Chance Me on my chances

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

Demographics
I’m an Asian American in Kentucky attending public school. Looking to apply as CS or data science major. I’m also a first generation student.

Stats
-4.00 UW gpa and 4.304 weighted gpa
-1360 SAT (710 M/650 E) will retake in Oct 1st
No class rank (top 5-10%)

Courses:
AP Classes-APUSH(4) and for senior year, I’m taking AP Calc, AP Stats, AP Chem, AP Physics 1, and AP Comp Sci A.
10 Honors Class and 1 Dual Enrollment English Class

Awards:
CTE Career Ready in Business Management
Honor roll
NHS (1 1/2 years) and math honors society (1/2 year)

Extracurriculars
-Tutoring (2 years)-Help peers and younger kids in the community improve on subjects they lack in.
-Work @ an asian restaurant(3 1/2 year)-Manager (food shipments, solely managing google business review, and serving customers) *not sure if it matter if I’m working with my parents
-InspiritAI- 25 hours (Explore transformative computer vision applications, study foundational concepts of machine learning, and Implement AI models for Computer Vision using Python) Also created an AI Passion Project on disaster tweets (this took about 2 weeks)
-HS Navigator Young Scholars Program-27 hours (Lecture series, research exposure experiences, and live projects corporation Python/Java/C/SQL/HTML/CSS/JS)
-FBLA (1/2 year)
-Volunteering (not including tutoring)-30 hours
-Learned Python and Javascript during COVID

Essays: Love for programming, connections from being manager, opinion of the high school learning curriculum.

College List:
NYU
Duke
Georgia Tech
Northeastern University
UKy Lewis College (EA)
Binghamton University
North Carolina State University (EA)
RIT
UNC Chapel Hill
Purdue
UIUC (Urbana-Champaign) (EA)
UMass Amherst
University of Michigan
UC Berkeley
UC Irvine
UC San Diego
UCLA
UC Davis

2

I have a few more creative essays ideas. Just haven’t thought how write it.

3

Unless you intend to be a full-pay student, it doesn’t seem that some of your state school choices would be affordable for you, especially the UCs.

As suggestions, you may want to consider Macalester or Denison, which, in addition to CS, offer majors in data science/analytics.

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You should be applying EA to Purdue as well. They continue to fill the majority of their class in EA so RD is extremely competitive, especially for your intended major.

I don’t see that many match schools on your lists. I would consider pairing down your reaches (you have a lot!) and finding more schools like RIT and Bing.

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Most public universities don’t give need based aid to out of state students. There are merit awards available at some but unless you bring that SAT score up a lot you won’t be in the running for those. So this means that unless your family is rich, you might not be able to afford a lot of those schools. What can your family pay? You may need a different list.

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I will address the UC’s only. The UC’s have their own GPA calculation so you need to use the linked calculator and repost with all 3 UC GPA’s which are based on the a-g course requirements taken the summer prior after 9th grade through the summer prior to 12th grade. OOS applicants only get honors points for AP/IB and DE courses (UC transferable). OOS Honors courses are not weighted. Also be aware that the UC’s require a 2 semesters of a Visual/Performing arts course as a requirement.

https://rogerhub.com/gpa-calculator-uc/

The UC’s are test blind so your SAT will not be considered. Here is the 13 areas of criteria used for the admission review. How applications are reviewed | UC Admissions

For the UC PIQs, they do not want any “creative’ writing but a straight forward answer to any of the 4 out of 8 prompts.
Students need to think of the PIQ’s as interview questions and respond to them thus”

What works:

• Examples and details are helpful. Examples should be recent (focused on events in high school) when possible. If students reflect on life before high school they will need to explain how that situation impacted them as a high school student. The PIQ’s need to be about you.

• The student doesn’t need to add details which place the reader in the moment with them. We don’t need to know that it was Tuesday at 2:15pm when the blue skateboard they were riding hit a green shard of glass and caused a 40 degree angle turn of their front wheel. Details should be about the experience instead (example – ‘I fell off my skateboard and ended up in a foot cast for 3 months walking on crutches.’ The detail here is due to their fall they had three months on crutches.)

The UC’s offer little to no financial aid to OOS students, so as stated above, you should expect to be full pay with a price tag around $67K/year.

After calculating your UC GPA and using the Capped weighted UC GPA, you can compare where you stand using this admit rate chart. Note CS is probably one of the most competitive major at the UC’s and Data Science is also rapidly getting popular so admit rates will be much lower than listed.

Campus 4.20+ 3.80-4.19 3.40-3.79 3.00-3.39
Berkeley 30% 11% 2% 1%
Davis 85% 55% 23% 10%
Irvine 60% 31% 14% 1%
Los Angeles 29% 6% 1% 0%
Merced 97% 98% 96% 89%
Riverside 97% 92% 62% 23%
San Diego 72% 25% 2% 0%
Santa Barbara 73% 28% 4% 1%
Santa Cruz 91% 81% 46% 9%

UC admit rates for CS if data was available.

UCLA admit rate for CS in 2021 was 8.3% https://www.seasoasa.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/seasoasa/2021-UCEE-Report.pdf

UCB’s admit rate for the College of Engineering was around 7%. If applying for EECS, it was 4.5% CS in the College of Letters and Sciences was 2.9%.

