Engineering Pathways - College Bound Mentor Podcast #25

Engineering Pathways – College Bound Mentor Podcast #25

Welcome to the College Bound Mentor podcast! Each episode, hear trends, case studies, and interviews with students who have gone through it all.

This is Episode #25 and you’ll hear the various pathways for pursuing engineering degrees. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and your other favorite podcast spots – follow and leave a 5-star review if you’re enjoying the show!

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Transcript

College Bound Mentor Podcast Episode #25: Engineering Pathways

Engineering programs seemingly get more & more competitive every year. How do you land a spot in that dream engineering program – or maybe one that’s an even better fit? In this episode, Lisa, Abby, and Stefanie break down the various pathways for pursuing engineering degrees. Hear how engineering works at larger public universities, how to get into an engineering school, what to expect from engineering at liberal art colleges, why applying to engineering programs is such a long process, and 3 case studies of aspiring engineering students. This episode covers everything from engineering to summer internships. Here’s a small sample of what you will hear in this episode:

How does engineering work at large public universities?
What is a 3-2 program?
How does engineering work at liberal arts colleges?
Engineering student case studies
How long is the decision process?

Subscribe to College Bound Mentor on your favorite podcast platform and learn more at CollegeBoundMentor.com.

Check out the episode and show notes below for much more detail.

Show Notes

Engineering Pathways
- [0:19] Welcome to College Bound Mentor
- [0:25] Lisa Bleich, Abby Power, Stefanie Forman
- [0:28] Subscribe to College Bound Mentor on your favorite podcast platform and learn more at CollegeBoundMentor.com
- [1:18] How does engineering work at large public universities?
- [4:42] How does engineering work at research universities and Ivy League schools?
- [6:32] How does engineering work at liberal arts colleges?
- [8:10] How does engineering work at STEM schools (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics)?
- [12:00] What is a 3-2 program?
- [13:18] Case Study #1: Callie
- [19:15] How long is the decision process?
- [22:10] What did Callie think of Johns Hopkins?
- [22:44] Case Study #2: Devin
- [30:06] Case Study #3: Maya
- [39:40] Subscribe to College Bound Mentor on your favorite podcast platform and learn more at CollegeBoundMentor.com
- Theme Song: “Happy Optimistic Americana” by BDKSonic

**What is the College Bound Mentor podcast?**

Lisa, Abby, and Stefanie know college. They also know students. With over 30 years combined experience mentoring young people, they’ll show you why understanding yourself is the key to finding the right college. Each episode, hear trends, case studies, and interviews with students who have gone through it all – giving you valuable insight to survive the college application process and beyond. Hosted by Lisa Bleich, Abby Power, and Stefanie Forman, Partners of College Bound Mentor.

Transcript

Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.

Lisa Bleich 0:05
I didn’t realize it was going to be such a long process.

Hey, CBMers, welcome back to College Bound Mentor, where we help you survive the college application process and beyond. We’re your co -osts, Lisa, Abby, and Stefanie. And on today’s episode, we’re going to discuss various pathways for pursuing engineering degrees, and also go over a few engineering case studies. You know, we work with a lot of engineers on their college applications, and this year in particular, it was really, really competitive to get into engineering programs. So we thought it might be helpful to just talk about all the different ways that you can get into engineering programs, and also describe what are the various engineering offerings, and then do some case studies, because I think it would give provide a little bit more of a framework for thinking about how to approach engineering, and also, just to give some examples, what I think we’re going to start off talking about, like, what are the different pathways? Because there’s a lot of different ways that colleges offer engineering, so one of the ways is through large public universities. And so Abby is going to walk us through, what are some examples of that. And then, how is engineering offered in those schools?

