The competition to study Mechanical Engineering at a top school is intense. Schools like MIT, the University of Michigan, Cal Tech, Berkeley, Stanford, and Harvard have vanishingly small acceptance rates. As a first-year undergraduate applicant, you will need to seriously stand out to claim a spot.
Differentiating yourself as a strong engineering school is about more than grades and scores. There are so many applicants that are academically exceptional that being at the top of your class is simply the starting point. It matters enormously to position you for being even considered for admission, but it doesn’t help you stand out. That requires something else. Instead of being all about what you are doing in the formal classroom, the way to differentiate yourself as an applicant happens beyond the normal class schedule. Instead, it’s all about activities.
We work with our students to build up applications piece-by-piece, developing layers of passion, leadership, and independent exploration. The more time we have to pull this off, the better. As a junior, though, the window of time for impacting your application is shrinking. In this post, we’re going to give you a peek behind the curtain at how we strategize with students, filtered for what is most important as a junior interested in mechanical engineering. Remember that college admissions is personal, so filter and shift the guidelines below to fit your unique interests and strengths.
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As a junior, you don’t have a ton of time. Even if it is only the very beginning of your junior year, the press is on to finalize your application package for early submissions senior fall. So, do what you can but skip what doesn’t work. You time is precious, and leaning into what matters most and resonates deepest with you it critical to putting together your best applications possible.
STEM CLUB/TEAM LEADERSHIP
At school, it is very important that you are appointed or voted a head, captain, or leader of a STEM-oriented club. This could be a robotics team, a general STEM club, an engineering team, or anything else that is directly related to engineering and that builds your leadership chops. You should have been a member of such a club for the past two years of school. This sets you up for pursuing leadership as a junior or senior.
If becoming the club head or captain isn’t possible as a junior, or the competition for the role is stiff even as a senior, that is a problem — but it is also a solvable one. After all, the strength of a college app is less about checking certain extracurricular boxes than it is about telling stories. Being the person at the top of the club’s pyramid is awesome if you can do it, but if that isn’t going to happen this isn’t a reason to give up on building stories of leadership around the club. So, schedule a time to meet with the current club heads and ask them how you can best support them in achieving their goals for the group. Ultimately, the goal with this conversation is to leave with something that you are in charge of and can point to as an example of leadership. Maybe this is leading a sub-team, like a build team for a robotics club, heading a committee, or pioneering a new program or learning opportunity.
INTERNSHIP
Heading up a club, or leading a group within a club, will teach you critical leadership skills around communication, teamwork, and time management that will serve you well in an internship. Securing an internship as a junior is very important, but the name of the company you are interning with is far less important than what you do during the opportunity.
We often find that juniors, and their parents, are hungry for ‘prestigious’ internships. While an internship with a well-known company can be great when it is the perfect fit, students are often willing to give up the things that make an internship actually impactful. They sign up for internships that are short-term, or even virtual, where what you need is something at least three weeks long and in-person. If this means getting an internship with a small engineering firm or company close to home that is actually ideal, not a letdown. Working on a close team and being in the mix during decision-making leads to the powerful stories that make an application stand out.
RESEARCH
While club leadership shows teamwork and an internship shows initiative, conducting independent research is a powerful way of illustrating intellectual curiosity. We work with our students to pursue independent projects for presentation or publication, but you can do a scaled-down version of this that still packs a punch as a junior if you haven’t already begun a research project. We help our students secure research opportunities with professors, but this can be harder to obtain alone.
Look for local, regional, or state STEM competitions that you could enter, or set one as the goal. Then, work backwards from there. What are the parameters of the competition, and what are you most curious about? By measuring off of those two factors, you can calibrate a project for the best chances of success.
TUTORING
Finally, we want to see our juniors tutoring with a social good bend. Assisting students with their STEM studies is an exceptional way of showing that your grades aren’t a fluke. You know your stuff, and you pass along that expertise to others.
Tutoring students at school is great, and you should do that, but what we’re talking about here goes beyond the campus of your high school geographically. We encourage our students to volunteer with a local non-profit that introduces young students to STEM, or with your local public library through a student group, club, or program, to provide tutoring services to underserved students, or those who are historically left out of the engineering field.
Standing out as a junior interested in mechanical engineering, and striving for a top school, isn’t easy but it also isn’t hard. Like many an engineering puzzle, building your ideal application can be broken down into manageable pieces that come together to make an impressive package. Get in touch to start working on yours.
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