(this is a update as its been about 3 months and plenty has happened since then.)
Hi, I am a high school junior that wants to go to competitive electrical engineering school that is not rural, preferably a city or suburban school. I want to major in EE or EE + CS. I got a 3.8 UW and 4.3 W GPA freshman year and sophomore year, and I’m disappointed with my sophomore performance but I am on track for a 5.1 this year if I lock in on math. I come from an upper-middle-class family, and my dad gets paid around $200k a year, so we’re doing pretty well financially. I’m not sure how much aid I’ll get, but I plan to do ROTC to get money or take on a little debt. I entirely understand what that entails following my education, yes I am fine with serving. I am dropping sports because of medical reasons along with being super busy, at least the winter and fall seasons. This medical reason is long term treatment for my food allergies which should be concluded winter of senior year, though if it takes longer which is entirely possible, I may do a year without rotc scholarship or go instate for a year or to CC just to stay active while I wait to pick up a scholarship for a school that I like more. If I am not treated I will remain ineligible for service in the military. I am still very fit and do calisthenics . I got a 4 on AP Bio and was disappointed but am taking APUSH AP STATS AP LANG AND AP CSP and Physics honors and Math honors right now and am doing super great in all but math honors. I will either take AP calc AB or BC depending on whether I peruse math over the summer at community college or at a summer program, as I don’t think it is a great idea to take BC without any high level math experience senior year. I’m applying to about 20 programs since they’re all super competitive.
My classes senior year will probably be:
AP Spanish, AP Calc ??, AP lit, AP physics (C if I take calc over the summer as previously referenced) AP Art History (I need to take a art class to graduate for a semester so I might as well take a whole year for GPA boost. plus art history is fun) DE Engineering, and Spanish Culture (grad req)
I work about 20-28 hours a week at my local grocery store. I also am head of my JROTC unit and am the head of a robotics team that placed top 50 in internationals, which is solid for a sophomore (it was last year). I’m a Boy Scout and am working on an eagle scout project I am actually passionate about, where I apply my self taught computer skills along with leading a large group. Last year, I was staff at 2 different camps, a Boy Scouts one and a JROTC one along with helping raise 10k for 2 nonprofits as part of a philanthropy program I did in my county. I am leading a satellite design team with some friends and applying for NHS this year along with working on selling some of my custom designed electronics and working on repair work under my business moor performance industries, website coming soon. Our Satellite is currently very competitive and could win best in competition at MIT. I am also managing my local senior communities website along with an eagle scout project website and some other small sites for community service. I am getting mentored every other weekend at MIT from the future society of engineers at MIT and I hope to help out with that or get something out of it more like an ambassador to other high schools for outreach or something.
I took the PSAT and got a 1430 which means i get a commended score and a sick award but not NM which is fine honestly because that’s super hard in my state. I signed up for march SAT and have been doing a practice every weekend, I currently have a 770 for each section which I took today and have been scoring consistently 1520+, I want to get perfect math though for MIT though that is a afterthought.
I live in Massachusetts and I’m Latino. My mom has only a high school degree and is a first-generation immigrant. My dad went to William & Mary, which is a good school, but he doesn’t know much about admissions since he only applied to one place.
I really want to go to MIT, I love the atmosphere and the people and the spirit and the campus and everything about it but understand its a crap shoot. My large list that I need go cut down by preference is currently
- MIT
- Caltech
- Stanford
- UC Berk
- CMU
- GT
- Harvey Mudd
- U Maryland College Park
- WPI
- Rutgers
- Purdue
- UVM
- U of Alaska Fairbanks
- UMass A and L
This will all be considered with the context of tuition which will be a large factor in my decision, I plan on applying for a Coke and some other scholarships summer and fall of Senior year. I have toured all but the west coast schools and GT. I also am applying to a handful of summer programs, my plans as far as which I would go to are as so.
By most desirable:
- MITES Summer and HSF YLI early session
- MITES Semester and HSF YLI and LL Rise
- NSLI ( I made it to final selection round and its about a 50% acceptance rate at this point)
- HSF YLI AND BWSI
- Community college + working
I am mostly worrying about my MITES essays as of now and am friends with a few past participants so they are helping me out a little but tell me my ECs and Grades are fitting.
At this point I am also working on research using googles machine learning algorithms for protein modeling and gaps in its accuracy based on training data, maybe a paper comes out of it. I also made it to DECA states and may make it to ICDC but probably not. I won first prize and a 60 person hackathon which was my first time, and plan on competing at a few more over spring. I have been doing wedding photography along with urban photography for fun on my own and published it in a local newspaper. I have also been experimenting on some personal projects and will use these for my maker portfolio for all my apps, notably….
- Designing and Open sourcing a teaching model for mitosis and meiosis to help students understand crossing over using handheld magnetic models that are 3d printed and can be modified, making a set for my school and offering to other schools, might try and use recycled plastic for extra points (done
- Building a modular sensor array to be deployed on a drone (learning to pilot drone through sims, yet to assemble, sensor array designs completed)
- affordable EEG for focus metrics (researched heavy but tabled until more free time)
- Deployed services and computer resources for my local community on a reproposed computer turned server and planning on making more progress on that (done but will expand)
- designed Robotics Modular mounting framework and wiring that is 3d printed and lowed maintenance times by 90% (done)
- A bunch of radio gadgets - I can expand on some but not super remarkable, more for pranking (done)
- Developing my own Rocket Fuel and testing for optimal ingredient ratios (working on currently)
- might build vectoring system for my rocket fuel (just researching)
- Designed chassis for robotic arm with fingers that can be controlled independently, waiting on parts
- Made my own preworkout blend and waiting on chemical shipments, not fda approved but fun
I am looking for advice on any other schools, scholarships or things I can do that would be fitting for my interests and experience. I understand MIT is totally insane but I will try regardless. I spoke with my parents about how much they are willing to spend and said ballpark at most 20-50 depending on a variety of things. I plan on graduating with about a 4.6-7 weighted conservatively.