I live in Nashville. Most wanna be engineers apply to U of TN and Alabama over Vandy. They are not known for engineering per se. They have a program but likely more that want grad school and other careers.
Don’t use US News to determine top engineering schools in my opinion. The criteria used to rate them is based on popularity. Not metrics.
There’s fantastic engineering schools all over, including the CA schools, Oregon State, the Arizona schools, Nevada schools and more close to home.
If you go home to China then yeah maybe a Vandy carries cachet.
To me, given this issue, I am not convinced that it is a good idea to apply ED at all anywhere.
Instead, I would avoid ED, apply to a range of schools including more safeties and likelies, do some more research regarding which schools are good for engineering and which are a good fit, look for ABET accredited schools, and postpone the decision regarding which to to attend until after the offers have come in.
I work closely with colleagues across Europe and Asia, and most people (and employers) recognize only a handful of US university names. Vanderbilt typically isn’t one of them.
You will have to check each college to determine whether Chinese will be considered. Chinese is your heritage language…you didn’t learn it in a classroom. Everyone took Chinese in China…like everyone takes English here.
Some colleges will recognize your fluency in two languages and be satisfied. Others will not take this. So check.
I’m curious, which won’t? I know that some offer proficiency exams to technically meet the language requirement which a native speaker would presumably ace, but I definitely recall seeing statements along the lines of the language requirement being fulfilled if English is a second language (after all, the requirement is language “other than English”). I don’t recall any saying that someone with another home langue would need to have shown proficiency in a third language, though obviously I have not looked at every college out there.
Forgive me if I misunderstand. Do you mean that all these schools are basically same for me, and I should choose whatever that’s cheaper and easier to get into.
Any ABET-accredited engineering program is a good program. That does not make them all the same.
There are a lot of very good engineering programs at a lot of very good universities. Academically talented students attend a very wide range of universities for a very wide range of reasons. Some need to attend an affordable school, which is often but not always an in-state public university. A few academically very excellent students from poor families attend very highly ranked private schools with excellent need based financial aid. Some students can afford to attend pretty much any university. Some prefer a small school. Some prefer a large school. Some prefer to stay near home. Some choose to go far away from home.
I have seen a U.Mass graduate solve a very tough problem that had stumped two MIT graduates. The second of the two MIT graduates was a well known expert in the field, listened to the problem, and immediately said “you have to talk to ‘name’”. The “name” was a very common first name only, but I immediately knew who they meant (there was only one person by that name in the company who had any chance to solve the problem). “Name” gave me the solution quickly and clearly, and then I said “would you like to have lunch” since it was lunch time. Since my older daughter had just started university and his oldest son was close to university age we discussed universities over lunch, which is how I found out that he was a U.Mass graduate. However, he was not a top expert in his field because he went to U.Mass. Rather, he was a top expert in his field because he was just that good, and he would have been that good pretty much regardless of where he went to university.
Strong students should be looking for a university that is a good fit for them. What constitutes a good fit will vary a great deal from one student to the next.
First of all your intended major does not need to have anything to do with your high school activities. If all of your high school ECs relate to biology, and you want to major in math, then apply to major in math. If all of your high school ECs related to biology, and you want to major in EE, then apply to major in EE.
Your comment also makes me wonder whether you are referring to the point that a bachelor’s degree in biology is sometimes considered to be not the easiest degree to find a job with. This can vary a bit. As one example a biology major with a lot of lab experience might have an easier job finding a lab job compared to a recent biology graduate with different experience.
Another thing that comes to mind is that there are engineering jobs that are related to biology and/or medicine. All of that equipment that you see in hospitals had to be designed and built. This however is something that you do not need to think about for many years (very likely until after you get a bachelor’s degree).
It is very common for students to change their major. Just as one example, in my family out of the four of us, three of us either changed our major or started university without any major. At the point that I graduated university (with a degree in mathematics) I still had no idea what I wanted to do for a career. Fortunately math is a field that can be useful in a wide range of ways, and I did find something appropriate eventually. This sort of uncertainty is perfectly normal, and finding an appropriate career is something that we each figure out over time.
At this point you are still a high school student, and it is entirely normal for you to not know what career you are going to end up with.
To me your reasons for applying ED do not seem compelling. You do not need to apply ED anywhere.
I have known a lot of very good engineers. A few of them (very few) are very good at literature. A few of them are somewhat bad at literature. A few are really bad at literature. Most of them I just would not know. Not taking AP Literature seems entirely sensible to me. I do not see a problem at all with this one.
At this point I am a bit lost regarding what you actually want your major to be. “I do not know” is a perfectly okay answer at this point.
I am also not completely sure what you want in a university.
I am also wondering about the visa issue. However, it might just not be possible to know what the situation will be like in 4 years in terms of getting work authorization at that time to work in the US. Unless you know something that the rest of us don’t, you might need to expect to return to your home country after graduation.
Mostly I think that you should think about adding safeties to your list of schools to apply to, apply for a major or majors that you want without regard to your high school ECs, and avoid applying ED anywhere.
Presumably, if the OP was in China attending school in Chinese through the first part of 10th grade, the OP meets UC’s language other than English requirement.
However, other colleges and universities may have different rules.
@Eric.H did you have a year of art in high school, either in China or the US?
Unfortunately the descriptions on websites are not always clear. However, many colleges, including Vanderbilt I believe, will recommend something for English classes, and then separately for a “foreign” language. The conventional definition of a “foreign” language is a non-native language. This is indeed distinct from using the term “language other than English”, which may be inclusive of native languages not English.
And since these are often just recommendations and not requirements, the lack of a non-native language other than English may not be automatically disqualifying. However, that also cuts the other way, meaning many successful applicants may actually exceed the minimal requirements, including both in terms of the number of years but also when considering rigor.
So, for example, even if a native language would technically satisfy a language recommendation, a college like that could still deem it a relatively unrigorous way of satisfying that recommendation.
But at a certain point you just have to apply with the transcript you have and see what happens. Still, if I had never studied a language that was neither English nor non-native, I would think it prudent to apply to some Likely colleges which confirmed they would be fine with that.
I’m not so sure about that. In the U.S., if a student studies English & also a “foreign” language that happens to be a second native language, the non-English language counts as a foreign language for college admissions & state scholarship programs that require 2-3 years of a foreign language.
However, if a student from Venezuela, for example, takes ESL classes at the U.S. high school, those do not count as a foreign language. If the student opts to take higher-level Spanish, like AP, those would count as the foreign language since the primary language of instruction in U.S. schools is English. The student would not need to study an additional foreign language (e.g. French). But a few colleges do have different rules & interpretations. What matters is where the student graduates from & receives the high school diploma - if it’s from the U.S. - then English is the primary language & Spanish is the foreign language; if it’s from Venezuela, then vice-versa.
But, as @SJ2727 asked in an earlier post, do any colleges actually state this? Are Hispanic students who speak Spanish fluently at home required to take a language other than Spanish in high school? (Many schools don’t offer other foreign languages, and I personally know Hispanic students who have been admitted to very selective schools without a 3rd language)
IMO, OP is going to be fine meeting the LOTE requirement.