I am a junior in a private high school in the MidWest interested in Mechanical Engineering. In my first 2 years of high school, I found school and homework boring (I was previously homeschooled) and I didn’t do them, so I had a B average over the 2 years. Now my grades have improved to the Aminus/Bplus range and with steady improvement to even higher grades, I estimate that my GPA will be 3.2-3.3 when I graduate. My PreACT score as a sophomore was 32 and it is reasonable to project that my ACT score next Spring will be in the 35-36 range. I play varsity football, and I am the chess team president. I am currently take AP Calculus AB, AP English Language, and AP Computer Science A, and plan to take AP Microeconomics, AP Macroeconomics, AP Statistics, AP Physics 1 in my senior year. Considering that I will have a high ACT and low GPA, what schools are likely to be reach, target and safety for me?
First, check with your parents as to how much they can afford to pay per year.
Then find schools that can fit that budget.
Most of your targets should be your in-state targets given your predicted GPA.
Thank you for your response.
I forgot to say that I will need scholarships and financial aid.
As a follow-up to your question, apart from my in-state targets, where else should I look?
Have you completed 3-4 years of a second language?
Being at an independent school, I imagine you have a college counselor available to you that should be of assistance with a college list to map to
your stats and budget - I would recommend you start there.
Part of your issue for scholarships are your grades.
The colleges and universities have finite budgets and tend to reserve their few dollars for the students with high GPAs and SATs, recruited athletes, performers, and students they need who will form their classes.
You need to meet with your Guidance Counselor and find out where students with your needs can place. If you need Financial aid and scholarships, it will be difficult for you to go out of state.
Thank you.
Yes I am currently in my third year of Spanish.
Can’t say need scholarships. Need a budget - how much per year can your parents pay (or are they willing to pay)?
Do you have size or geographic preferences ?
Thank you.
I don’t have a number but we have talked about taking loans in addition to financial aid, if need be.
No size or geographic preference.
I want to go to the best school given my stats.
Nope - need a #.
You can only take out $27k over four years - and you don’t want loans.
Can they spend $90k per year?
$60k?
$40k?
$20k?
You need that talk b4 building a list.
There is no best school - other than one ABET accredited that you can afford, preferably with no loans.
What state are you from ? Not Midwest but state ?
Here’s an example my son went to an east to get into school - turned down Purdue. Works with kids from Purdue, Michigan, etc.
They all make high 5 figures.
You pay taxes. Rent is over $2k - he prefers to live alone. Maybe $1300-1400 with roomie. Groceries are higher here in CA, car insurance etc.
If he lived in Missouri he might make $20k less.
Life is far more expensive than kids realize.
You don’t need loans but even if you did, the feds fortunately limit you.
So develop a budget. I promise there are schools to meet the budget.
Your bigger issue is the coursework. Engineering has a 50% plus drop out / change major rate.
State of residency?
Price limit?
I have a family member with similar stats, he had one acceptance because he applied mostly to reaches, 35 act, 1540 sat. ED’d at northeastern, his first rejection. Full pay. He’s at Pitt. Your list needs to start with budget. Great chess player. He was diagnosed with adhd summer before senior year (his lowest grades were in the easiest classes).
IMO, it’s too early to make a list since you’re guessing about ACT scores and grades for this year. Do the very best you can to get the highest grades possible from here on out, start developing better study habits, and prepare well for the ACT.
A high score isn’t going to negate your grades but there are some schools that don’t look at Freshman year grades and many that will consider a strong upward trend.
You sound very similar to a friend of my D’s - excellent standardized test scores and good but not great grades. He was shut out of all but his safety school because he overshot his list.
When the time comes, my advice is to use the weakest part of your application, compare it to the common data set of schools you are interested in, and create your safety/match/reach list. The worst thing you can do is have an unrealistic list and being disappointed with the results.
As noted by others, there are plenty of great schools for mech e that are less competitive for admission. Come back in the spring when you have your junior year grades and actual scores and do a chance/match me then. Work hard in the meantime!
University of Dayton (private) has a very supportive engineering department. If you want to be an engineer focus on abet programs that are a good fit for you (academically and financially).
