Carnegie Mellon, UPenn, USC Berkeley, NYU, Cornell

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

Ethnicity: White
Gender: Male

Rising Senior
Major: Computer Science (possible a double major/minor with Philosophy)

Current list:

  • UPenn
  • Carnegie Mellon
  • Cornell
  • USC Berkeley
  • NYU

GPA: 4.143 weighted, unsure of unweighted (our school does it weirdly)

AP:

  • 5 Computer Science (self studied)
  • 4 World History sophomore year (only AP offered to juniors)
  • English Lang, US History still waiting for results (expecting 4s or 5s)
  • Self studied Psychology (expecting 4 or 5) and Computer Science Principles (expecting 5) junior year

Senior classes:

  • AP Physics 2, AP Calc AB, AP English Lit, AP Government, Honors World Religions, H. Computer Science IV (no AP offered)

Total 7 AP classes, 10 AP exams
Total 7 Honors classes

No class ranking available

SAT: 1460 (740 verbal, 720 math, 20 essay)

  • 1490 superscore (740 verbal, 750 math)
  • Will take SAT again
  • Will take Physics/Math II as well

ACT: 32 (taken one time)

Extracurriculars:

  • President of Cybersecurity Team (won state competition under my lead)
  • Personally ran CTF security competition for >25 students around state
  • Member of Quiz Bowl team
  • Theater lighting for all school theater shows, Junior/Senior year (four shows each year, ranges elementary/middle/upper school plays and musicals)
  • Performance Choir (senior year)
  • YIG (senior year)
  • Editor and senior publisher for school’s literary magazine
  • Member of student technology helpdesk

Out of school things:

  • Helped found multiple startups (not going to go into detail on this forum)
  • Three year winner of Apple Worldwide Developer’s Conference Scholarship (200 worldwide in '14, 350 '15/'16)
  • Interned at local cybersecurity company
  • Competed in regional professional-level security competitions, placed either 1st/2nd in all of them
  • I play piano/guitar. Not really an accomplishment or anything, but it shows that I do things besides computers.

Essays/recs should be fine

2

USC and Berkeley are two dif colleges…

3

Try getting your test scores up a bit as they are on the low side of the schools you are interested in except for NYU.

4

Meant UC Berkeley… It’s been a long day

Thanks for the advice though, @witurner

5

safeties??? also cmu’s cs program is super competitive (~7% acceptance).



every one of those r reaches for you, except with nyu being more of a high match. retake ur sat and get a 1540+ and ull have a better shot

6

Are you in state or OOS for Berkeley? If out of state, then your 10-11 GPA would get the extra weighting from AP/IB/DE only and you would be paying 60,000 with little/no financial aid.



I would suggest applying to Berkeley Arts and Sciences if you are considering CompSci with a Philosophy minor. CompSci in the School of Engineering has brutal acceptance rates. CMU CompSci is going to be a reach for anybody since it has similar acceptance rates as an Ivy League school.



If you can get the SAT 1 Math to ~800, your superscore would be 1540 and that would give you a fighting chance at all of your schools (they would be reaches instead of high reach). WWDC looks good as an EC (coming from someone who works at Apple).



I would add UIUC and UW-Seattle to your list if you’re interested in CompSci as match/low match schools. Try to add more matches/safeties.