HS Junior-Am I on the Right Track for Engineering

jyinsanity
Sun, 15 Nov 2015 20:15:08 +0000

CMU doesn’t really consider your freshmen year grades, so what’s your GPA without freshman year? Anyway, what’s done is done and the only thing you can do now is get stellar grades to try to raise it. Also, are you taking any AP or honors classes? I would say that you need to have AP Calculus AB and AP Computer Science A at the very minimum, and maybe some kind of advanced physics class.

A lot of what you have is preliminary because you haven’t completed your standardized testing. It’s a bit soon to tell without having your final scores. Your ECs look great though! CMU PreCollege seems to help a lot of applicants who are borderline (like weak in one area, e.g. high GPA and low test scores or vice versa) and is a great way to show interest (which they take pretty seriously), but it comes with a hefty price tag. It’s also a great way to get a taste of CMU and make sure it’s the one for you. Perhaps weigh the pros/cons of this program with whatever selective program you’re considering.

One thing that I wish I had done earlier is starting my college app essays. Since you already know you want to go to CMU, why not get started on the essays for it? I know it seems really early, but find a trusted teacher or hire a good college counselor to look over your essays now, and I think you’ll have a huge advantage when the time for college apps come around. An essay that you’ve been working on for a couple months will almost always come out better than an essay that you threw together in a few weeks. At least get started brainstorming topics for your common app essay and the CMU supplement.

As a disclaimer, I’m a senior who applied ED to CMU CIT, so I don’t know if I got in. Personally, CMU is a reach for me and I’m aware that I’m a below average applicant (my GPA sucks) so maybe take all I’m saying with a grain of salt. But this is all based on what I’ve learned from lurking on CC for the past three years and the CMU forum here for the past couple months. Good luck!