<p>I’m an upcoming high school senior going through the rigors of the college refining process, and I want to be an engineer but not to an engineering-exclusive school, so no MIT or Caltech, for example. Anyway, my high school stats are very good all except for the fact that I have gotten straight B’s in math freshman through junior year. All my classes are weighted/AP and all, but also most of my extra-curricular have to do with music and business, and they are all very prestigious as well, but I was wondering which Ivies would look at the whole picture of me as a student, and not just eliminate me right away on the grounds that I shouldn’t have B’s in math if I’m applying to engineering.</p>
<p>Basically, I’m overqualified except for math grades, not even the SAT’s though, I’ve done more than fine in them. Right now my reach school list consists of Cornell, Princeton, UPenn, and Yale, but I know Cornell places a lot of credence in the math grades, even though both my parents went there and I’ve loved the place since I was little. I need to broaden my horizons, so any non-Ivies that are great engineering that you can recommend would be tremendously helpful as well.</p>
<p>Yeah I don’t think west coast is an option for me. I live in the northeast.</p>
<p>Duke I think would still be considered a reach for me, I’m looking for more middle-of-the-road schools, like Carnegie-Mellon, that are strong in engineering but still a strong liberal arts presence</p>
<p>Some off the top of my head
-VT (not a whole lot of LAs)
-UT-Austin
-Texas A&M (not a whole lot of LAs, less than vt probably)
-UMD-CP
-UVA
-Lehiegh
-Duke</p>
<p>look for bigger schools. Broad universities will usually have both engineering and liberal arts (I transfered from VT to UVA looking for the same thing, and big schools have big variety I’ve found)</p>
<p>I know UMD is a good program, but I have a cousin who lives in Maryland (not attending though) and he says the engineering program is trying to get its rankings raised so they’re being really cutthroat on grades and failing half of each class. I want to go to a good program, but I want a semi-decent environment too… Plus Baltimore is the second-most dangerous city in the US now (on projection for the highest murder rate this year), and the area UMD is in is a fairly bad part of Baltimore.</p>
<p>I feel like I’m being picky about everything, but is it my fault if I find faults with so many schools?</p>
<p>What kind of science classes have you taken. Engineering is math and science intensive. You will be in for a rude awakening if you haven’t been exposed to some rigorous math and science classes.</p>
<p>Have taken calculus or are you planning to?</p>
<p>Actually, luckydivot, UMD isn’t in Baltimore at all - it’s closer to DC than it is to Baltimore. There are buses at UMD that will take you to metro stops, just hop a train into DC! The town of College Park itself, in Prince George’s County, isn’t too bad. You might have been thinking of JHU, which is definitely in a sketchy part of Baltimore…</p>
<p>I’ll be perfectly fine in any of the sciences. My chemist dad has been preaching science stuff at me since I was little, all A’s in all honors/AP courses, 800 physics 800 chemistry satii’s. In math, I’ve been in the normal honors track throughout, my senior year i’m taking AP Calc AB, so it’s average level. I understand the concepts, I’ve had really ****ty teachers though so I’ve gotten B’s every year. I’m worried that cornell eng school will look at those B’s and think I’m not up for it. Or even worse, that I won’t be up for it and I’ll have to study every waking hour while I’m there if I do make it… I really don’t know though, I tend to underestimate myself dramatically on stuff like this and then it turns out perfectly fine</p>
<p>Yanners: Ah yeah college park. I do get hopkins mixed up with that city sometimes. My cousin did say it’s a kind of sketchy area though… Is the campus pretty well closed off, or is it open into the town, like more of a Columbia or more of an NYU, for lack of a better analogy?</p>