Generally your budget is what you and your parents have saved for college divided by four, plus annual earnings you can provide, any annual contribution your parents can make plus the $5,500 freshman loan (and possibly Pell grants or state aid based on need and/or merit).
How much have you and your parents saved for college? How much do you earn that you can put toward college? How much do your parents think they will be able to contribute annually toward college?
The average net price for families that earned over $110,000 per year at UDayton was $34,678 in 2022-23. College Navigator - University of Dayton
What state are you in? If it’s Ohio you have lots of great in state public options.
I think it is important to understand that a very high ACT will not necessarily dramatically change your options over just a pretty high ACT when you have a significant grade issue and you also need a lot of aid.
But one of the reasons why we need to know your actual budget and your state is that can all affect what even plausibly makes sense.
As an example, suppose you were an Iowa resident. Just to begin with, that means you have a fantastic MechE college in your state in Iowa State. Just to calibrate, I think Iowa State is roughly a top 50ish engineering college in the US overall, and maybe more like top 30ish in MechE specifically. So, really quite attractive for MechE.
Iowa State is interesting because they have a fairly transparent formula for admissions:
I believe assuming you have a good number of core courses on your transcript, it is possible for you to get the necessary 245 for automatic admissions even with just an ACT in the high 20s (although you should check their calculator to confirm this).
OK, so if you are in Iowa, and can afford Iowa State’s resident cost of attendance, you might be in great shape:
https://financialaid.iastate.edu/getting-started/cost/cost-of-attendance/undergraduate-students/
For that matter, if you can afford their non-resident cost of attendance, you might still be in great shape. Because Iowa State would be a great option for MechE either way.
OK, but let’s say you could not afford Iowa State’s full non-resident cost of attendance. Is it over? No, not necessarily, because Iowa State offers merit. But that depends on your state.
Let’s suppose you were in Ohio, say. Here is what that chart looks like:
Note this depends on GPA, not ACT, so that is what it is. However, they will accept a weighted GPA (within certain limits). So you could estimate how much you might get, and maybe that would get you on budget. Or not. This is all a hypothetical, so it would depend on your actual budget and state of residence.
OK, that is just one example. But very much a relevant one for someone interested in MechE.
What are you interested in doing with mechanical engineering? Is it something that could be accomplished by going to a specialty trade school? I ask because your stats sound a lot like one of my sons. He is very mechanical and chose to do a 2-year program at Texas State Technical College doing precision machining. He did not care to go to a 4-year college because he doesn’t want to go to school any longer than necessary and knows what he wants to do.
Many midwestern state publics offer reduced tuition rates and scholarships for residents of bordering states. Check the publics in your neighboring states.
Look at the Common Data Sets for the colleges/universities in which you might be interested: Section C7 tells you how each school weighs different types of academic and non-academic criteria; Sections C9-C11 give objective data about recently matriculated classes.
You probably want to avoid schools that weigh academic GPA as “very important,” and to look for schools that weigh standardized test scores as “very important”.
Just to back this up, another college that really swings above its generic rankings when it comes to specifically MechE is Missouri S&T.
And they have what they call their Connection Award that will cover the difference between in-state and OOS if you are coming from Arkansas, Kansas, or Oklahoma:
https://sfa.mst.edu/financial-aid/scholarships/undergraduate/connection-award/
And in their case, they actually have an ACT-based “Extra” award that will bump that up a bit more.
That said, even if you are not from one of those states, they have automatic OOS merit that depends on a matrix of ACT and GPA, and will use weighted GPA:
https://sfa.mst.edu/financial-aid/scholarships/undergraduate/freshmen-merit-based-scholarships/
So it appears to me it is very likely the OP could qualify at least for their Tier 3 award, and maybe Tier 2 depending on their weighted GPA.
Anyway, just another example of how budget, state residency, and other factors are all going to be important to determining which options actually make sense.
I’m curious which these might be. Every one I have looked at regardless of ranking has this checked as very important (including schools that auto admit at a 3.0 GPA and those that admit instate residents at a 2.5), and I have simply concluded that they mean relative to their own admit pool and not in absolute terms.
lol I looked up some too. The only one I found so far that doesn’t have gpa as very important is North Dakota State. There are probably more but even Kansas (no shade, I love Kansas) has gpa as very important.