My daughter is high school junior and would like to know her chance for computer science major. She took honor, dual credit and AP classes
• GPA - 4.1UW / 4.234W
• SAT - 1230 (will take again)
• AP Cal, AP Physic, AP Computer Science, Foundation of Computer Science, AP Micro Economics, C++, Java, Python,
HTML, Honor Algebra I, II, Geometry & Pre Cal ( will take more AP Classes during senior year)
• Planning to take AP test for math and computer science this spring
• Varsity Track & Field during 9 & 10 grades
• Gymnastics team since 2nd – 8th grades.
• Top 7 Gymnasts represented for home state at Regional Championship.
• 2018 Regional Honorable Mention Award from National Center for Women & Information Technology.
• 2016 Creativity Award for most create robot design during 12 weeks session of FOCUS program.
• Editing Leader for year book club.
• 150 hours volunteer - Teacher assistant, YMCA, School admission …
• Will look for summer internship in computer science before high school graduation
• Working during weekend
Please let me know if she has a chance at UNH, UMass-Lowell, University of South Carolina, UNC, George Mason, University of South Florida, University of Central Florida, UT-Dallas?? or any scholarship??
Class ranking, standardized test scores are all utd really cares about. The earlier you apply will also matter in terms of award. Work on the sat or act and get those scores up and she should get at least a full tuition scholarship with 1k stipend per semester. Work on getting an act score of 30 or above or sat around 1400. Apply in August if possible if you got the test scores.
Her stats seem quite good, especially her extracurriculars. Getting into the university itself shouldn’t be a problem for her. What may cause difficulty is acceptance into the honors program, and/or the prestigious Top Scholars program.
This link has some information about the process of applying to the honors college. Acceptance to the honors college guarantees a scholarship of at least $84,000 over four years. However, the stats to get in are rather high: as you can see on the site, in 2017 the middle 50% of students had SAT scores of 1440-1520 or ACT composite scores of 31-34. Ignore the high weighted GPA, as USC recalculates that with their own formula.
Acceptance to the honors college also weighs the two additional essays very heavily. From speaking with my friends who got in, the trend seems to be that they wrote their “What are you thinking about?” essay on a topic of major social concern, like rape culture, political tribalism, etc. while the “How are you doing?” essay is much more freeform and encourages genuine self-reflection. The essays have a minimum word count but no maximum, which I personally found quite nice. Each of my essays ended up between 800 and 900 words, but I do write quite a lot.
In the end of the day, I believe your daughter has an excellent chance at acceptance to the university as a whole, and assuming she brings her test scores up a bit, a good chance to the honors college as well. Best of luck!
Sources: U of SC website, my own experience applying and being accepted to the school and honors college this year, and the experience of my new friends who did the same.
Thanks for your info…she tries to put about 2hr/day for SAT studying and takes practice test twice a month. Her next SAT test is April, hopefully she gets improving for her scores
U.Mass Amherst is of course a different school from U.Mass Lowell.
I think that it is worth an application to U.Mass Amherst for your daughter. If she can get her SAT up this would help her chances. She should do some SAT preparation (sadly the SAT does to some extent measure the parents ability to pay for SAT prep tutoring). U.Mass Amherst has an excellent computer science program. The main reason that I would not call this a safety is that computer science is very competitive, and her SAT is a bit low for computer science (not for the school overall).
Her chances at U.Mass Lowell are excellent. With her current SAT I still would expect her to get accepted. Improving her SAT of course might help, at least in terms of the potential size of any merit scholarship.
U.Mass Lowell has merit scholarships available for out of state students, including but not limited to international students. I do not know much about the likely size, but I expect that your daughter probably does have a good chance at some sort of merit scholarship there.
@Chickenpet Your daughter has very impressive stats although the SAT score could be higher. If you are relying on OOS scholarships (as my son did) would it be feasible for your daughter to take a commercial SAT/ACT prep course? We did that with my son and he improved his baseline SAT score by 300 points (when the test was 3 sections totaling 2400 possible points). This really helped him score well and accumulate some significant scholarships. Best of luck!
I’m sure she has a chance, but make sure she applies early- in August and through the UCF application. People are reporting the common app taking longer. Also do the essay. Hopefully her SAT will go up, good luck!
Although optional, an essay assists the Admissions Committee in knowing you as an individual, independent of test scores and other objective data. We ask that you respond to two of the topics below. Your responses should be no longer than a total of 500 words or 7,000 characters.
If there has been some obstacle or bump in the road in your academic or personal life, please explain the circumstances.
How has your family history, culture or environment influenced who you are?
Why did you choose to apply to UCF?
What qualities or unique characteristics do you possess that will allow you to contribute to the UCF community?
Again, her SAT scores are low for UMass Amherst CS. Her GPA and coursework are fine. Her chances of getting right into the CS major at UMass Amherst aren’t great; it’s super competitive to get into. She would probably get into the university as a whole, and then have to complete specific coursework before she could try for the CS major again.
Again, she’s likely to get right into the CS major at Lowell.
My daughter has one on one SAT tutor for more that 2 months, she got 1400+ for most of the practice tests (1460 superscore). She will have SAT test at her school next week. Hopefully she does good