Chance A Middle Class Asian Female in CS (UIUC, Georgia Tech, Northwestern, and more)

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

hi! i’m applying ED to northwestern and EA to uiuc, georgia tech, uw-madison, purdue, cwru, umich, + northeastern. not sure where i’ll apply for RD yet. i’m a cs major. chance me! :slight_smile:

demographics: middle class, chinese, female, suburb of a large city, goes to top 20 hs state-wide

academics: 3.6uw, 4.2w, 33 ACT (34 superscore), taking SAT next month, 780 math 2, graduating w/ 13 APs, national merit commended, national AP scholar (gpa has upward trend; 3.8uw gpa w/o freshman year; hardest course rigor available)

work experience: interned + built code at a fortune 50 company, worked on a governor campaign

in school: president/founder of cs club, varsity robotics and leader, stem regional/sectional competition, fbla, nhs

out of school: founder of global 501©(3) cs nonprofit, regional director of an intl org, tech conference organizer, tech speaker event founder, program teaching young students cs founder, brand ambassador for a hackathon, member of 2 national cs orgs

awards: fbla nationals qualifier, congressional stem scholar, one of 20 in the nation admitted in a selective program (5% admit rate), hackathon winner, 2x record holder in a school sport

LORs: one of the best he’s ever written (10/10), the other is pretty decent (8/10)

essays: common app has a somewhat unique topic, decent writing (8/10), supps are pretty decent (9/10)

2

hey!! i LOVE your ecs and hope you get into nu ed!! you definitely deserve it, and i can see your passion for cs clearly.

3

Congratulations on your achievements.

What state do you live in?

I can’t chance you but all of the schools on your list are reaches (CWRU may be a match), whether they admit by CS major/program or not.

Do you have other schools on your list…several matches and at least one affordable safety that you would be happy to attend?

4

This is a very reach heavy list and your UW GPA is low.

What is your home state? Hopefully you are in state for one of the schools you listed.

I agree with the above that you need to add matches and safeties!

5

You definitely need to compartmentalize. As most of these are reaches, you should first break down into high reaches (such as Georgia Tech out-of-state and possibly U Mich) and more reasonable reaches for CS, such as UW. You appear to have a match in Northeastern, but in this game, nothing is a guarantee. Also, as I was reading, I saw that your CS and STEM credentials are very nice, but things like music/art and sports are not at all emphasized. At the very end, almost as an afterthought, you point out that you are a 2x record holder in a school sport. Why is that given such little attention? It helps round you out! That’s so important! If you hold such a record, you must have been on a team - probably varsity? That needs to be fleshed out. Lastly, as others have said, you need to add some more realistic schools to the list. Reaches are great, but everybody needs matches and safeties. I’ve heard about so many top kids being closed out of schools because they got rejected at so many places. You could think about Virginia Tech and RPI and WPI and U Maryland CP as match-type schools, and something like RIT as a safety. Some state schools (SUNY Stony Brook and Binghamton) would also be likely safeties.

6

Not to pile on, but at GT only 4% of the accepted students had an unweighted gpa under 3.75 and U Mich it was 15%. Also for U Mich for CS/Engineering I am sure it is about the same as GT.

7

Thank you all for the comments! Bumping this^

8

Have you considered Olin College of Engineering in MA and SUNY at Stony Brook?

9

RIT, RPI, and WPI would be more reasonable targets with a 3.6 UW GPA.

10

Thank you!