UCI’s 2021 admit rate for CS was 7.1%. https://datahub.oapir.uci.edu/Data-Hub/Undergraduate-Admissions-Dashboard.php

No specific data for UCSD CS only Student Profile Information: https://ir.ucsd.edu/undergrad/publications/21_22_StudentProfiles.pdf

UCSB historic admit rate for CS 6-8%. New Freshmen Profile | Office of Budget & Planning

No specific Data for UCD CS only Student Profile information. https://aggiedata.ucdavis.edu/#student

CS is a very marketable major so you do not have to go to a “top” school to do well post graduation. Affordability and having no Undergrad debt would set you up well later in life so your in-state options might be the best bang for your buck. Best of luck.

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Agree we can’t make recommendations until we know your budget. Have you talked with your parents about that? Have you run each of the Net Price Calculators on the websites of the schools on your list?

I encourage you to NOT write about this in your essays, your essays should be about you. It’s ok if you say something like ‘my HS doesn’t offer java or Python, so I learned them on my own’, but beyond that, not so much. No complaining.

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8

I think this is great and of course it matters. Have you thought about writing about your experience working at your family’s restaurant (I’m extrapolating here, maybe it’s not your family’s restaurant but you just work together)?

Let us know about budget!

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IMHO both tutoring and holding a job are very good ECs. Being a manager in a restaurant seems like a step up from what most high school students do for a restaurant job. A 4.0 unweighted GPA is very good.

I also (like others who have responded) am wondering about your budget. What can you afford to pay without taking on any debt?

The Universities of California would be full pay as an out of state student.

You might want to run the Net Price Calculator on other schools. If you Google “Net Price Calculator university of wherever”, and if there was a “university of wherever”, then you would find its NPC.

Otherwise I think that you are doing very well. Congratulations on your good results to this point and best wishes.

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10

Got it, EA to Purdue.
What target/match school do you recommend for me?
What reach schools do you suggest I remove from my list?

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I can afford to pay $40000 a year at most. So yes, 30-40k would be my cut.

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Yes I have thought about it. You just made me more confident about writing it, thank you! And yes it is my family’s restaurant.

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I think you misunderstood my words. I meant my opinion on how high schoolers just memorized stuff for the test and forget after and when I started to realize how that is a bad habit.

14

My parent can pay 30-40k at most a year which would be fine for all my schools except UCs, Northeastern and NYU. What target schools do you recommend I add to my list?

15

You’re welcome! Sometimes when we live in a situation we can’t see how fundamental it might be to helping us grow as people. Give it some thought. My daughter wrote one of her college essays about working summers on her uncle’s farm. It had nothing to do with her major but it helped her grow and she learned a lot.

As far as your college list, I would go to each college’s website that you are interested in and run the Net Price Calculator. It will help you minimize your list. There are other more knowledgeable posters on good colleges for computer science that will help you out.

Good luck! I wish you all the best!

Edited to add: it seems like you’re interested in California schools. The UCs will certainly be over budget but you might want to look into CalPoly SLO. It’s hard to get in for computer science but will meet your budget criteria I think and it’s very good. Calling @eyemgh who knows a lot about the school.

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If there are schools that don’t meet your budget after running the Net Price Calculator, cut them from your list. That’s the easiest way to cull the list.

Schools like RPI should be matches for you and may give you merit money.

If you like the big state school vibe look at Iowa State or Michigan State.

17

@Leon.KY7:

Cal Poly SLO costs estimates for OOS students is listed as $50K/year.

San Jose State is another Cal state with an excellent CS program and cost estimates are around $35K/year for OOS students. Add $396/unit x 15 units to get a Non-resident cost estimate.

18

@Gumbymom beat me to it.

I fully agree with @momofboiler1, if a school isn’t in budget, cut it.

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Did you run the NPCs for all of those schools and Northeastern, NYU, and UCs did not make budget, but Duke, Michigan, and others did? Or were you simply looking at the list prices for out-of-state (OOS) tuition, room and board? You want to make sure you run the NPCs to see if the college thinks your family has any financial need and how they plan on meeting it (i.e. with lots of loans and work study, or with more grants) as well as whether they are going to provide any merit aid.

See if you can get a firm idea on whether your family is willing and able to pay $30k or $40k as that $10k/year difference can be pretty substantial. Also, does that number include any loans? You can only take out $27k total over the course of four years (about $5500 your first year). And loans beyond that would need to be taken on by your parents. As CS is such a marketable degree, there are definitely schools where you can major in CS at a lower cost and find a good job after graduation. There’s absolutely no reason to go into debt for a CS degree if you don’t have to.

What kind of college experience are you hoping to have? Are larger schools your preference, or are these just want you’ve seen listed as “top” CS programs? If it’s from a list, what size school do you prefer? You have schools in major cities to small towns to suburbs. Do you have a preference between rural/suburban/urban? Are there any geographic preferences (including if you know where you might like to live after graduation…as colleges frequently have the strongest relationships with employers closer to them, though you can go anywhere from any university)? Weather preferences? How do you feel about intercollegiate sports or Greek life? Is there anything that you’re hoping to experience (something new or continuing something you enjoy) while in college?

Getting a greater sense of your interests will help in providing suggestions of schools for you.

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If you truly would like to craft your list, you may want to emphasize colleges at which your academic credentials would place you no lower than the 25th percentile. For example, while Duke currently may be out of reach for you, Davidson might represent a realistic reach.