Purdue has changed in the last few years. Engineering and CS have become selective. Make sure to apply to this school EA.
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The most important thing to know about the highly rejective schools is that the stats of the admitted students will mirror those of the rejected students. Essentially everyone applying has similar stats and only a small percentage get in.
UW has a strong program but doesnāt offer WUE. I would only choose it if directly admitted to CS.
UCB also doesnāt offer WUE tuition and is apparently having some issues due to the number of students they have. I donāt know them particularly, but maybe @ucbalumnus will have a better handle.
OSU is the no brainer safety. Youāll get into the honors college and have plenty of opportunities. Iād probably pick one other WUE safety, Cal Poly Humboldt, Cal Poly Pomona, Utah or Colorado State.
Then whatās left beyond just looking at rankings? I have a preference for schools that have small classes and donāt rely heavily on TAs. Three that I really like that have great job placement and high salaries after 2 years are Pomona, Harvey Mudd and Cal Poly.
If you just prestige/rank hunt youāll miss great schools like these, and you miss out on the fact that the āT20ā schools are very different than one and other.
The bottom line is that CS is hyper competitive at many schools, but you can have good job opportunities and earnings with a degree from almost any school if you work hard and do well.
This part is important. I will assume this means with no debt and no family hardship (please let us know if I am wrong).
Your stats are excellent. Your ECs look excellent to me.
The only downsides that I see are: (i) Admissions is very hard to predict at top ranked universities in the US; (ii) Being Asian-American will hurt your chances at top universities in the US; (iii) CS is a very competitive major at those universities that consider your major for admissions. A few of the top ones (MIT, Harvard, ā¦) do not consider your major when deciding who to accept.
I think that you are competitive for Stanford, MIT, and similar schools. However, these are definitely reaches. The same is true for UC Berkeley.
I do not know whether Cornell considers the children of graduate degree holders as legacy. Most universities do not.
I think that you need to do two things. One is to find at least two very good safeties. The other is to decide what you want in a university and apply to reaches that fit what you want.
The obvious safeties might be the University of Oregon and Oregon State. Other WICHE/WUE schools might be another option. The University of Washington is also very good for CS but is probably not a safety out of state. Some universities in Canada might be an option here (UBC comes to mind, Waterloo and Toronto and Simon Fraser are some of the many other possibilities). There are quite a few Asian-American students at the top universities in Canada specifically because being Asian will be much less of an issue in Canada. I am pretty sure that the Canadian universities however do consider your major when choosing who to accept.
One thing to keep in mind: At least where I live and work the hiring managers are in many cases Asian-American. They know how race impacts university admissions. Many of them are also in the ādonut holeā of families who make too much to qualify for need based aid but not enough to be comfortable paying $300,000+ for a bachelorās degree. They know how many excellent students (such as yourself) attend in-state public universities, and then graduate and become excellent employees. CS is a field where the āprestigeā of your university really does not matter. This all suggests that attending an in-state public university will be a good choice and will not negatively impact your career.
But with your stats I would include an application to a few top universities based on which of them you are most interested in. If it were me, U of Oregon, U of Washington, Stanford, and UBC would be included on the list of universities to apply to.
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Purdue is a great example of a school whose selectivity has increased notably in the last few years - it has been ādiscoveredā.
As your mother has given you a minimum to spend on college apps & limited where you can apply to meet her standards I canāt see any reason that she canāt get you to Cornell during the school year, on a school day. Doing that may well be inconvenient for everybody involved, but relative to applying ED to a program that is a bad fit for you, itās nothing. What you donāt want to do is end up back here trying to figure out transferring.
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According to the OP, the parents will not pay for any college other than top 20 overall or CS, or Oregon State. So any additional safety must be an automatic full ride for the OPās stats, and any other non top 20 college reach/match assessment must be based on getting a full ride scholarship.
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Yes! But keep in mind that WUE is often restricted to specific campuses and/or majors of various participating institutions. Still a great deal, but itās important to research whether it works for a particular studentās major or campus preference.
will ur parents pay for University of Oregon? or just Oregon State
Top 20 according to who? This is a weird constraint, especially considering that grads from CP, HMC, and Pomona earn more than the grads of many if not most of the T20 schools. Itās yet another example of how rankings a prestige have grossly warped the college search process.
