If you have A grades in all math and sci, better.
Make sure you know how to make your best presentation, from their perspective, what they look for. As noted, the competition is fierce, many kids with solid records and similar ECs won’t be successful.
@lookingforward Totally, those kids applying are like crazy amazing. There has to be some element of humbleness when kids are building nuclear reactors from spare parts out of the garbage can or actually curing cancer. (I can barely even change a tire … #ripme)
N.B. I’m typing all of this on my phone. So everything I have posted is literally stuff right off the bat of my head w/ no editing for added sincerity.
Humility is a sought quality, btw. But do look at the MIT tale of the kid who built a reactor and didn’t get in.
“Yeah totally, but at least there’s a reason for it. I can get my counselor to talk about it in her recc. (I was chronically ill - like hospitalization ill - for like 20 days throughout that year.)”
Mention it as well in the open (or anything else you’d like to tell us) part and as long as you don’t use it as an excuse, you’ll be fine. Take responsibility for your grades and if hosp was for something temporary, colleges won’t hold it against you. They can’t hold anything medical against you as that would violate the ADA, if you want to be upfront on why you were in the hospital.
I’d apply early to MIT or Stanford and another public university with excellent engineering, Michigan or Illinois (Berkeley does not have an early program).