Match me: HS Senior, ADHD, GPA 3.476, SAT 1310, Engineering, West Coast schools - help identify target schools? [WA resident, <$37k]

Chance Me / Match Me
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Washington state, near Seattle, competitive high school in tech suburbs. US Citizen.

Grades are all over the map (from A+ to D+) with overall GPA at 3.427 end of junior year. One AP exam (4 on AP Lang … and that was the D+ class). Not sure the school weights the GPA - they don’t award extra points for honors classes - though there are a few in the mix. Expect the GPA to go to 3.6 by the end of a summer class.

Not sure about class rank, but this is a school where there are many dozens of high-achieving all-AP 4.0 students, so a relative rank here would be median at best.

Looking to round out the colleges to be considered. Not a hard-core student; want to be engaged and learn and build things, but not highly competitively. Looking for a sustainable pace that allows for the processing speed issues with ADHD. It’s plenty easy to understand the concepts, but churning out papers about it takes much longer than for most.

Parents have $150k set aside already and for the right fit could get to $200k if it really mattered. Hoping it does not. Lucky there.

Looking at engineering majors. Building things, improving things, making them better, faster, cheaper, more efficient. Not sure where to focus - mechanical engineering and materials science look interesting but not sure yet exactly. Is there a career path around battle bots? :wink:

Have visited Western Washington and Washington State. Like the setting and location of Western but WSU seems to have a lot more by way of resources for engineering students. Both schools are automatic admission with WAGAP and both seem to have good professional placements. Concerns about WWU with so many students being excluded from their engineering program after sophomore year; WSU, though, would automatically admit to the engineering school.

Not thrilled with the rural setting of Pullman, or the personal experience with grads from their non-engineering programs, but engineering there doesn’t look bad there at all.

Looking to stay West Coast. Are there other schools with good engineering programs, largely taught by professors, that should be considered? Gonzaga? Oregon State? The big California ones might be a stretch or might be too intense - maybe?

Looking for a school that’s not too tiny - the resources and energy of thousands rather than hundreds of people is preferred. Expected to want to stay at least suburban, but … if WSU is even on the table… guess it turns out the setting isn’t actually that important.

Drowning in promotional material from schools everywhere. Where should we actually be visiting over the next few months?

  • English: Honors except for second semester jr year

  • Math: through Calculus, planning Statistics sr year

  • Science: Biology, Chemistry, and Physics. Hoping for Astronomy next year.

  • History and social studies: regular HS classes, no honors offered, did not do AP

  • Language other than English: will have four years of Spanish

  • Extracurricular: Ultimate Frisbee; founding administrator of a 20,000 member online game community.
    *Work Experience: Movie Theater

  • LOR - several teachers have said they would do one, it seems people collect these, but schools seem to say they don’t want them - maybe it’s a more highly competitive thing?

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Any chance you can complete your chance me thread using the following template?

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Demographics

  • US domestic (US citizen or permanent resident) or international student
  • State/Location of residency:
  • Type of high school (or current college for transfers):
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Cost Constraints / Budget
(High school students: please get a budget from your parents and use the Net Price Calculators on the web sites of colleges of interest.)

Intended Major(s)

GPA, Rank, and Test Scores

  • Unweighted HS GPA: (calculate it yourself if your high school does not calculate it)
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  • Math: (including highest level course(s) completed)
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Oregon State is a great place for mechanical engineering, and it’s also not difficult to switch between engineering majors if desired. The Honors College is excellent and there are small honors sections of engineering classes available throughout the 4 year degree. Once you satisfy minimum criteria (a 1310 SAT would qualify), applications for Honors are holistic (including an essay). I would definitely recommend a visit. Pick a day to visit when you can get the specific tours of the engineering school and the honors college (and any other specific tours you like).

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I think that Gonzaga and Oregon State are both great suggestions. Run the Net Price Calculator (NPC) at Gonzaga though, as it may not hit budget. The schools below are all ABET-accredited for most of the main engineering disciplines and might be worth checking out.

  • Cal State: Chico is one of the few residential Cal States, has several engineering and engineering technology majors, about 13k undergrads, and is part of WUE which means a discount for Washington residents.

  • UC-Merced: The only UC that’s part of WUE. It’s the newest UC campus which means that many California residents find it less than desirable, but it’s already #60 on U.S. News & World Report’s ranking (which only means as much as you want it to mean…but I’m using it here to show that this campus is no slouch). Since it’s not a super-popular UC (yet), that means that there’s a lot of flexibility in terms of choosing and switching between majors.

  • U. of the Pacific (CA): About 3300 undergrads at this school that’s ABET-accredited for several different engineering disciplines.

  • Portland State (OR): About 17k undergrads. This school has more of a commuter population, but 36% of first year students live on-campus, so there is a certain cohort within a residential community here.

