At the end of my senior year in High School, I was generally unmotivated and applied to only two schools: Stonybrook and CCNY (The City College of NY). I had a GPA of 93 (I think it was unweighted) and something like a 1780 SAT score (I should’ve cared more, I know). I took a bunch of AP courses like AP Physics, AP US History, AP Lang, as well as other honors courses. I also did 2 years (freshman and sophomore year) of track and field/cross country. I know these grades don’t matter anymore since I have more than 24 credits in college, but I feel the need to share them to show that I could’ve gotten into a better college.
I was accepted to CCNY but waitlisted from Stony, most likely because the essay I wrote for Stonybrook was poor. I went to CCNY not knowing much about it, and did decent my first semester (3.6), but did absolutely terribly my second semester (dropped my overall GPA to a 2.9). I don’t know what happened because I’ve never gotten grades that low before, and I feel like it’s killed my chances of transferring into a much better school. My first semester of sophomore year, however, was really good (3.7). I retook a class from my second semester of freshman year and got an A, and that raised my overall GPA to a 3.5, which is where I’m at right now.
I’ve always been into motorsport (racecars) and at the beginning of my sophomore year found out about a thing called Formula SAE, which is a design competition where students develop a formula car and then compete against other schools. Binghamton was the only college I could afford that had this, so I applied and, unsurprisingly, got rejected. There’s another competition called Baja SAE, which is like Formula but offroad and less complicated. CCNY technically has this, but the school is so underfunded that the club literally has no money to work with. The club hasn’t made any progress nor has it attended a competition in years.
University at Buffalo and Stonybrook have Baja with a well funded and competing team, but I’m unsure if I can get into those schools. Furthermore, I’d like to go somewhere to dorm, as right now I despise my commute from my home on Long Island to CCNY.
What should I do? Should I try applying to schools with a good Baja team that are also good places to dorm now? Or should I wait a bit, raise my GPA, contribute to the Baja team here and maybe join another club (to have some EC’s), and then try to transfer? I don’t want to wait too long since I now want to have the full experience of college. Also, if I manage to transfer into a better school, would it be possible/worth it to do well there, and then try and transfer to Binghamton? I can’t stress it enough that I really want to be a part of a Formula team and would give it my all. Sorry for the novel, but any advice would be appreciated!
Apply now to the other places with formula teams. If you get in and it is affordable, go. If you don’t get in, stay where you are and keep working on your grades and apply again in the future.