Abby Power 1:28
Thanks Lisa, larger public universities where you might pursue engineering are schools like University of Michigan, University UI UC, University of Maryland, Rutgers, the University of California, schools like UCLA and Berkeley, University of Colorado, University of Washington, University of Wisconsin, and on and on. And generally speaking, the larger public universities will have a separate College of Engineering, and you’ll be most of them will do what we call direct admit, which means that you are applying directly to the engineering program versus the College of Arts and Sciences at the University. Mostly they admit by a major by specialty within the program. So whether that’s mechanical engineering or electrical engineering or computer science or systems engineering, there’s lots of different engineering programs. Basically the idea the the trick to getting into these programs is that you are showing the universities that you are pursuing your interest in that specific area of engineering through relevant experiences, like internships or research or classes, summer classes taken, some mostly bigger public high schools will offer engineering classes. So you need to really have a compelling answer to the why engineering and why do you want to do engineering at our university? Question Which, which you will undoubtedly be asked to answer. And so there are lots of options within engineering, and I’ll just add this too, that most engineering programs at large universities start out with very general a few general engineering classes, and then you get into your specialty a little bit later on, that varies. You know, the speed of that varies at different schools, but for some large universities, you don’t even start doing your specialty until your junior year. Some of you start out sooner than that.

Lisa Bleich 3:35
The UCS don’t necessarily admit by major, because they don’t, well, they actually do ask the question about, you know, academic interest and how you pursued it. But I think that this year we saw that at the large universities, large public universities, engineering was really, really competitive. So that’s just something to keep in mind going forward.

Stefanie Forman 3:54
I don’t have an answer, but like what you said, I think we just saw that this year was the most competitive year that that I’ve experienced with engineering at these larger universities. So I’m just curious, you know, moving forward, how to help our students maybe think about it differently? Yeah,

Lisa Bleich 4:12
no, I think that’s true. And I think a lot of it is about animal and in one of the cases, we’ll talk about that, but I think a lot of it is looking at engineering within the context of other things, and looking at it more from an interdisciplinary way, like, how will you use engineering to like, thinking about like, what’s problems you want to solve, and how will engineering help you solve those problems? I think that’s a good way to think about it when you’re approaching those wise school essays. The next category or ways that you could pursue engineering is really in this sort of medium, highly select research universities, or the ivys. And I put those together because they’re similar in the way that engineering is done. In some instances, you may have an engineering separate engineering school, but you don’t always have it. I mean, most of the Ivy’s do have a separate engineering school, wash. University in St Louis has a separate engineering school. Carnegie Mellon does, Northwestern does, Duke does, but then many others do not. It’s just kind of part and parcel of the school. So like Rice University or Johns Hopkins, they don’t typically admit by major. They’ll admit into the into a specific goal, but they don’t admit by major, but in some instances they do, for example, for Johns Hopkins, biomedical engineering is the only engineering major that they actually admit you to that major, and that’s the most competitive. USC is kind of a I mean, it’s not, obviously, it’s not a public school, but University of Southern California is a larger school, and they do have a separate round of questions for engineering students, as does Cornell, there’s a very specific questions to look at. For USC, they’re looking at the grand challenges, and so they want you to identify how you’re going to use your engineering degree to combat one of those. There’s usually a lot of flexibility in these schools, though, to explore and change your major. So one of the nice things about these schools is, if you are very competitive in engineering student and you have interests outside of engineering, or maybe you’re you want to do engineering, but maybe you’re not sure if you want to stick with it, you have a lot of flexibility to explore different things at these schools, and they also typically will have a lot of options within engineering. So I think that’s also something to consider for those schools. How about liberal arts colleges with engineering? Stephanie? You want to talk us through that?

Stefanie Forman 6:31
Sure. So some examples, I’m going to be talking about smaller schools, starting around like 2000 undergrad ranging to about 5500 so like these are schools like Smith union, Lafayette, Trinity, Wake Forest, which has a new engineering program, major curriculum, and in Swarthmore. And so these schools typically don’t have separate engineering schools, and they don’t admit by major, so you are applying to the school, you’re not applying to the major. And the nice thing about these liberal arts colleges that I just mentioned, you have a ton of flexibility to explore and change your major. So compared to what Abby was talking about previously with these large public universities, you might not have any engineering experience, and it might be this new passion that you explore, and it’s something that you can major in which is really nice. So a lot of room for flexibility interdisciplinary work. But conversely, you are more limited with your options with engineering. A lot of times, like at Smith, there’s a general engineering major, and there’s not a lot of space, maybe, to specialize in mechanical or computer, etc. So So I think that really covers it.

