<p>so im a junior now and im gettin ready to aply to colleges</p>
<p>heres what id like</p>
<li>a very intellectual environment with kids from all spheres of both cultural and academic environments. for example , i wanna meet kids that are great at piano while meeting others that are passionate about soccer.</li>
<li>an environment in which i will be able to confer with my classmates in a conversation be it about sports, literature, art, science,etc,. until the late hours of the night</li>
<li>either a rural campus or a campus that is in the middle of the cityy,no suburb type campuses.</li>
<li>a school with a great engineering departament/science.</li>
</ol>
<p>im biracial (hispanic/arab)
gpa:3.83 (recaculated on the 4=a , 3=b…etc. scale) unweighted
dunno weighted</p>
<p>sats: 800 math 670 reading 700 writing</p>
<p>ec’s: pretty good</p>
<p>*President of Astronomy Club( conducted astronomy night at my school, conduct observing sessions every other week)
*Captain of club soccer team(cant play varsity because of religious obligations)(3 years)[Outdoor/indoor soccer for 3 years])-hoping to explain this obligation in my app.
*Drill Seargent of Church Youth Group(3 years)
*Master Guide of Seventh Day Adventist “Pathfinders” organization, kind of like a huge youth organization for my denomination.Master guide is the highest rank you can achieve. [pretty much a religious eagle scout type thing]
*Currently working as administrative assistant/research assistant at New Age Skin Research Foundation[will be mentioned as co-researcher in study that will be published in top dermatological journal]
*4 year of mathletes
*3 year of Model Congress(competed 2 years Yale,1 year Harvard, 1 year UPenn)</p>
<p>*~300 hours volunteering at LIJ Medical Center
*NHS-regular and french.
*2 years Website club</p>
<p>Summer Programs
*Attended Johns Hopkins CTY[discreet math] 9th grade
*Attended Cornell University Summer College[bioethics-contemporary medicine] 10th grade
*Cornell Catalyst or caltech SSP this year</p>
<p>Awards(as of now)
*Ventures Scholar
*National Hispanic Scholar
*AIME qualified</p>
This requirement (especially engineering) limits things quite a bit. I’d say as reaches, places like Stanford, MIT, Cornell, and Northwestern are ideal for you. Schools like UMich/UVA/etc. might be good matches. After that, the quality drops off quite a bit for what you want.</p>
<p>In general, you’ll be wanting larger schools so that you can get both scholastic diversity as well as having a strong science/engineering department. Unfortunately, the larger a school is, the less likely it is for it to have a truly ‘intellectual’ environment. </p>
<p>If you are willing to sacrifice a little bit of engineering program quality, you can start looking at some of the other Ivy league schools (and U Chicago) as well - they’ll be able to satisfy things like:
You could also look into good LACs which tend to have good science but not as good engineering, while also fostering a very intellectual atmosphere.</p>
<p>edit:</p>
<p>
I should read your whole post. This eliminates Stanford and Cornell.</p>
<p>Yeah, I’m a junior physics major at Caltech. </p>
<p>You should at least look at some Stanford campus pictures or just apply and then visit if you’re accepted - it’s a really nice place in my opinion.</p>
<p>ive always wanted to go to caltech…not because of the name but because after my psat i started getting a lot of stuff from there that seemed ultra-nice and interesting…it really attracted me and now i want to apply there.</p>
<p>I mean, I obviously think Caltech is a great school; I chose it over some very appealing alternatives.</p>
<p>But, judging from your post about desiring academic and ethnic diversity, I’m not sure it would be the best match. It’s incredibly intellectual when it comes to science/math/engineering, but there are many other schools that can do a significantly better job at providing a diverse environment. It’s not as bad as is stereotypically portrayed, I’d say, but it’s not like we have people like olympic gymnasts or movie stars or extremely talented artists. It’s a necessary sacrifice for the unique traits that Caltech values.</p>
<p>If you ever have any specific questions about Caltech, feel free to PM me, and I’d be more than happy to answer them as best as I can.</p>
<p>I’ll second the UChicago mention… you’ll meet people with all sorts of personalities and all sorts of interests, but what they all have in common is that they care about what they’re learning (not even that they care about what grade they’re getting or care about what graduate school they’re getting in to). Marathon conversations abound.</p>
<p>Chicago’s campus is impressive… at one moment it can feel enclosed, at another it feels like you’re the pulse of Chicago. You’re not living besides the Sears Tower, but you can get to the Magnificent Mile and the Loop in a good twenty minutes.</p>
<p>Sciences are excellent here, and you really get to participate in research and get to know the people in the departments well. We don’t have engineering programs per se, but our physics major will let you do almost anything engineering-related as a career.</p>
<p>great job on being able to tell us some of your preferences in a school.
2 more things that would be extremely helpful: do you care about size of school or which part of the country?</p>
<p>hmm…i really really truly would like coastal states west,east,south …and although i may seem like i am contradicting myself, chicago attracts me alot as well…“the life of the mind” book that they sent me is fascinatin</p>
<p>Well, it’s definitely not a “name” school, but Knox College in Illinois has a good science dept. and from what I understand fits the rest of your criterion. Plus… I’d consider you a definite in there so it might make for a nice safety.
Otherwise, I’d second mostly what people have said so far.</p>
<p>It’s good too because your GPA is about the same as mine, but you scored much better on your SATs. And I don’t know how concerned you are about financial aid, but they gave me a lot of money. So that’s always a plus. =)
It’s also featured in the book “Colleges That Change Lives” by Lauren Pope.
It’s a good place.</p>