Schools that would be a good fit?

Chance Me / Match Me
1

Thanks in advance for taking the time to read through this post (I think I included too many details, but better too many than too little I hope). I’m planning to major in either chemical or mechanical engineering. I’m just beginning to put together a college list so I wanted to see what schools you guys could recommend I check out.

ACADEMICS:

3.91 GPA
2200 SAT (I was thinking of retaking this; it would be my third try)
800 Math II 800 Chem 800 Physics
IB predicted 42/45

  • 6 in Math HL
  • 6 in English HL
  • 7 in Chem HL
  • 7 in Econ SL
  • 7 in Spanish SL
  • 7 in Physics SL

AWARDS:

several small Scholastic Art & Writing awards
Foyle Young Poets award
Presidental Award for Education for two years (I know this doesn’t really count)
several departmental school awards

ECs:

Doctors’ Club (even though I don’t want to be a doctor; I did mostly fundraising through this club) (3 years)
NHS (2 years)
Literary Magazine (4 years, president for two years)
started arts & crafts classes for elementary children
started art & writing competition for elementary children
expanded arts & crafts to children in cancer hospital
lead disease awareness campaigns (combining both NHS and Doctors’ Club)
don’t know if this counts, but I can speak five languages, two of them self-taught

WORK/ INTERNSHIPS:

marketing internship (completely random, probably won’t include in application)

BASIC INFO:

female
living in Middle East but American citizen (so there are very, very few job opportunities for women without having high-up connections, and not even then)
upper-middle class
no hooks, basically

Any suggestions on how I can strengthen my application over the summer are more than welcome (one thing I know I need to work on is my dearth of STEM ECs).

2

What can you and your parents pay since this will be the most important factor in targeting acceptable colleges?

3

I’m not sure as to the exact amount, but cost isn’t a huge issue.

4

Well, what kind of environment do you want to be in? West coast or East Coast?
Harvey Mudd, the UC’s (Berkeley and Santa Barbara stand out a bit more than the rest), Cal Poly SLO, are good for engineering. Purdue, UIUC, maybe University of Maryland (not too familiar with them though) on the east coast.
Obviously you could try for Caltech and MIT, and Stanford, all of them have insanely good engineering programs.
Some reaches, but certainly some matches/safeties mixed in there as well.

5

U of Delaware has a superb ChemE program.