Lisa Bleich 7:49
There’s not a lot of them. It’s a there’s very few of them. So that’s also just something to keep in mind. There’s not a ton of schools that fit that category. But on the other side of that, there’s the stem focused colleges. So these are schools that are really just focused on engineering and anything STEM related. Abby, you want to walk us through those.

Abby Power 8:07
So if you are really sure that engineering is your jam, and that is what you want to do, you might look at some of these engineering and STEM focus schools. Those include RPI in upstate New York, WPI in Massachusetts, Rose Holman in Indiana, Harvey Mudd out in California, MIT in Boston, Cal Tech in Pasadena Cooper Union in New York, Lynn in Massachusetts. And these are schools that many people don’t know about, but they’re real well MIT, I guess everyone’s heard of MIT and Cal Tech and Cal Tech, I guess because watch the movie The Martian, but, but these schools are really good at what they do when they are focused on engineering and and other STEM subjects, like physics. So the whole school is engineering. So they don’t have a separate engineering school. They don’t always admit by major so specific area within engineering, but sometimes they do. You really need to have a very clear story and really back up your story with experiences when you’re applying to these schools, because you’re now limiting yourself to this field of engineering, so that you really want to see people with the compelling story who are completely committed to this area of study. There are lots of options within engineering. And at some of these schools, there are very specific areas within engineering that you might not find in other places, like aerospace and I don’t know all the other there are a lot of other ones that I’ve never heard of that are really interesting materials engineering. At these schools, you will find humanities offerings, but they will be more limited, so you will be able to take humanities classes like English and history, but it won’t be the full like book of offerings that you’ll see at another mid sized college or at a larger. University. So again, you want to make sure that engineering is really your calling before you go for one of these schools. I would say actually, though MIT is an exception to that. They have pretty strong, I mean, maybe not as strong. Yeah, they have good business, and they have pretty decent humanities too, but the rest of them, really, you are more engineering focused.

Lisa Bleich 10:23
I have a funny story about that. When we were in my oldest daughter, who, at the time, was interested in creative writing, we went to Boston to look at some schools, and MIT was not necessarily on her list, but I made her go because we were in Boston, and so they did have a creative writing major,

