by rigs90 » Sun Apr 07, 2019 11:27 am
I'm a mechanical engineer, and much like you, I applied to SMART my first year in college, made it to the semifinalist round, then didn't receive an award. I think part of the reason why was because I had two of my letters of recommendation from high school teachers since I didn't know any professors that well yet. Another big reason I found out after calling a few facilities is that not that many facilities are looking for first year college students. A lot of places are looking for at least second or third year college students.
So I changed up a few things and I managed to earn an award this year. I think the three biggest things that helped were:
1. I'm now a second year student with a decent GPA
2. During the summer I browsed through my departments faculty list and looked for faculty that did research that seemed interesting or related to what I wanted to do and then just emailed them politely asking if I could volunteer as an undergraduate research assistant. First professor I emailed told me to send him my transcript to see my grades, they were good, so he let me come onto his team. I did good work as a volunteer this past fall semester, and now this spring semester he's letting me do work for credit hours.
3. Having gotten to know more professors since my first year and as well as the professor I do research under, I was able to get much stronger letters of recommendation that discussed my college performance, rather than my high school performance.
Hopefully this personal anecdote proves useful/comforting and I'm willing to answer any questions you might have.
I'm a mechanical engineer, and much like you, I applied to SMART my first year in college, made it to the semifinalist round, then didn't receive an award. I think part of the reason why was because I had two of my letters of recommendation from high school teachers since I didn't know any professors that well yet. Another big reason I found out after calling a few facilities is that not that many facilities are looking for first year college students. A lot of places are looking for at least second or third year college students.
So I changed up a few things and I managed to earn an award this year. I think the three biggest things that helped were:
1. I'm now a second year student with a decent GPA
2. During the summer I browsed through my departments faculty list and looked for faculty that did research that seemed interesting or related to what I wanted to do and then just emailed them politely asking if I could volunteer as an undergraduate research assistant. First professor I emailed told me to send him my transcript to see my grades, they were good, so he let me come onto his team. I did good work as a volunteer this past fall semester, and now this spring semester he's letting me do work for credit hours.
3. Having gotten to know more professors since my first year and as well as the professor I do research under, I was able to get much stronger letters of recommendation that discussed my college performance, rather than my high school performance.
Hopefully this personal anecdote proves useful/comforting and I'm willing to answer any questions you might have.