My academics are not up to my standard but my ECs are good what are my chances?

Chance Me / Match Me
1

Hello everyone! I’m currently a junior in high school in Livonia and I want to know how competitive I am.
I’m attending an accelerated program in my high school where only 30 people get admitted every single year and my life has been through a pretty rough ride throughout my high-school career.

I’m a foreigner from the Philippines and I came when I was four years old. My biological family and most of my adoptive family have never went to college and I went into accelerated programs early into my educational career.

I got involved with robotics and other extracurriculars before I entered high school since I wanted to give back to the community and gear myself towards engineering

My freshman year of high school was pretty good with a 3.8 average unweighted. I participated in out of school engineering programs and had a good yea - but my sophomore and junior year were much rougher.

I became a captain of robotics over the summer (first sophomore to do it) and got more involved with robotics and taekwondo meaning I had to choose whether ECs or academics were more important to me

Sophomore year we designed a robot that got us to world’s for the first time in the team’s history. I personally also got second in states for taekwondo and qualified for nationals. Because of those two extracurriculars I put more time into them and my grades suffered. I had a 3.6 average unweighted now.

Sophomore year ended and on Father’s day my father passed away leaving me to decide on what to do later on. I decided not to go to taekwondo nationals but still stay involved with robotics and I got a job learning how to create pharmaceutical booths. I wanted to use it to slingshot me towards a job with CAD involved.

Junior year began and the loss was still affecting my grades and I. I continued to perform at a B average for the first semester of high school, continuing to dedicate more time into my ECs.
I’m also currently going to get positions in our school’s Rotary club and Greenhouse club as event manager or higher since I want to help out the Livonia community more too.

My second semester of Junior year is starting and I feel like I’ve gotten over the rough patch in my life and I want to know if it’s too late to become competitive
My PSAT shows I am extremely competitive for mathematics (750/760) yet I need to work heavily on my reading and writing score (670/760)

TL;DR I’m foreign no one in my family got into college, put a lot of time into ECs which got super far, dad passed away lost motivation on doing stuff, standardized tests look good, grades 3.6 unweighted

Would I still be competitive entering an engineering school like U of M Ann Arbor?

2

What state do you live in? If Michigan, yes.
What’s your family’s income if you live OOS?

3

Sorry to hear the loss of your father.
As you are in junior year, it is the most critical time to keep/bring your grades up and obtain a good official test score. I assume you are waiting for the SAT in the state mandated MME coming up soon. You should do more practice exam trying to bring up your reading score to 700+. Your GPA is on the low side for CoE which has an admission average of 3.9+. You should apply to other UM campus at the same time as you can waive the application fees for additional campuses. In addition, the cross campus transfer is very easy if you don’t get accepted by UMAA next year.

4

Agree wth post 2, you only have a chance if in-state. And it’s not guaranteed so apply to a few other places. And run net price calculators everywhere you apply so you can find an affordable option. The financial aid formulas are not always as kind to single parents as I think they should be.

5

Even for instate, UMich CoE is still competitive. I know a student from one of the top feeder school with 3.8+/33 got rejected a few years ago. However, I also know a girl got in with 4.0/29. Make sure you recalculate the GPA in UM’s way.