but we asked them about that, like, and it was just kind

of an interesting response. It’s like, well, yes, we have it as a major but you wouldn’t come here if that’s all that you wanted to do. You’d have to also do all this other stuff. You’d have to be really steeped in STEM to be able to do that. But I thought that was kind of interesting, but they did have that there. And the one thing I did want to add about the public universities is some states actually split up their schools by engineering and non engineering. So for example, UNC Chapel Hill, they do offer some limited engineering, but their main engineering, if you really want to have the full breath, you’re going to go to NC State. The same thing in Indiana, you’ve got Purdue, which is very stem focused, but a public university. And then same thing in Georgia, you’ve got Georgia Tech versus University of Georgia. So keep that in mind that there are some, you know, states where they’ll split that up by stem focused publics or non engineering focused publics. Yeah. And then I the last category is, if you really like, like everything in your kind of a renaissance person, and you want to go deep in liberal arts, but you also feel like you want to have an engineering degree, there are a number of schools that are part of what’s called a three plus two program with a liberal arts college. So those typically, you would do three years at a liberal arts college, and then you would do your last two years at an engineering school. So you would get two bachelor’s degrees. One would be a Bachelor of Arts and Sciences in something non engineering, and then you would get a Bachelor of Science in Engineering. And so Columbia, Dartmouth, Wash U those are typically a lot of schools that offer that the second part, which is the two years, and then there’s any number of liberal arts colleges that participate in that, from, you know, Bowdoin, Brandeis, Bryn Mawr, Colby, Millbury, Davidson, Muhlenberg, Claremont, McKenna, there’s, like, a number of liberal arts colleges that will participate in that. So that’s where, if you they don’t admit by major. So that’s again, if you’re just not sure, but you think you might want to explore it later. The one caveat that is, because you get the double major or double bachelor’s, you have to do an extra year of college. So from a financial standpoint, it’s not necessarily that great because you have an extra year of college. So sometimes it’s better to maybe do the four years of a liberal arts college, and then actually go and get a master’s in engineering for the same amount of time, and then you have a master’s. So that’s just one another pathway to think about so we thought we would start now and do a case study. And so I wanted to start with Callie. And I call Callie an intellectually curious, interdisciplinary, service oriented engineer. So Callie is a top student at a private Girls High School. Her highest math was multi variable calculus. She attended the prestigious Governor’s School program in engineering, and that’s a really competitive program that brings in the top students from the state, you have to be nominated by your school, and then it’s a fairly robust application, and they typically only choose, you know, one or two students from each school that are eligible, depending on the size to be nominated, and they don’t necessarily all get in. She did really well on her test. She had a 1590 on her SATs, and she took five AP exams by the end of junior year, with fours and fives, and she was taking four more senior year. She had multiple interests, from business to engineering, but she definitely wanted to do engineering in some capacity, but she hadn’t yet decided exactly how she was going to do that, so she wasn’t ready to commit to a specific engineering major. She had done significant volunteering at the Community Food Bank. She her mom was very involved, so she started doing it when she was a little girl, and she continued doing it throughout high school. She was on the teen board for the Community Food Bank. She also volunteered with a prenderlo, which was a program that was tutoring students for whom English isn’t their first language. So she got a lot of good experience doing that, and she also did some operation stuff for them, because everywhere she went, she would kind of bring in that operation systems mindset, and she would apply that to certain things. She was a pitcher for her softball team. She was also really into weightlifting and nutrition, and she she was a counselor at a camp, like a camp tech counselor that. A local day camp. So the strategy for Kelly was to identify a list of highly select, medium sized engineering colleges with various various offerings. Again, because she wanted engineering, but she wasn’t 100% committed to only engineering. Wanted to emphasize her interest in using engineering to impact the world. That was really her core message, highlighting the depth of service through the food bank and a prenderlo and how those experiences really impacted the lens and how she thought about engineering. Also, in our application, we wanted to showcase her intellectual curiosity and how she really thinks about issues and problems solving it through an interdisciplinary lens. So her main essay, she talked about a class in a bioethics class that she took in her high school that really pushed her to think about things in a more nuanced way. She used to be much more black and white about how she approached things, but that class gave her a lot of gray area to think about, and it really pushed her her thinking in a way that she hadn’t before. For her supplements we wanted, she talked a lot about all of the different experiences that she had, and that how the interactions that she had through volunteering in the food bank showed her how she could use engineering to solve problems. Like one example she showed was that when she was working in the food bank, she was, you know, moving some boxes around, and noticed that there was a lot of food that had expired. So she started thinking about how you could use some sort of modeling or some sort of engineering to perhaps mitigate a problem like that, in terms of moving foods around. So her list was her reach and sort of what I would call wild card schools, because there was really her academic profile was such that she was eligible for any school, but it was just a wild card. So University of Pennsylvania and Princeton were her reach, slash wild card schools. Her possible schools were Duke Johns, Hopkins, Northwestern Washington University in St Louis, Vanderbilt and Cornell. Her target likelies were rice tufts, UVA and Michigan, and her safeties were University of Maryland and Rutgers. And so her strategy was to apply early decision to University of Pennsylvania. Going into this, she really wanted the most prestigious school that she could get. That’s how she felt about it. So she applied there, and she got deferred, which is never that you want to do. So then she was somewhat, she was she was disappointed, understandably so, but she had a lot of other schools out there. And then she also got Michigan back and got deferred, likely because they thought that she wouldn’t, wouldn’t attend Michigan, and I think they were right on that front. And so then she went into the regular decision, and she had a lot of great acceptances. She got into Johns, Hopkins, Northwestern Vanderbilt, Cornell, Tufts, UVA, Maryland and Rutgers. She was wait listed at Duke Wash U and she was denied, ultimately, from Penn and Princeton. And so then she was trying to decide where she wanted to go. And it was interesting, because as she went back and looked at all of the different schools, she really fell in love with Johns Hopkins because it was a perfect fit for her intellectual lots of ability to explore her different areas of interest. She had a lot of time to decide what she ultimately wanted to major in, and it really fit her. The other thing was, there was the gym that was right near the dorm, and that was kind of a clincher for her, because she liked the fact that it was a smaller campus, and she could just see herself really fitting in and doing well there. So ultimately, that’s where she ended up matriculating. Fantastic. I feel