  • Seattle U (WA): About 4k undergrads

  • Seattle Pacific (WA): About 2400 undergrads

  • U. of Portland (OR): About 3400 undergrads

  • Santa Clara & Loyola Marymount are mid-sized possibilities, but I’m less confident of them coming in as affordable.

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Given your budget, you might look at the WUE. I’m not quite sure of the engineering discipline you’d want - but for mechanical, the following are ABET accredited and some are less difficult admits. That said, engineering has the amongst the highest drop out rate of any major - some studies show over 50% - so your student will need to be really, really strong at math. Given the ADHD, perhaps a smaller school is better. On the flip side, having a school with a lot of majors, just in case also matters.

Here are WUE schools - I removed any that are not ABET accredited - they offer you huge discounts and most are “safe” admits. A few schools (like Oregon State) don’t give to all. Some on the list are small - including the Mining named schools in SD and New Mexco - perhaps that’d be smaller classes?

Alaska: U of Alaska Anchorage, U of Alaska Fairbanks

California: Chico State, Cal State Northridge, UC Merced, Cal Poly Pomona, Cal State Maritime, Cal State Sacramento

Colorado: U of Colorado at Colorado Springs, U of Colorado Denver, Colorado Mesa

Hawaii: U of Hawaii

Idaho: Boise State, U of Idaho, Idaho State

Montana: Montana State and Montana Tech

Nevada: UNLV and Nevada Reno

New Mexico: UNM, NMSU, New Mexico Mining & Tech

N Dakota: NDSU, UND

Oregon: Oregon State, Oregon Tech, Portland State

S Dakota: SD State, SD Mines

Utah: Southern Utah, Utah State, Utah Valley, Utah, Weber State

Wyoming - U of Wyoming

As far as in state goes - E Washington, UW Bothell, WSU, WSU Vancouver, and UW are ABET…as is Seattle U (private but with aid)??

WWU does not offer mechanical engieering so it would not make a wise choice for your son’s interests.

Hopefully that’s some new names to work with - most all will be safeties and all should be in budget.

Best of luck.

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Apologies - I read the formatting suggestions as a “make sure you don’t forget these items” rather than “follow this format”.

Demographics

  • US domestic * US citizen
  • State/Location of residency: Washington
  • Type of high school (or current college for transfers): Regular Public High School
  • Other special factors: * ADHD

Cost Constraints / Budget prefer $150k, maybe $200k, some flexibility

Intended Major(s) Engineering, possibly mechanical or industrial. Building things, doing math, looking for new angles on old ideas

GPA, Rank, and Test Scores

  • Unweighted HS GPA: * 3.390 (turns out there is some weighting at HS) / 3.476 by August
  • Weighted HS GPA: * 3.427 / 3.505 by August
  • Class Rank: unknown, but middling, it’s a major tech burb and there’s a large number of extreme high achievers
  • ACT/SAT Scores: SAT 1310

List your HS coursework

  • English: Honors 9, honors 10, AP Lang /regular 11 (melted down first semester jr year but got a 4 on the exam), headed for honors 12
  • Math: through Calculus, not AP, likely Statistics sr year
  • Science: Biology honors, Chemistry, Physics, likely Astronomy sr year
  • History and social studies: World History, “World to Present”, US History, likely Government sr year
  • Language other than English: will have 4 years of Spanish
  • Visual or performing arts: Art 1, tech theater
  • Other academic courses: Engineering, Digital Design, lots of PE

Extracurriculars
Ultimate Frisbee
Founding and ongoing admin of a 20,000-member online game community

Essays/LORs/Other
No essays written, not particularly strong at this, will be adequate. Some teachers have offered to do a letter of recommendation

Schools
Washington State University
Help us out here, tyranny of choice

  • Assured (100% chance of admission and affordability):
  • Extremely Likely: WSU, WWU, anything WAGAP
  • Likely: OSU ?
  • Toss-up: Gonzaga ?
  • Lower Probability: ?
  • Low Probability: ?
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Major error: Calculated GPAs wrong. Learned about weighted GPAs yesterday. Lots of B+s in there made GPA look higher.

Once summer course is complete, I expect:

Unweighted GPA 3.476, weighted GPA 3.505.

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See my post above and note if you are planning MechE, WWU is not an option.

1 Like
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With budget and GPA constraints, Santa Clara and Gonzaga are both unlikely…but you have received lots of other great suggestions. Good luck!

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Colorado State is also a WUE school with ABET engineering. However, WUE is considered a merit scholarship, so if your grades fall below the required GPA, you will lose the WUE benefit.

1 Like
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Good catch - I missed CSU - it’s tuition full pay this year was $34,751 (vs. a bit more than $20K WUE) - and $17K room and board.

Thanks