Third decile is a flag, even though the school doesn’t officially rank. Our lot went to secondary schools that did not officially rank, but there are ways for the GC to flag the top students and for AOs to work out where your student is relative to their cohort.
For CWRU:
Case Western Reserve University offers a limited amount of need-based aid to first-year and transfer international applicants.
The CSS Profile is required for the awarding of need-based institutional grant, loan and campus employment. Case Western Reserve’s school code is 1105.
Scholarships
First-time, first-year international applicants may submit applications for special CWRU scholarships listed on the Office of Undergraduate Admission website under “Scholarship Competitions.”
https://case.edu/financialaid/for-undergraduates/international-students
I think here’s where you should start: Where does your child want to go?
If your kid is interested in CS, why NU? It is not strong for CS. Why not Cornell or CMU? They compatible schools, but very strong in CS.
@Bobby72 my kid got lucky and got into UC-Berkeley, L&S CS-intent. But he applied at 12 different schools though just to cover all bases. He also did apply to Northwestern RD for CS and got rejected.
As far as Northeastern merit aid, my D got enough to pretty much cover her tuition, about 85%. My S got $18K offered after getting accepted. So Northeastern does seem to be fairly generous as far as merit aid goes.
OTOH, my D (same SAT score as OP’s daughter, albeit different subscores) only got Northeastern’s funky “no merit in the first year and then 10K/year thereafter” scholarship, which was underwhelming. And I don’t know how much merit they give to internationals. But it’s worth a try - great urban school, extremely well-designed CS program with many options for interesting combined majors - and the opportunities for US work experience can be hard for international students to replicate outside of a coop program, so that’s a lot of value-added IMHO.
@oldfort , I would guess that OP isn’t interested in Cornell because they’re focusing on urban and urban-adjacent schools. CMU could be a good choice for a CS-adjacent major like applied math or cogsci, but OP’s daughter’s chance of getting into the CMU CS department is probably slim unless she has major coding/hacking achievements.
OP, Rice is definitely not “more for BME” - it gets attention in this area because of it’s relationship to the nearby Houston Med Center complex and Baylor Medical School, but it is excellent in CS and really for STEM across the board (materials science department is regrouping a bit, but other than that I would choose Rice for just about any STEM field). All other things being equal, I would go to Rice for CS over Northwestern, but that’s just one person’s opinion. Even if the program quality were the same, Rice’s student quality of life is fantastic (no Greek life - inclusive Residential College system) and the weather is… well, there’s the occasional hurricane/flood, lol, but generally much easier on non-snow-hardened students than the Chicago area! (And Rice is on high ground and did well even through Harvey.) Given the price differential, I personally couldn’t see a reason to pay ~13-14Kyear more for Northwestern over Rice (for CS anyway - I know NU has some excellent programs that Rice doesn’t offer), unless being at 11th vs. 14th in the USNWR rankings has >$50K total in value to you.
@bouders Thanks very much for this info on UofTor. Was aware of this at UWash but not for UofTor.
@ProfessorPlum168 Congrats on the great acceptance. Have you’ll crossed the bridge of getting into CS Major ? How difficult is that.
@aquapt Thanks once again. Will definitely check out merit aid at NorthEastern. Yes the Co-Op there is a huge value add especially for Internationals.
Totally agree on the savings at Rice. That’s one reason one cannot leave this decision completely to the kids.
How would you compare Rice vis-a-vis UcB or Ucla.
Does being on the west coast matter that much for CS.
@Bobby72 here are some opinions and suggestions
I don’t have the numbers but ED for CMU definitely improves your chances of getting in, at least 2-3x. SCS is very difficult to get in, SIS is slightly easier. They gave my S $0 in Merit aid.
UCLA CS which is only in their Engineering school will be very very difficult to get in. Their median unweighted GPA is a perfect score. Your SAT would probably have to be over 1560 to have a decent chance of getting in. Acceptance rate for UCLA’s CS is probably well under 10%, I think their overall Engineering is at 9%. Note that the UC schools in general emphasize GPA a bit more than test scores. Not sure what your GPA is but hopefully it’s close to perfect.
The same holds true for UCB EECS. Even harder to get in. Acceptance rate is probably between 3-5%. One of my niece’s friends got rejected with a 1580 and 4.8 weighted GPA. I personally know two others who got rejected with a perfect ACT score. However, UCB also has CS in their L&S school, which is a little bit easier to get into, around 15%, probably lower for CS-intent majors. That’s how my kid got in. However I think you still should have a SAT over 1500 to have a decent shot. 10-15 of my kid’s friends are CS intent and all were above 1520. Average UC GPA is 4.25 which is around 3.95 unweighted. The L&S CS is almost the same as the EECS program, with the notable exception that you need to get a minimum 3.3 GPA in 3 of the main CS courses in order to declare for the major, whereas EECS is direct admit. Sounds easy but it is not. I would say close to 50% who were originally CS-intent wind up doing something else.