Abby Power 18:38
like the the process has become so much longer lately. And you know, you have sort of even factor in wait list and all that. A lot of kids aren’t even getting into school until the summer. So, you know, how did she do during the regular decision process? Because if you really think about it’s a long time. The kids start working on their applications during the summer, by November 1, and then sometimes it’s, you know, not until March, the end of March, that they really know their options. So how did she fare with that whole regular decision process?

Lisa Bleich 19:12
Yeah, that’s a really good question, and I would say that that was a huge problem for her in the sense she did well in regular decision but it was a huge problem for her, because she thought she would apply to University of Pennsylvania, she would be done like she really felt like she was governor school, she was top student, like she felt like this was, you know, we’re going to do it like she took her SATs, it was one and done. And so when she got deferred, it was a it was a big deflation from her. She was felt very deflated. And I knew she was going to get into great schools, but at that time, she just thought, Oh, this is such a long process. And then she got into UVA in January. So that was actually even though that wasn’t really a good fit for her, but it was just nice to have that so she knew that she was into a strong school because she also got deferred or postponed from Michigan, which they kind of do, and then fortunate. Lee, her regular decision schools were Vanderbilt, Northwestern, Johns, Hopkins, like she got into all of those regular decision so it was a good thing that she got into those regular decisions so she didn’t have to extend it. And the schools where she was wait listed, she wasn’t ultimately interested in those schools. So that was also good, but she definitely one of the takeaways that she reflected on was that I didn’t realize it was going to be such a long process. Yeah, and I wish I had known that going in and, you know, we talked about the fact that it could be a long process, but of course, until it happens to you, you don’t really recognize it. So I think that was a really good insight Abby, that that was the part that was the hardest for because she felt like, I’ve done everything, you know, I’ve done everything right. I’ve got, like, straight A’s. I’m, you know, I was in the Governor’s School, and it was hard for her not to get into early decision. But after she now that she’s at Hopkins, and she realizes that that actually is the right fit for her. I mean, she really is a Hopkins student, and she didn’t, really hadn’t visited the school before she applied. I told her that I thought it was a good fit for her, which is why she applied. And then when she came back, she’s like, Oh, my God, you’re so right. Like, when she was in she could see it, but she couldn’t see it going into the process. She had to wait until the process played out. And it’s interesting, because a lot of her friends are saying, oh, you should go to Vanderbilt, because that’s like, no one got into that school, but that just wasn’t, you know, just culturally, that was the right fit for her. I mean, she was much more of a Hopkins girl, and she’s doing great. And in fact, she just got an amazing one of, like, a very competitive research program that very few freshmen got get. And so she got that, so she’s going to get a stipend to do research over the summer, interestingly, at Penn research for 10 weeks. So it’s kind of funny how things come full circle. So I mean, it did, it did work at the end, but it was a longer process for her than she would have liked, or that I would have liked, but I’m happy that it played out that way, because she’s in the right place,

Stefanie Forman 22:03
right? Do you know how she’s taking advantage of, like, the interdisciplinary nature of Hopkins?

Lisa Bleich 22:10
Well, I think she’s just taking a lot of different classes that are helping inform what she’s doing. And I think that I don’t exactly know what the research is that she’s doing, but I think just the fact that she didn’t have to declare a very specific engineering major right away, was helpful, and she’s just been able to take a lot of other classes that are very interesting and they don’t really have any requirements. I mean, it’s an open curriculum at Hopkins outside of your major, so that’s been a good benefit for her as well.

