<p>@AnnieBeats I will see if I can get my hands on a school profile. It’s a typical northern Virginia FCPS.edu high school with a lot of APs and an extremely diverse student population, economically, ethnically, and languages spoken.</p>
<p>@Miw140 and @PurpleTitan @cobrat thanks for the CS program suggestions. CMU is top of his list because he discovered it on his own and it’s close enough to DC (sort of) that he can drive home on the weekend occasionally to do laundry and raid the fridge. Columbia was on his list but I’m not sure if it’s still there. Umich is a great school with truly mind-boggling OOS tuition however. He might apply anyway. The tuba angle has yielded a stunning number of scholarships for fellow students under the tutelage of his instructor. He responded to Princeton on his own after they contacted him and now they are on the reach list. He says that he will be perfectly happy going to a state school, either UVA or Tech or William & Mary when people ask him. He has also told me that graduating in 3 years is very appealing which are what both UVA and Tech will give him based on his APs. That is less certain at the reach schools. He is now teaching himself Ruby so he’s up to ~6 programming languages.</p>
Scholarship to William and Mary. Nobody from DC Area this year admitted to MIT without a hook from what we have heard and seen: hooks: Intel or Siemens award, URM, etc. They are pulling in so many foreign kids with international awards, and put so much emphasis on geographic diversity that it comes down to a handful of DC kids out of hundreds upon hundreds with perfect 800s on math SAT (which MIT requires with no hook) So does CMU and they are very blunt about it “We are looking for the best mathematicians in the country. 800 on the SAT isn’t enough. Perfect grades are valued less than aptitude- median GPA of admits is 3.7, not 4.0 like many other programs, google recruits not our valedictorians but our smartest most creative graduates at a higher rate than Stanford,” etc- those are all things CMU told visiting students and parents. Political correctness went out the window. It is all about raw genius in the CS program at CMU and they make no bones about it. The kids who didn’t have 800s on the math SAT were squirming and asking uncomfortable questions- I felt sorry for them driving all the way to Pittsburgh to hear that news. Our son was Priority waitlisted at CMU for CS- which you apply to specifically, not to CMU as a school. You commit to CS, and they don’t accept transfers, regardless of where you come from (Princeton, MIT, etc it doesn’t matter). 7,000 applicants for 140 spots in CMUs CS program. First year in many that CMU pulled nobody off their waitlist for CS, their yield was so high. He is shooting for CMU for grad school and was happy to come so close. Like his grandfather who tried out for the Olympic team and barely missed (long jump 1960- i won’t tell you anymore or you’ll find us all on google lol). Gramps never regretted trying. .
He was reluctant to apply out of state, no interest in Stanford in spite of nearby family and many family members having gone there, did not apply. Applied to Harvard too which was a waste of $80 and his time, and I knew he had no connections, no visits, no hooks, and not a perfect GPA so why the heck would they look at him? And their most famous computer scientists (Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg- who didn’t even major in CS when he started FB)- dropped out. Sorry for any Harvard Alums- my scoutmaster was a Harvard Med School graduate and a great guy, nothing against Harvard but it’s all about the brand there, and not the quality of the CS program). Why W&M: In-state tuition + scholarship, more kids go on to get PhDs than any other public school in country, smallest class size of any pub school (Military Academies excepted). W&M values intellectual curiosity, drive, and his 18 college courses completed. I value the small class sizes, better than anywhere that we looked at. Incredible value for a Virginia resident, especially when they offered an unexpected academic scholarship to boot. This is important because his mother (also a grade skipped extremely driven student) is getting her Masters at Johns Hopkins right now and JHU charges a fortune and two tuition payments could drive me to an early grave.
Sorry for taking so long to reply, I tried to make up for lateness with detail and content: @Miw140 @PurpleTitan @Disneydad @AnnieBeats @tjcolonial @cobrat @fondmemories
@Ynotgo @DrGoogle I just posted info on William & Mary, MIT, and CMU. He’s going to W&M- in state tuition in Virginia (many people think it’s private, even Virginia residents- but it’s not. It’s public)- my bank account threw a celebration when ne chose W&M.
@AnnieBeats you had several questions on this topic a year ago and I tried to clear as much up then as I could. Regarding GPA- his school doesn’t do UW GPAs but I ran the numbers mid-way through 12th grade and it was 3.6. More importantly, his STEM GPA you can calculate off this ( As in AP Computer Science, Chemistry, Honors Biology, Bs in AP Physics C - Mechanics, and AP Chemisty- so two As, two Bs inScienc. For Math: As in Honors Alg 1, Honors Geometry, Honors Algebra II, Multi-Variable Calculus- those are on his regular high school transcript)- his CTY transcript was pass / fail with Teacher commentary- which was glowing and included in his applications: Honors Trig and Precalc, AP Calc AB, Number Theory, Probability and Game Theory- and self studied Calc BC and took the BC AP exam)- so all in all 8 math courses, all As that had letter grades, 5 of those courses were college math, and he did them all before his 17th birthday, most before his 16th birthday- so there was a story there.
Non-stem: he had his AP English Language teacher, (who has a PhD in English) write a recommendation stating that he was the most profoundly gifted English student that he had ever come across and this was validated by the thousands of practice AP tests that he kept records of. He said that he, as a PhD holder, could not beat my son in terms on the AP test- it’s not just about scoring a 5, it’s how high your raw score is compared to the 200,000+ kids who take the AP English test. And he was only 15. This negated the enexpected C+ in Honors Freshman English- basically the PhD showed that his Freshman teacher didn’t have a clue what she was dealing with- which is true. How many 13 year olds are working at a Post Phd level in terms of reading speed, comprehension, and aptitude? One in 10,000 kids beat 700 on the Critical Reading SAT before they turn 13, he was one of those kids.
so on GPA- yes GPA is the #1 criteria- but it’s more nuanced than that if you are applying to STEM majors in the most competitive programs- they want awards, diversity, and proven aptitude- Math SAT scores, AP tests are extremely important. The only kids who don’t have AP scores are URMs from rural areas not offering APs. APs are unversal in the DC metro area, regardless of your neighborhood: FCPS, PG County MD, Montgomery County- everyone has access to APs and the schools pay the test fees. William and Mary made a big deal about AP scores because it’s another predictor, and here in Virginia the access is nearly universal.
I just wanted to get the facts out there because of all the assumptions made in the absence of data or detail. I’m closing this thread out.
correction, on science, 3 As 2 Bs, then 4 As in Math (all of that is on the transcript), and another 4 not letter-graded, but on a separate transcript with comments- via Johns Hopkins CTY) and another self studied math course - Calc BC.
Hey, congrats!
I think that VA residents are very fortunate to have both W&M and UVa as top options at in-state prices.
Only MI residents (with UMich) can compare, but you have to like a gigantic school to like UMich (CA residents have Cal & UCLA, but they are almost as hard to get in to as elite privates these days).
Congrats! Nothing beats in-state price. He will do well there.