the California process leaves a lot to be desired. The system for understanding their particular weighting seems awfully complicated. I remember being frustrated, for example, by an outdated approved course list from our high school.
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I think not applying to Purdue by their early deadline was an unforced error, given that he was applying for engineering. Unfortunately he wasn’t prepared to write a 650 word essay about Purdue by November 1. He hadn’t done enough homework and was out of juice. So he punted.
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I was pleasantly surprised by some of his acceptances. He basically got in everywhere except the CA schools and Purdue! We’d not shown much interest until the 11th hour in Case (we did a trip to Pitt/Case/Rochester/Union/RPI/Lafayette this February). He MISSED his Macalester interview because he was confused about the time zone (as was I). He showed up for the Lafayette rep’s visit to his high school but when she asked if anyone had visited the campus, he volunteered that he’d seen Lehigh instead. (face-palm)
At this point, I think he’s basically deciding between Case (which blew us away on our trip last month) and UW (which we will visit in a couple of weeks). As enchanted as I am by the idea of him living in Seattle (with all that this would imply–easy to visit, likely to stay on the west coast in the long-term, etc), Case feels like a better academic and potentially a better social fit for him – less competitive, easier to find his people (and I wish he were still looking hard at WPI, which in some ways feels like the best fit of all). I could write pages about all these great schools that we visited and learned about and how I could envision each of them opening new portals for him. But alas, he can only go to one.
Thank you all so much for your help as I fumbled through this. There is such a wealth of accumulated wisdom in these parts and I’m looking forward to continuing to contribute in the years to come.
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Thank you for this detailed update of your son’s experience to date! I look forward to reading his final decision.
Your posts this cycle will be valuable to many readers, and I have no doubt your contributions to future cycles will be as well. 
Thank you for so generously sharing.
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Congratulations to your son! He has some great options. Looking forward to hearing the final decision so I can 
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Congrats on some great acceptances!!!
Is your son still thinking about an AFS year? Case would allow him to defer for a gap year; UW-Seattle would not.
Given that he hasn’t been laser-focused on engineering all along, one thing to look at, at the schools he’s considering, would be adjacent majors that would be of interest if he didn’t end up feeling like MechE was “all that.”
One very cool program at UDub is the Human-Centered Design & Engineering major. It’s very much interdisciplinary and project-based - the fact that you see WPI as a fit makes me think that HCDE could be worth a look. Historically this has been a non-ABET degree, but they’re in the accreditation process now and they anticipate that the graduating classes of 2026 and onward should be covered by ABET accreditation.
CWRU’s open door policy vis-a-vis majors is particularly great for students who may want to explore their options. Since your son was thinking physics at one point, he may want to compare the MechE curriculum vs. the Engineering Physics curriculum, within which MechE is one of the eight concentration options. It’s an ABET degree either way.
Anyhow, I look forward to hearing what he decides!
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Great process, great options, nicely done!
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Awesome outcome! You are such a fantastic writer and it’s been so engaging to follow along. Congratulations on all of the wonderful choices!
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Washington does have secondary admission to specific engineering majors.
Placement data | UW College of Engineering indicates that aero/astro, bio, and mechanical typically admitted fewer students than had chosen those majors as their first choice. Others appeared to have at least as many admits as first choice requests, although it is not obvious whether all first choices got in, or some first choices were denied while second/third/etc. choices with better applications (grades, resume, and essay) were admitted over them.
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I wish he would; he is, however, quite set on staying “on track” with his friends. (insert small parental eyeroll). I do think he’s interested in studying abroad during college and my sense is that this will be trickier through UW than it would be at Case, which is probably trickier than it would be at WPI or Lafayette or one of the schools that designs exchange programs specifically for their engineering students. I’m going to encourage him to probe this topic when we visit UW. I worry he’s going to be so enraptured by the gorgeous campus and views of Mt Rainier that he forgets the doing school part of the equation.
Very cool to know about – thanks!
Case also makes it quite easy to double-major in physics and engineering.
This is something that worries me, as the process involves essays and examination of engineering-related clubs (many of which seem potentially application-based). This is, as they say, a “growing edge” for my kiddo – he’s quite uncomfortable putting himself forward. But of course he’ll need to do this for internships and jobs eventually so it’s not something to avoid forever (but to your point, he’s definitely not assured of getting his desired major at UW, as he would be at all the other schools to which he was admitted. And this is something he needs to earnestly consider.
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This is from last year, but as I recall Case was trying to do specialized study abroad programs for engineers. They were trying to put together a program for a junior year semester abroad for mechanical engineers in Madrid. Also there was a program in Sheffield and/or Dublin, but I think that’s for CS or EE.
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It’s kind of unfair to other schools that the cherry blossoms are in full bloom when accepted students visit!
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We just got back from an admitted students tour at UW yesterday, not the same as the big tour on the 19th, more of a standard tour but with info related to admitted students, and we did a res life tour after.
We are in a predicament as a result. My son loves the campus and location and could see himself living there. He’s really focused on the ‘soft’ stuff and the academic details have taken a back seat.
Like your son, he applied to a combination of SLAC’s and larger schools. UW is one of his 4 favorite choices but I think the other 3 schools are all better fits for him academically, as an English major. He is blindsided by the social elements. Hoping to have a chat with him tonight before we head out tomorrow to start our Midwest blitz of the last 3- UMichigan, Macalester and Carleton. It’s going to be 20 degrees when we tour Macalester, which is not helping matters after the cherry blossom display at UW! I absolutely love UW too but it’s very ‘major’ dependent. It might be great for your son.
Edit: he just crossed off his no 5 choice, Vassar, which was a killer, because it seemed like such a good match for him.
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