Abby Power 22:38
Okay, so this young man’s name is Devin. He was at a very large Midwestern public high school.

took very advanced math and science classes. He also, I think Lisa you said, multi variable calculus. He had also gotten through linear algebra. He had to go outside his high school curriculum and take them at a local university. So he was really gung ho going forward. Had a real passion for math. He was on math team. Loved math. He had a couple of blips on his transcript, however, unexpected blips, one in an early math class and one in an English class. So his dream school, if you will, we try to discourage kids away from Dream schools, but his number one choice was Michigan. You know, we were concerned about those blips, just because it’s very competitive at Michigan. He also had decent standardized test scores at a, I think it was a 1410, on his essay T but his test scores didn’t quite match his academic performance, you know, because, again, he got an A in linear algebra and an A in multi variable calculus at his local university. So he had a little bit of a schizophrenic application in that way. So he also ran track, and was captain of his track team. A very accomplished runner. Probably could have run d3 was very interested in like sort of track and field club at whatever school he was going to. He was on math team at his high school. Pretty accomplished in that not at a national level, but he did pretty well regionally, and his community service was around track and field. He volunteered his time at his local middle school and that some underserved schools in his area develop, helping to develop track teams. He was really felt like track transformed him into the leader in person that he was so he really wanted to give back to that community. And then the most compelling thing about him was that he obtained a very highly competitive internship, summer internship at a large fortune 500 company in their. Research Group. Not only did he do the summer with them, but then he was invited to keep working with them throughout the year, and it was on nano science and nano technologies, and he was just, you know, like a pig in S, H, I T, like, you know, couldn’t have been happier. And became obsessed with physics, you know, obsessed with the application of math in physics, obsessed with math and physics in solving problems. And you know, he was just going for it. So he wanted to do this major in within engineering programs called engineering physics, which is about using physics principles to solve problems. He was laser, laser focused on this. So he wanted Michigan. He was not interested in smaller schools. He wanted a larger he went to a large public school. He wanted a big state school. He wanted kind of that spirit. He wanted the social choices and sort of everything choices. He was very comfortable in a larger environment, so he did not go for any of the middle sized schools. So his reaches were Georgia Tech and Michigan. He was deferred at both of those. His targets were Wisconsin, Purdue, and even though it’s more highly selective his his high school, because of this internship thing, did really well at ui UC, so that was kind of almost more of a target for him. And then he had a bunch of safeties other state schools in the Midwest. He was deferred at Michigan and Georgia Tech. He ended up getting into Wisconsin and Purdue. He was deferred at U, I, U, C, and ended up getting in later, off the wait list, and then he got into all his safety schools. It was like University of Minnesota, a bunch like that. He ended up choosing Wisconsin, mostly because of a specific area of research that they were doing within this nano science area that he had been involved in in his internship, and it sort of there was going to be an opportunity for collaboration with that company that he had had the relationship with. So he just got really excited about that whole thing. And he is actually doing that. He is doing exactly what he intended to do in the exact way that I just described it at the University of Wisconsin. He is running on their club, Track and Field Club, and overall, really kind of enjoying himself. So he was a little bit different of a student because he was so laser focused. And there was absolutely no doubt. I mean, he talked about nothing else. There was no other interest.

