Type of high school (current college for transfers): American High School
Gender/Race/Ethnicity (optional): Asian Male
Intended Major(s): Computer science, Engineering, Informatics, Data Analysis
GPA, Rank, and Test Scores
Unweighted HS GPA: 3.97/4.00
Weighted HS GPA (incl. weighting system): My School does not Have WGPA
Class Rank: No rank for my High School
SAT Scores: 1520
Coursework
AP Computer Science, 9th grade
AP Human Geography, 9th grade
AP Modern World History, 10th grade
AP Calculus AB, 10th grade
AP Chemistry, 11th grade
AP Physics 1, 11th grade
AP Psychology, 11th grade
AP Language and Composition, 11th grade
AP US History, 11th grade
Scores are a mix of 4s and 5s
Awards
Local Youth Entrepreneurship Challenge 2020-Third Place
High Swim Team 2020-Most improved
Tech Hackathon 2021-Second Place
I might be able to come up more, but that’s all I can think of right now
Extracurriculars
1.Varsity Swim Team 9th-11th grade
2.Independent game developer (published game with 1k+ download)
3.School chess club
4.Participated in a local leadership group to perform various activities that benefit the community
5.Participated in a project with Microsoft employees in assisting to develop a College Match AI system (now published).
6.Part-time life guard (red cross certified life guard).
7.Taught my native language in a local language school as a TA.
That’s all I can think of, don’t have a lot of ECs, so I’m kind of stressed If I can get into some of the colleges.
Essays/LORs/Other
Didn’t start on the essay yet, I’m a very bad essay writer so I don’t expect the essay to be great.
AP Physics and History teacher will write LORs for me, I don’t expect them to be strong essays as I rarely speak in class.
Cal Poly SLO and UCSD are test blind this admission cycle but your GPA is still competitive and you are overall competitive.
You will be a full pay OOS student so is $42K+/year for SLO or $65K/year for UCSD affordable for your family?
Both would be slight Reach schools for CS since it is an impacted/capped major.
You definitely need some in-state safeties and a couple of Match schools. Your college budget needs to be determined so CC posters can give you some realistic suggestions.
Also if you do pursue an application for UCSD, your 1st choice major can be a selective/capped major but you should select a non-capped major as an alternate choice. UCSD admits into the University first and then into the major. Having 2 capped majors as possible choices might result in you being rejected or admitted as Undeclared. Undeclared to CS/Engineering/Data Science can be a tough road in changing majors at UCSD.
As stated by @eyemgh, you need to select a specific major for SLO and each major has varying acceptance rates with CS having one of the lowest acceptance rates.
CMU SCS will be a reach, as it is for pretty much everyone. GPA is a match, but their 25-75% SAT scores are 1570-1580, and your thoughts on essay/recommendations don’t match what successful applicants probably need to get past the 7% acceptance rate. But it’s an admissions outlier and there are many good CS schools.
Being a Washington resident will make Washington much more likely, and that’s a great program, if admitted.
Any geographic or other preferences/requirements?
Some other thoughts: Purdue, Maryland, Wisconsin, Colorado-Boulder
