Engineering programs at the very top universities, such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Caltech, expect their first-year students to have passed at least one year of calculus before they start college. Other programs want students to be prepared to take college calculus freshman year. Engineering programs at Carnegie Mellon University, for example, call for four years of high school math, including analytic geometry, trigonometry and elementary functions or pre-calculus.
Your high school transcript should indicate you completed four years of science-–more, if your school offers science electives and your schedule allows you to double up on science classes. Caltech engineering applicants need to have completed a year of chemistry and physics. Carnegie Mellon requires a year of biology as well. Taking extra science classes in your area of interest will demonstrate initiative and rigor to engineering admissions officers. For example, if you want to major in biomedical engineering, an elective in cellular biology or organic chemistry will help you explore the field and prepare for college work.
To enter engineering school, you compete against people with grade point averages above 4.0, due to advanced placement, International Baccalaureate (IB), honors or college-level classes. You can increase your engineering admission chances by taking as many of these higher-weighted courses as your school offers. If your school doesn't offer AP or honors classes, look to local colleges that offer concurrent high school and college credit. At Georgia Tech, for example, admissions officers recalculate your GPA based on your core courses, remove all the electives, and add a half point for any AP, IB or college-level class.
Four years of high school English is a near-universal requirement for admission to any college program. You need to read and write well to succeed as an engineering student, Caltech admissions director Ray Prado says. Four years of English will prepare you to write application essays and do well on the language-arts portions of your SAT or ACT test. Invest some time learning another language, too. Most colleges expect at least two years of study in a single foreign language. Four years of foreign language readies future engineers to take the Advanced Placement exam, giving them a further edge.