<p>I don’t know if this is the right forum or not, honestly, but here goes.
I’m in a bit of a situation at the moment.
I want to be an engineer - I’m especially interested in neural engineering, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, etc., although I know those don’t specifically fall under the banner of “engineering” per se. I applied to a number of colleges, but got rejected from the ones I really wanted to go to (MIT, CMU). However, I got into Rensselaer and a few in-state schools (I live in Virginia) with fairly average undergraduate programs.
I know why I got rejected from my top choices: I had a pretty terrible time during junior year of high school due to the fact that I moved to a new town a couple hundred miles away. The new school was a lot more competitive than I was used to, and I’d lost direct contact with all my friends, etc., the whole bit. I didn’t join any extracurricular groups until senior year, when I joined the French Club and Literary Magazine, and got accepted to the French Honor Society (because my new high school’s guidance department is incompetent, my old transcripts were not processed on time and I didn’t get into NHS, Beta Club, or any other academic performance-based groups). I have no research experience at all.
I’ve done taekwondo for almost seven years, and taught it for about four (two years with pay, but the first two without), which I think was one of the only reasons I even got in to RPI, so bad were my junior year grades. I’ve been a first degree black belt for much longer than is usual because I’ve moved around and changed schools so often. Unfortunately, if I go to RPI, I can’t continue to advance–RPI has a taekwondo club, but if I joined a local school I’d have to start over from first degree black belt, or worse, white belt–and won’t be able to continue practicing my nunchaku because they’re illegal in New York (but guns aren’t–go figure).
My SAT score, first attempt late junior year, was 2220: 800 CR, 650 M, 770 W. My attempt to raise my math score by retaking it succeeded, but I got lower reading and writing scores on top of that, so my overall score was lower. My SAT II scores weren’t great either: 650 Math II, 700 Math I, 770 Bio.
My usual performance is better than this: I’ve got my act together this year, and have a much higher YTD GPA, seven classes (5 AP, 2 Honors), with all A’s but two, which are B’s. Unfortunately this still leaves me with barely over a 3.5 cumulative, down from a 3.9 before I moved. Everyone else in my classes has above a 4.0, with the valedictorian this year having a weighted GPA of around 5.6 or something ludicrous like that.
The way I see it, I have three choices:</p>
<li><p>Go to RPI, which is a good engineering school and has some measure of prestige but not as much as my original top choices, and fail to attain my second degree black belt yet again.</p></li>
<li><p>Go to VCU, which is only a few miles away from where I live but is only an average school (not very good undergrad programs in engineering, from what I’m told), and continue my martial arts training.</p></li>
<li><p>Wait a year, keep working and get my second degree black belt, then apply to my top choices again and hope I get in this time.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Note that I skipped a grade, so I’m graduating high school at 16 and thus taking a skip year would not be much of a problem–I’d be the same age as everyone in my grade for once in my life.
If I go for option three and take that skip year, what could I do in the meantime that would increase my chances of admission to, say, MIT, CMU, or Caltech?
Thanks very much in advance for any helpful response.</p>