My son has a 34 ACT (35 Superscore), but a 3.35 Weighted GPA and 3.1 Unweighted GPA. His GPA has gotten better every semester and he’s now getting almost all A’s. He’s also been very active in his Robotics Club every year, including going to the “World Championships” of Robotics (yes, they have that…).
He will be a Computer Science Major. Although I think he’ll do better in small classes, for the most part, my research here and elsewhere suggests most of the schools he can get in to with good Computer Science Programs are large public Universities.
So, any suggestions on big state schools with good computer science programs that somehow “make a big school small” (e.g. a large school, but small computer science classes; or living/learning communities, etc.) Thanks!!
CS has gotten really popular lately as a major, so even medium size or smaller schools can have relatively large introductory CS courses (e.g. 700+ at Stanford and Harvard, 200 at Harvey Mudd).
^^you think a 3.1 could get into Carleton just because of a high ACT? I doubt it.
Will he consider tech schools? He could get into some of those perhaps. Is his gpa low from just freshman year? How is it so low if he is getting almost all A’s? Is there some issue that has been resolved? Budget, you are willing to pay OOS premiums?
UC Santa Cruz is one of the smaller UC and they offer a good CS program, also a rigorous programs is CS games that is technical in nature and might appeal to a robotics student as it has graphics and AI. He might be able to get accepted if he has AP classes that will boost gpa to 3.4 UC weighted. UC gpa is sophomore+jr year weighted for up to 8 semesters of AP. But OOS cost is $55k https://cs.soe.ucsc.edu/undergraduates
Check out WPI. They have one of the top robotics programs in the country (they were the first to offer an undergrad major in it) and Massachusetts is a robotics industry hub. They placed near the top of the recent DARPA robotics challenge via a joint entry with CMU. UMass Amherst and more recently UMass Lowell have good robotics programs as well and may have smaller classes than other state schools.
Big state schools typically have big classes, especially for introductory subjects – that is the nature of those schools. If you feel your S would do better in small classes I would strongly consider some mid-sized universities or LACs.
Well, if OP has an upward trend, with strong performance during junior year and a very convincing application, Carleton would be more receptive to his application than say, UCLA.
Not a state school, but RIT might be worth a look. They kind of specialize in kids like your son, and looking at the fall class schedule, the intro to CS classes are all limited to 50. I think with his scores and robotics he’d probably get a decent merit scholarship.
If you want to look deeper into the suggestions you get here and elsewhere, often colleges have their schedule of classes online and they list the enrollment cap. It is a bit of work, but what you’d do is look at the CS dept to see what are the required/common courses to take, esp. the 1st 2 years. Then look in the schedule of classes to see the enrollment.