I am a junior in high school currently and I think engineering is really interesting and I would like to major in it. However, all of the things I do outside of class are much more ELA focused. For example, I’ve been my schools debate team since my freshman year and I also worked as a debate counsler at a deba camp for two summers. The only STEM extracurricular I have is I am the secretary of Bioethics club in my school. I’m currently in AP Physics 1 and I’m going to take AP Physics C and AP Calc BC next year. I really like engineering but I also enjoy ELA and would still like to take classes in it. Does it make sense for me to apply as an engineering major when my competition has so much more STEM activities as extracurriculars?
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Absolutely! Colleges want well rounded students that have a passion or are accomplished in something. As long as your math grades are good and you’ve taken a rigorous schedule of STEM classes you’ll be a strong engineering candidate. If you want to also take ELA classes, you should look at some of the LACs that offer engineering or look at a school like URochester that has a more open curriculum.
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You are fine.
If you want to study engineering then apply to engineering programs.
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An engineer can find skills at communication and convincing others to be valuable in a career.
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S24 got accepted to engineering in some competitive schools, such as TAMU, tOSU, CPP…His ec are color guard and Taekwondo. You are fine.
It’s actually all good as long as you have the necessary math/physics courses. Colleges of Engineering don’t want clones so you may even stand out ! 
Depending on your goals and grades, you may want to look into colleges such as HarveyMudd, URochester, Lafayette, Lehigh, Union, Clarkson, WPI, Case Western Reserve.
Look into what engineers do, the different forms of engineering, their curriculum.
Engineering has a very prescribed path with very few electives or non-STEM classes. Flagships typically offer excellent Engineering majors but you have to like that prescribed path.
If you want more flexibility, you can study Physics, Applied Math, or Computing/CS/IST (and still find a job, but not as an engineer.) You can also start in Engineering and switch at the end of your 1st or 2nd semester. However it’s typically very hard to switch into Engineering because the COE at most flagships is more difficult to get into than the university as a whole (the colleges named in thr 2nd paragraph have a “whole university” approach, meaning they admit you to their whole university and you can pick any major, switch in and out, etc, without restrictions beside the classes taken.)
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Use it to your advantage.
So, use this skill to your advantage. Communication skills for an engineer is very key being part of a team usually. Being able to present ideas and having a rationale behind it is useful. Collaborating is a must. Debate gives you skills and maybe even an edge applying to engineering. Being able to speak clearly and concisely to your team is important.
Good luck to you.
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Our advice is to make sure you have plenty of schools on your list with a wide variety of majors (ie not tech focused). Large flagships plus schools with engineering & business & liberal arts (good starter list above).
My S16 was similar - he toyed with architecture then went in as an Engineer because because he was really looking for a degree automatically associated with jobs. He didn’t see how liberal arts was a job. But he was much more passionate about history and politics. He made it one semester, did fine, but sat down with the first problem set of Calc 2 and said ‘I’m not a numbers guy, this isn’t what I want to do’.
He ended up trying business before landing on Econ and PoliSci. He realized politics can be a career and ended up writing major legislation on Capitol Hill. Doesn’t pay quite as much and it was a grind but he loves what he does.
Moral of the story: Leave yourself options. He probably would have liked the Eng job more than the schooling but it was never his passion.
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Sample of one. Our DD is working in a STEM field and graduated with a double major in bioengineering and biology from college. her high school ECs had absolutely nothing to do with anything STEM. Most were music.
She did not apply to colleges as an engineering major but she did make sure that everywhere she applied allowed students to switch IN to engineering as long as they were taking the right sequence of courses as a freshman…which she did.
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This is not necessarily true. Some schools like Harvey Mudd and MIT require ~25% or more of the courses to be in humanities, social sciences, and arts. However, others, like Brown, require only ~13% for ABET-accredited engineering majors (ABET accreditation does require some general education).
Completely free electives (i.e. not restricted by requirements for the major or general education requirements) are often scarce, however.
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This was in the paragraph describing typical Engineering (at flagships) contrasting this with college such as HarveyMudd.
I’d tried to format the paragraphs to make that clear but I’m not sure how it appears on others’ screens.
My son also loved humanities etc and took a lot in high school and continued in college with electives. He is still an engineer. Lol. Engineers are people too and have multiple interests ya know.
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Assuming you have good grades and (ideally) a good test score, you are going to be a competitive applicant at many colleges that have good engineering programs. And engineering is the kind of field where you can get great jobs out of many colleges as long as you do well.
So I think for you it will end up being more a question of which are affordable, and then which also have any flexibility to take other classes or indeed possibly switch majors that you might think potentially valuable. I note lots of people in general switch majors, and this is no less true for engineering, where many people start and then switch out into something non-engineering. But at many colleges it is easier to go from engineering to non-engineering than vice-versa, so it can make sense to at least start in engineering and see how it goes.
Anyway, my suggestion is you might want to do a new thread at some point where you follow the full “match me” format. It does not have to be now, but it could be if you wanted to get going on investigating colleges. People here are great about giving you lots of options to consider based on your budget, credentials, and preferences.
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Humanities, social science, and arts requirements do vary among flagships. Some are on the lower end, around 13-15% of the total courses or credits, while others are in the 20-23% range.
Forum favorite University of Alabama is on the higher end at 30%, if one includes the writing requirements (25% if one includes only the first half of the writing requirement, since the second is commonly an upper-level in-major course).