Will I get into my top engineering schools? [3.4 GPA, 1320 SAT, 30 ACT]

Chance Me / Match Me
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I want to major in Aerospace Engineering, but I am finding a lot of contradicting information online about admissions. Most of the colleges that I am looking at don’t publish major-specific acceptance rates, and I have a bit of an unusual application.

I am going into my senior year of high school, and I am currently sitting at around a 3.4 unweighted gpa. I have a 1320 SAT (retaking soon) and a 30 ACT. I have decently strong extracurriculars, including 4 years of varsity sports and 490 community service hours. I run track and I’m fast enough to try out or walk on for some of them (given some improvement), so keep that in mind.

Here is my list of colleges that I plan to apply to. Some of them don’t offer an aerospace degree, so I will apply as mechanical. Also I am OOS for all of them.

Cal Poly SLO

Cal Poly Pomona

NJIT

San Jose State

Long Beach State

Purdue

Maryland

Virignia Tech

Embry-Riddle Daytona Beach

UIUC

CU Boulder

Penn State

UWash

NC State

Any insight on their acceptance rates or information that would help me create a smarter application is greatly appreciated.

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Purdue engineering just published the profile for the 2025 incoming class:
GPA (unweighted) Average : 3.85
ACT Composite: Average : 31.4
SAT Composite: Average : 1409

Acceptance rate - 34%

Purdue engineering will also expect to see the highest rigor in math and physics that was available to you at your high school and will look closely at those grades.

All engineers start in first year engineering and then transition to their majors second semester of sophomore year. Aero is one of the more competitive majors and you will need a 3.2 GPA in your STEM classes to transition to the major.

Be sure to make sure to meet the early admission deadline since the majority of the class is filled in EA.

Purdue should be in your “reach” category. I’d say the same for UMD, UIUC.

I will let other posters more familiar with your other schools to chime in about them.

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Tagging @Gumbymom for info re CSUs. You’ll need to calculate the CSU GPAs: GPA Calculator | CSU

Cal Poly SLO takes 9th grade into account and the others are 10th-11th.

Aerospace engineering is very competitive at Boulder, I believe the most competitive within engineering. Your stats are below the middle 50 for the engineering college as a whole (Weighted High School GPA: 3.97 - 4.42, SAT Total: 1360 - 1500, ACT Composite: 31 - 35). You may get into exploratory studies, which you can use to transfer in to engineering if you meet the requirements.

(No info on the others)

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California public universities do not use SAT or ACT in admission.

Also, you ACT 30 is likely to be seen as better than 1320 SAT, which is likely to be seen as concordant to 28 ACT. So if you want to retest, you may want to focus on the ACT.

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SJSU shows last year’s thresholds at Freshmen Impaction Results | Admissions

You need to recalculate you GPA for CSU multiply by 800, then add 400 times your math GPA to get the engineering admission index to compare. But thresholds may change from year to year.

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If you haven’t already begun the recruiting process with these schools, it’s highly unlikely that this will help you with admissions. They don’t give admissions help to walk ons. Have you had any contact with any of these T&F programs?

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CPP lists prior year thresholds at https://www.cpp.edu/admissions/freshmen/freshmen-student-profile.shtml

You need to recalculate your GPA for CSU, multiply by 1000 and add 450 to compare. Thresholds may change from year to year.

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Please make sure to include your budget for the schools: either give an annual amount, or a total amount for all four years. For California schools, as a nonresident, you’re looking at about $42K a year plus additional monies.

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As noted by @SJ2727 the Cal states have their own CSU GPA calculation and that all except Cal Poly SLO uses 10-11th CSU a-g course grades with a maximum of 8 semester Honors points for CSU eligible classes which are CSU/UC approved Honors (CA HS students only), AP/IB or DE/CC classes that are CSU transferable.

SJSU uses an Impaction index calculation to determine admission and they post their previous year’s Impaction Threshold for each major. For Aerospace, the Impaction threshold was 4320.
Here is how you calculate the index: Impaction | Admissions

Cal Poly Pomona has a CPP index/MFA calculation with an index threshold for admission for each major similar to San Jose state, however they do not spell out all the extra point values used in the calculation. Based on the just the basic CPP index calculation with no additional points a CSU weighted GPA of 4.0+ would be required to meet last year’s Aerospace Threshold of 4710.

Cal Poly SLO only lists their target projections and I calculated out a projected admit rate and the College of Engineering SLO GPA admit range (25-75th percentile): Admit rate: 11% SLO GPA 4.13-4.25

Cal State Long Beach Aerospace admit rate for 2024 Freshman was 47% with an average CSU GPA of 4.07 for non-local admitted students.

The CSU’s will only ask for hours/week for your EC’s so you cannot go into detail. They are test blind, do not accept essays or LOR’s so they admit mainly only GPA, HS course rigor, the # of a-g courses exceeding the minimum, if you are within their local admission area and first generation status.

I would say that it will be a tough admit for Aerospace Engineering or any other Engineering at the Cal states listed dependent upon your CSU GPA.

Best of luck.

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For non-CA schools, my guesses -

No to Purdue, UMD, and Va Tech.

Yes to CU but exploratory - which isn’t bad - and then transfer in.

Not sure of Penn State.

ERAU yes.

Can’t just the CA schools

What level of math are you?

You should look at UAH and Mississippi State or Alabama and / or Arkansas for large.

Good luck.

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I am taking Calculus this upcoming year as well as AP Physics 1.

As I research the larger schools more, it does seem much less likely.

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Thanks, I just toured SJSU CP SLO and CP Pomona, and they are some pretty impressive programs. Definitely my reaches along with Purdue UMD and VA Tech.

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I have received recruit and walk on info from a couple, and I am close to reaching them but other than that, no.

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Noted. I may end up retaking the ACT also, as I didn’t study for either and also came completely unprepared. I have since studied a lot and got a 1500 on practice test 4.

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For aero or MechE, short of a few schools, the where doesn’t matter.

Mine turned down top 10 Purdue for unranked Alabama. With 19 interviews and 5 offers by Christmas, he works in aero (as a MechE) and is in a cohort with Michigan, Purdue, and more kids.

If you can complete the curriculum, and you attend an ABET school, you’ll be competitive with grads from other schools. Others to look at - U Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa State, Arizona and more - lots of great schools for you - budget dependent.

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What state are you a resident of, and do you have cost constraints?

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I would say only Embry Riddle is within reach from your list.

Penn State Behrend is a target but UP is out of reach for engineering (3.65 is average for UP, 3.5 and below tends to be admitted to one of the branch campuses and Engineering is pretty competitive compared to average.)

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Note that your list of CSUs includes the more competitive ones for admission, but there are other CSUs with mechanical engineering that are not difficult to get into, such as CSUC, CSULA, CSUN, CSU Sacramento, CSU Fresno, and SFSU.

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