If you really really really wanted to get into either UCLA or UCB and you don’t get in as an incoming freshman, there is sort of a backdoor way of improving your chances significantly. That is by attending a California Community College for 2 years, then reapplying as a transfer. I’m guessing though that most smart kids who are looking at 4 year schools all over the country will not want this route.
Northeastern seems to have a very good CS program. My D who was originally a Neuroscience major but who has switched to PoliSci loves it there. The winters in Boston can be brutal though. For Northwestern, it’s right on the shores of Lake Michigan and the winds there is brutal in the winters also. Houston where Rice is has the opposite issue, hot and muggy much of the time.
About half of students in those three CS courses earn B+ or higher grades.
Transfer admission to UCB EECS or UCLA CS is highly selective, and not a reliable back door. Also, because some lower level CS courses are not widely available at CCs, transfer students may have to “catch up” after transfer, possibly delaying graduation.
I’m not the right person to provide any kind of in-depth comparison between CS at Rice and at UCB/UCLA, as far as how the academic programs differ. What I can say is that the flexibility to move among majors however you like, at Rice, is unparalleled in the UC system. Certainly there are challenging intro classes in the STEM majors, at Rice, which may deter the faint-of-heart. But there are no formal barriers. My d had a friend who was accepted as a music major (which does have an additional layer of audition requirements for admission), and after one semester decided to switch into engineering. So he scheduled his classes and switched, end of story. So, if your daughter were to start out as a math major, her potential access to the CS major would be vastly different at Rice vs. UCB/UCLA.
Also, anecdotally I have seen any number of CA kids get STEM degrees at Rice and get internships and post-graduation jobs back in CA. My own Rice kid is still in TX, which wasn’t necessarily her first choice outcome, but she wasn’t a STEM major so her options to get a Silicon Valley job with pay commensurate with the cost of living here were a lot more limited for her than her engineering and CS peers.
Socially, Rice is a very different experience from UCB or UCLA. The school is much smaller, and the Residential Colleges provide a built-in community. Most students live on campus at least three out of four years - they’re typically off campus for junior or sometimes sophomore year, and return to claim the most desirable rooms/suites in their residential colleges for senior year. There are many campus-wide events. My daughter’s friends who went to UCLA ended up finding a group in their first year, moving off campus with that group, and then being kind of “stuck” with that group from that point on - which was just great for some but not as great for others. Of course, these larger schools also have a greater variety of opportunities - but for that to be a benefit, you have to be a person with the temperament to strike out and try new things without expecting to know anybody when you get there. For the outgoing and adventuresome, the UC’s offer an inexhaustible supply of new experiences. For those who prefer to have more familiar faces and connections throughout the community, things can feel more accessible at a school like Rice. For my part, if I were traveling to a whole new country for college, I would love the idea of belonging to a whole residential college community right away. From day one… all the students working at orientation have studied the profiles and pictures of the incoming freshmen. When you drive up to the College with your stuff, they recognize you, cheer your arrival, greet you by name, and move all your stuff to your room for you. (You can watch videos of this online - it’s pretty cool.) And then you have a whole week of orientation to bond with your new community, including doing your course selection with the guidance of advisors. It’s a very well-engineered experience. That’s not to say that there aren’t lots of very happy kids at the UC’s, though!
@bouders (#17) and @Bobby72 (#27), this link will take you to current information about direct admission to CS at the University of Washington:
https://www.cs.washington.edu/academics/ugrad/admissions/dtm
Thanks @UWfromCA Sounds like a good move. Students and parents will feel more confident committing to UW with direct admission.
I generally don’t recommend University of Toronto for students who are set on studying CS because of the unpredictability of admission to the major. Students don’t find out until after their first year of courses. Hopefully they will go to a direct admission system soon too.
@ProfessorPlum168 Thanks very much for these hard facts which changes our perspective and odds. Definitely will need to look beyond the UC’s more seriously than we have been so far.
@aquapt Thanks for such detailed info on Rice. Will be considering that seriously as an ED option.
@UWfromCA Thanks very much for the link. Direct admits should really become more the norm and hopefully more universities should do that especially for high demand Majors.
Interesting that Rice has most of the students leave for a year from on campus housing and return for senior year. It just like Boston College in that way. It was really surprising to me when I learned that about the school. To me that says a lot about how much they like being at the school.
It’s really great they all want to be there for the last year together.
I wonder how many other schools have that pattern.
For me once you had the apartment going back to a dorm and even a nice and roomy one would not been in the cards. Totally different experience.