Excellent! Please take the counsel of the extremely wise folks on CC on safeties.
My D is your year too. She’s not likely going for CS, and CC+TAG is definitely the fallback. We’re lucky in California that we have that option. But, like with you, I recently had exactly the same discussion that she should try for some realistic safeties AND the CC/TAG option. As some have said on this website, I think the strategy is now “far and deep”.
By all means, apply to the T10s etc. But look out for YOU.
What do you think my chances are at the schools currently on the main post? And how can I improve those chances + compensate for my low GPA?
There is no such thing as compensating for a low GPA at top schools, unless you are really really good at football or basketball, or your parents can fund a building.
There are many here who are far wiser than me. The most important thing is to work hard and enjoy yourself.
Just remember that getting into any school (whether T10, T20, or whatever) is not the end goal. It’s what you do there and beyond that counts!
And being in the top 10% is EXCELLENT! Don’t bring yourself down.
I think the point is that neither of those colleges are horrible places to go to school. You might actually wind up liking one of them once you spend some time there. We’re talking about Arizona State at Tempe, right?
I just wrote in another thread that smart, upper middle class kids have the intelligence and drive to figure out college admissions. The OP is exactly the type of kid I meant.
OP, you are super accomplished and really smart. You will do well in life. However there are tens of thousands of kids just as accomplished, or even more so. You are running a substantial risk that you will not get into any of the schools on your list.
Do your research!!! Read the threads from families deeply unhappy with their college results. Be strategic!! Please, think outside of the box! Differentiate yourself from all the other kids who have the same qualities you have!
OP, I think you might appreciate this post from a different thread: Ridiculous reject train ride 2022 - #178 by blossom
Other possible schools to apply to might include U.Mass Amherst, Williams College, and U.Wisconsin (which was suggested by someone else).
Waterloo and/or Toronto and/or a few other Canadian universities might also be worth considering. Stat’s are important for admissions at Canadian universities (yours are very good), your upward trend will matter, and being Asian will not hurt nearly as much as it does in the US (other than Universities of California which are not allowed to consider race, but for which CS is a very competitive major).
You have a lot of reaches but I cannot point to any that I would clearly drop.
Do you think I should also consider applying in the UK? (Namely schools like Edinburgh, Cambridge, ICL, UCL, LSE)
I do not know the UK at all.
if you are so worried about prestige, what makes you think many people are going to be more familiar with schools in the united kingdom over schools you don’t have on your list (such as vanderbilt and duke) in the united states?
To be completely candid, with your GPA, I think getting into a Top 10 is going to be tough. There are too many others with similar resumes and higher GPAs (people in the top 1% instead of the top 10%). How can you stand out to these schools? What unique thing can you offer a school that no other candidate with a higher GPA can also offer?
This does not mean that you are not accomplished. Certainly, still apply. It might work out.
But if not, I have a different suggestion for your safety schools. Find a safety school that has a high admission rate but an eminent CS professor (like Turing Award winner Dongarra at University of Tennessee). Or a school that recently received a huge new donation to fund a CS program or initiative — U Mass Amherst’s CS program just received a transformative $95 million gift last year.
That way, you have a story to tell about why you selected a less selective school and may well be attending a program on the cutting edge, whose reputation and ranking are on the rise.
Yes that makes sense because they only care about exam results not GPA. You will need to get pretty much all 5s in your AP exams this year to have a chance at top schools. Oxford is more amenable to American applicants than Cambridge. You do need to have a clear understanding of what you want to study and do plenty of preparation (including persuading your school to administer the Oxford entrance tests in November). Start looking at their websites now.
Not sure if this counts, but Tufts just built a new CS building and is expanding their CS programs. And Tufts loves full pay kids.
Agreed that as accomplished as you are, you have to consider how you’ll stand out in the applicant pools for the T20s. There are a lot of asian-american males from California who want to study CS.
Also, you have way too many schools. I’d ditch Brown and Dartmouth.
John, your writing voice sounds so familiar. Are you sure this is your first time on CC?
It seems like a varsity sport helps admission unless one is near the top of the class. That’s the way it plays out at our high school. Sport + club/student body leadership + community leadership + volunteering + high grades and test score. Maybe debate covers the sport here.
If Cornell is your top choice, and you get rejected during ED, have you thought about attending one the NY community colleges that have articulation agreements with Cornell?
CALS, Hum Ec and ILR have agreements with various 2 year colleges in the area, I’m fairly certain. Not sure if A&S or the engineering college have them. The transfer process is limited to the less popular majors though. My guess is that CS is probably out of the question. But you could still do something similar (Statistics, etc)
I found an old articulation agreement between City College of San Francisco and Cornell’s engineering college. This is probably not up to date, but indicates that there may be other ways to transfer into the engineering college at Cornell:
Oxford CS applicants have to take the MAT with all of the other mathmos. Everyone does the same multiple choice section. I’d go here and look at the past couple of years to see how your math skills match up to see if Oxford is an option. And fair warning, my son who was active with his high school’s ACSL team said that his Oxford CS classes were extremely theoretical.
https://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/study-here/undergraduate-study/maths-admissions-test/mat-past-papers
Varsity sport is the same as any other EC (after school job, theater, debate etc) unless the athlete is being recruited. Then it trumps everything.