Lisa Bleich 27:47
Well, that’s great that he was able to find it. And I would imagine that that engineering physics is probably not at a major that’s available at every single school. Even with engineering, it

Abby Power 27:57
is not. It’s available at Michigan. It’s available Wisconsin. You can kind of cobble it together a little bit at some other schools through a double major in physics, you know, outside of the engineering school, but yeah, that specific major was not at every school you know, potentially. Had he gotten into Georgia Tech, he would have figured something out. I don’t really know, but yeah, I mean, he this is really an example of a kid who knew exactly what he wanted to do, and he is continuing to do it. And I have no i no doubt that he will, he will get there and and continue to do it. But he really likes school. What he told me is it’s exactly what he expected and what he wanted. So, yeah, I don’t know how disappointed he is that he didn’t get into Michigan. And I think, you know, he actually had a b minus in one of his math classes early on. I think, you know, that’s and then coupled with two B’s in English classes, I think that just kind of took him out of the running without test scores at Michigan. But, you know, I don’t think he has any regrets at all. I think he’s getting to he’s going to achieve his goals. So there you

Lisa Bleich 29:02
go. Yeah, it sounds like he’s doing everything he needs to do. I think with engineering, that’s the thing is, like, you know, all of any school that’s accredited in engineering, you’re going to get what you need to do in terms of getting an engineering degree. I feel like it’s not as critical necessarily the brand of the school or how prestigious, or how hard it is to get in, I think you’re going to learn the skills and you have opportunities to do a lot of amazing things at most engineering schools and UIUC, for those of you, because it took me forever to to actually be able to say that without garbling it is University of Illinois, at Urbana Champaign, I believe. And so just for those of you listening that UI UC is our little term for that, and that has one of the top engineering programs, engineering schools. And so that’s why a lot of students, particularly engineers, are attracted to that school. All right. Steph, why don’t you talk? Take us through. To a student who went to a stem focused school.

Stefanie Forman 30:04
So yeah, I’d love to chat about Maya. So Maya, she was a student at a revered public high school in New Jersey, known for its really strong academics, and Maya, from the beginning, had a really strong passion for robotics and a really strong passion for finding the strong community. Those were the two things that were really important to her and in high school, again, this high school that that’s known for really competitive academics, she was really a BNC student freshman year in her core classes, all C’s and B’s. Sophomore year the same thing, although she never took honors courses, but she took two AP courses, one of them being AP, computer science. That was that was a B plus. And then junior and senior year, her her grades started to improve, but there were still some C sprinkled in. Saw some mores, so just wanted to show that we’ll get to the results soon. But success can definitely happen. Being a B and C student and strong success. Oh, and she was also test optional testing was not a strong suit for her, which is fine, it’s not for many people, and was totally aware of that, and from the beginning, knew that she was applying test optional and had two AP scores. One she didn’t submit once she submitted. And so throughout high school, like I said, her passion was robotics, and that’s really where she spent most of her time. So she was the captain of her high school robotics team. She was a member there since ninth grade. She created a manual that she gave to all of the students. I think there were almost 100 members. And so she created a manual to give the all the students, to train everyone she qualified in freshman year for World Championships. I learned all about all these different phrases about certain competitions, like next AI tipping point competition, she defined a robot assembly and custom parts and did AI demos and like met people truly all over the world through through this passion of hers. And then she she had some other things that she did in high school. She did some community service that she was passionate about. She was involved in some other extracurriculars, but broken record it. It all comes back to robotics, and that’s what she was doing in her spare time, and it was really to problem solve and to figure out how to use machine learning to make things better, and that’s that’s what she cared about. So in her essays, I thought her essays were a real strong part for her, because we, like we mentioned before, it should be really clear that, especially when you’re going to engineering focused schools, like, what’s your story? How are you going to use engineering in college, out of college, etc, and that’s really they were just so genuine, and that’s really what, what she spoke about, and she gave examples of how she would be at, I think I don’t even know how she was allowed, honestly, to be in these, like computer labs or robotics labs as late as she was, like post school. So she spoke about that and her personal statement. Also, she’s really resilient. And she went through some stuff that, you know, some some family stuff and some personal stuff, but she wrote about it with such positivity. And she was clearly so had so much grit and so much wonderful character. So I think that was also a really nice part that that came out in the personal statement, that probably came out in her teacher recommendations too, and the way her teachers talked about it, but I was happy that she was able to write this personal statement that had nothing to do really with this passion in robotics that she spoke so much about. So I did mention that she did have some a lot of B’s and C’s in her transcript, and so we were really thoughtful. When putting together a list, they were mostly against schools, engineering schools. So Colorado School of Mines, Drexel, which is not one, but known for their Co Op. So hands on experience. Oh, and hands on experience was something that was really, really important to her, that was vital to wherever she went, that she would be able to have that experiential learning, that hands on learning, be in the lab, New Jersey, Institute of Technology, Penn State, actually, Penn State, Altoona had the specific program she wanted, which is not as popular. We try to get our students to be open to Penn State was. Years because they had the specific robotics program. She wanted Rutgers in New Jersey University, Stevens Institute of Technology, which is also in New Jersey, Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Massachusetts, also known for really hands on an excellent robotics program. And then she was deciding between her for early decision, she was deciding between Rochester Institute of Technology and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. And like I said, community was super important to her. And what was great about Maya is she was so proactive in talking to people through her robotics community and finding people about and asking, like, all the right questions and thoughtful questions about these schools she visited, and in the end, she decided to apply early decision to Rochester Institute of Technology, RIT, and she got in, and That’s where she is. She’s thriving. And I also learned she, I I’m learning things. She is a mechatronics engineer, or engineering major, which is interdisciplinary major, okay, combines like computer engineering and electric electrical and mechanical engineering. She loves machine learning, but often, like it’s, I think, associated through robotics and stuff like that. So she is, she’s living her best life with a very strong community and being hands on and doing what she loved from day one. So it’s yeah story,

