- Demographics: Asian Male in Feeder High School in CA
- Intended Major(s): CS, Computer Engineering
- UW GPA, Rank, and Test Scores:
4.0 UW 4.5 W
ACT 36 (35, 36, 36, 36, 10)
AP CS A 5, AP Phys 1 5, AP Calc BC 5 - Coursework (college coursework for transfer applicants)
many cs classes + differential equations + multivar calc - Awards
1x USAPHo Semifinalist
3x AIME Qualifier
USACO Silver
Awards at Waterloo competitions
Awards at national cs competition (Placed 1st) - Extracurriculars (incl. summer activities, competitions, volunteering, and work experience)
President of tutoring NPO (news appearance)
TaeKwonDo 3rd Dan Black Belt
TaeKwonDo Instructor
TaeKwonDo Referee
MathCounts coach for middle school
Robotics Member
Volunteer Club Member
STEM Tutor - Cost Constraints / Budget
None - Schools including Safety, Match, Reach (include ED/EA when applicable)
UCs, UIUC, UT Austin, GTech, CMU, Cornell, HMC, UNC, Purdue, UDub, Penn State
Congratulations on all your accomplishments! You have a very strong profile. I think you stand as good a chance as anyone to get into the universities on your list. Unfortunately, however, there are far more well-qualified applicants than there are spots at these schools, so chances are unlikely for all applicants at most of these institutions.
Apart from the UCs, I have sorted the schools on this list based on my guess of what might be your chances. @Gumbymom and @ucbalumnus are the resident UC experts here and could indicate which campuses are likelier to provide an acceptance. Unfortunately, CS is an impacted major at all the UCs (and most of the colleges on your list), so stats for people accepted to those programs are usually significantly higher than those of the rest of the university.
Guaranteed (100%)
-a UC, assuming you’re in the top 9% of your class, which I’m assuming you are
Extremely Likely (80-99%)
Likely (60-79%)
Toss-Up (40-59%)
Possible (20-39%)
Purdue
Penn State
Less Likely (less than 20%)
UIUC
UT-Austin
Georgia Tech
Carnegie Mellon
Cornell
Harvey Mudd
U. of North Carolina
U. of Washington-Seattle
If you need help coming up with likelier options, please let us know. If so, it would be helpful to let us know what kind of college experience you’re looking for so we can give you more targeted suggestions.
Congratulations are on your achievements and you are a very competitive applicant. That said, so are many of the applicants that are applying to CS at the UC’s. Just in case you are not aware, the UC’s are permanently test blind so your excellent ACT would not be considered during the application review.
First calculate your 3 UC GPA’s: Unweighted, Capped weighted and Fully weighted
https://rogerhub.com/gpa-calculator-uc/
Familiarize yourself with the 13 areas of the UC application review: How applications are reviewed | UC Admissions
100% guaranteed UC admission is for CA HS students that are in the top 9% of their HS. The UC default campus is UC Merced.
Since CS is impacted and one of the most competitive majors at the UC’s some which have under a 5% acceptance rates, expect the UC’s to be tough admits and highly unpredictable.
For UCB, you can apply to EECS which is a direct admit vs. College of Letters and Sciences which at the moment is Undeclared admission with a secondary competitive admission to declare the CS major. EECS has around a 3% admission rate. UCB is planning to make changes to the College of L&S CS Freshman admission so check back in the fall for updates.
@ucbalumnus some UC weighted GPA data for the different UCB colleges to help gauge your chances.
UCLA had a 5.4% admit rate for CS in 2021 so another Reach school.
The most likely UC’s would be UC Merced, Riverside and Santa Cruz. Likely/Target schools would include UC Davis, Irvine, Santa Barbara. San Diego would be a less likely and the Reach schools would be UCLA and UCB.
Also note that UCI and UCSD admit into the University first then into the major so if applying for CS, select a less competitive alternate major or you could be admitted into Undeclared. Trying to declare CS later maybe difficult to impossible.
UCSB will also consider an alternate major but it cannot be in the College of Engineering. Again, changing majors to CS can be very difficult.
I think any of the UC’s would be lucky to have you as a student but make sure you identify at least very likely/safety schools you are willing to attend no matter what. Plenty of high achieving CA HS students that were waitlisted or denied from the majority of the UC’s this year for CS.
Best of luck.
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Recalculate your HS GPA with GPA Calculator for the University of California – RogerHub . Use the weighted capped version for the table below.
Fall 2021 admission rates by campus and HS GPA range from Freshman fall admissions summary | University of California :
| 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 | 75% | 35% | 5% | 1% |
| Santa Barbara | 73% | 28% | 4% | 1% |
| Santa Cruz | 91% | 81% | 46% | 9% |
These are for the whole campus. Different divisions or majors may have different levels selectivity (usually, engineering and computer science majors are more selective).
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From OPA – University of California Berkeley , choose the Academic Indicators tab. “Last updated on October 22, 2021” for the “last 3 complete application cycles”.
GPA appears to be weighted, not capped. Calculate using GPA Calculator for the University of California – RogerHub
Admission rates only by division:
| GPA | L&S | CoE | CoC | CNR | CED |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3.800-4.000 | 6.3% | 2.7% | 4.5% | 11.5% | 8.7% |
| 4.001-4.199 | 10.6% | 3.9% | 8.2% | 23.7% | 14.7% |
| 4.200-4.399 | 21.8% | 8.8% | 17.5% | 38.9% | 29.1% |
| 4.400-4.599 | 34.8% | 16.4% | 33.3% | 53.0% | 39.5% |
| 4.600-4.799 | 40.9% | 21.4% | 39.6% | 52.4% | 49.4% |
| 4.800-5.000 | 41.5% | 20.7% | 36.2% | 46.1% | 43.0% |
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Of your list:
Colleges which admit to the college as a whole, and do not restrict declaration of the CS major:
- Harvey Mudd
Colleges which admit to the division or college as a whole, but have a secondary admission process:
- Cornell
- Penn State
- NCSU
- UCB L&S
Some other colleges on your list admit to the CS major, but some may also admit to the college without admitting to the CS major. If that occurs, but you enroll anyway, it may be difficult to change into CS after enrolling.
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Would Purdue also be an acceptance into the college of engineering but then needing a secondary admission/matching for the specific major?
At Purdue, CS is separate from the engineering division (where students enter as first-year-engineering and then must earn a 3.2 GPA or face competitive admission for their engineering majors). Purdue CS is direct admission; it is difficult and competitive to change into CS if enrolling not in the CS major.
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I might switch PSU with Pitt and UNC with NC State. Pitt is direct admission. Apply early. NC State has a very good rep for CS.
For reaches you could add Michigan, UMD and UMass. Toronto or Waterloo if you’re interested in Canada.
Just curious. You have CMU on the list. Why not MIT and Stanford?
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Asian Male in Feeder High School in CA>>
Feeder to where!
However, it admits to engineering-first-year, and the secondary admission process currently does not have much transparency in how competitive each major is for secondary admission.
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Look into CCS at UCSB and Turing at UT Austin.
Both may have advantages for admissions and acceleration depending on the CS classes you have already completed. You don’t mention anything about your goals after undergrad. So weigh those goals against the what the programs offer.
The school is a UC feeder and I believe ~5% got accepted into Berkeley last year.
@gumbymom what is a UC feeder?
There are some High Performing HS’s in California that have a higher than normal percentage of students that have been historically admitted to the UC system but I have not encountered the term “UC Feeder” as stated by the OP. Any CA HS student can look up the admission data for their HS using this link: Admissions by source school | University of California
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