Lisa Bleich 36:39
yeah, that’s a great story. And I think what it shows is that there’s pathways for everyone, just depending on where you go and what you want to do. And I think that engineering can be obtained in many different ways. And so that’s really the way to think about it. So you don’t have to only go one pathway for engineering. There’s lots of different ways that you can get there, regardless of what type of a student you are, there’s always a way to get into engineering.

Stefanie Forman 37:06
I think that’s such a great point. And just to add on, we talk about this a lot too, but when you’re applying for competitive or not even competitive, engineering programs, you should have really strong math courses and strong math grades. And the same with science, and mine didn’t. And again, she, she did do well in AP Computer Science. And again, there, there were some stronger grades depending on the year, in some math and science classes. But that was by no means her strength. When you look at, look at her overall transcript. So right, and I think

Lisa Bleich 37:39
that’s good. I think that’s really important for the the highly select schools and the and the state public universities that you have to have really high grades and high test scores too, even if it is test optional in your math. But if that’s not the case, then don’t rule out engineering. If that’s something that you want to do, you just have to find the options that are going to best fit you, and I think that’s what hopefully you’ll take away.

Abby Power 38:04
Some kids who express an interest in engineering but really haven’t dived into it during high school. They’re just not sure. Another path is to attend a school, whatever you know, the school that’s best for you, and try to transfer into engineering. It’s not always easy, but it’s definitely doable. So if you know you’re getting to getting to school, and you’re thinking you might want that to be an option, you need to look at the requirements that the engineering students have to take. So you really need to prepare yourself for the transfer process. So you need to take the right science and math and, you know, all the other maybe the liberal arts pre reqs, so that you would be able to transfer in your sophomore year. And I know kids who’ve transferred into engineering at Michigan, at UVA, at Duke, so it’s

Lisa Bleich 38:57
doable, definitely doable. Now, I had a student who transferred. He started off at a community college because he just wasn’t in a good mindset, you know, good headspace to go to college when he was 18. So he went, and he did an Associate Degree in pre engineering at a community college, and then he transferred, and he got into every engineering school that he applied to, and he ended up going to Georgia Tech and doing really well there. So there’s a lot of different pathways to getting to engineering, or really, really for anything. I mean, engineering is what we’re talking about today, but I think that’s just something that you always want to keep in mind. And people grow and change and have different different ideas of what they want to be doing. So that’s also just some things to keep in mind. All right. Thank you, CBMers, for tuning in to catch more episodes of College Bound Mentor, make sure to follow or subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and tell a fellow parent or student about the podcast to learn more go to CollegeBoundMentor.com

Until next time, you got this!