I get not wanting to pay a lot more than Oregon State unless the school really is ābetter.ā To define better only by a list with critical flaws is very misguided. The rank doesnāt consider class size, who teaches, retention, graduation rate, placement or earnings, let alone intangibles that the student might care about like location, price, weather, etc.
Presumably according to the parents or whatever ranking the parents are reading.
Hi, thanks for the reply.
When you say ācal polyā, which location do you mean? To my knowledge, there are multiple cal poly locations, correct? Sorry, outside of the UC system I am not too familiar with California universities. Iāll definitely take a closer look at the universites
Hi, thanks for the reply.
Do you know where I can find any information about this? Iāve tried googling and I canāt seem to find any information about it from the Cornell website itself.
Do you know if Canadian unis have some sort of required testing sort of similar to how US schools used to require SAT?
Thanks
Hi, thanks for replying.
I didnāt think about skipping school but Iāll definitely discuss it with them about that. Do you know where I can find any more information about sitting in a class? I looked online but I can only find info about virtual visits.
Thanks
Hi, thanks for replying
Sorry, I think I was being a bit unclear when I said what I said before. Weāve had a couple of short conversations about paying, however, if I really want to go somewhere, I think I should be able to convince her so long as there arenāt any exorbitant tuitions fees. Sorry for the confusion!
Thanks
Hi,
They are both at relatively similar price points, so I would assume that my mom would be ok with paying for UO. Although, I donāt think I would go there over OSU just because of the reputation it has around here. My parents have a much stronger bias toward OSU because most of the hires in their companies are from OSU. If I were to look for another safety I would probably have to look among the WUE universities.
Thanks
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Hi, thanks for replying
To answer the question that @eyemgh posed, they mainly get their information from the USNews rankings as well as other parents who they talk to.
Thanks
I also was not able to find information on whether having a parent hold a graduate degree from Cornell makes you legacy. I am pretty sure that this does count for Stanford and Columbia, but I was not able to find anything for Cornell.
This depends where you come from, and which universities you apply to. Before COVID most of the large universities in Canada did require the SAT (or ACT?) for students from the US. From what little I was able to find this seems to be coming back. Your SAT scores will be excellent for any university in Canada that considers the SAT.
I just checked and it looks like UBC does require the SAT for students from the USA. My expectation is that other large universities in Canada (including the ones you have heard of) will at least consider your SAT score if you submit it. Most required the SAT for students from the USA before the pandemic, and I would guess they are probably returning to this requirement.
Universities in Canada do not consider your grades in grade 9. I have seen students get accepted based on grades from grades 10 and 11, or instead based on their grades in grades 11 and 12. The latter results in the acceptance showing up later. However, you are in a situation where your grades and your test scores are excellent all along, and it hardly matters which they look at because they are all very good. In many cases (possibly all?) applying earlier and having superb stats will result in your getting your acceptance earlier.
Generally speaking admissions to universities in Canada is very stats oriented and relatively predictable. Given that your stats are excellent this will help your chances.
The top ranked universities in Canada (Toronto, McGill, UBC, and Waterloo specifically for computer science) are a bit more expensive for international students compared to other universities in Canada, but still mostly cost less than private universities in the US. Note the exchange rate if you are going to check prices. These four universities are generally well known in the US as well as in Canada and worldwide. Some other universities are also very good and are a bit less expensive for international students, but are not as well known outside of Canada as the top ranked schools.
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Please get a firm $$ amount which can be paid annually by your parent without them taking loans. Donāt plan to āconvinceā them later that paying more than they really can afford is a good idea. Itās not.
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Iāll respond to this. I understand that some families feel the USNews rankings are THE most important criteria for colleges.
BUTā¦in my opinion, the only ranking that really matters is the one you, the student, gives a school when you review it. As an example, one of my kids looked at Stanford (really just for the fun of it) and the Claremont Colleges (which she wanted to see). She HATED both of them despite the higher ranking they had relative to where she applied and matriculated. Her ranking put them at the bottom of the list of schools we saw.
Just because USNews ranks a school highly does NOT mean itās the college for you.
You might not have to skip school, if (for example) you have an early enough fall break, or if your classes start after Cornellās do (August 22).
However, you are right that virtual may be your only choice, unless they change their visitor policy between now and October (based on how conservative they have been throughout the pandemic, and their commitment to keeping in-person classes, I wouldnāt be optimistic).
Either way though, I strongly recommend a visit before committing to ED. In person tours & info sessions came back in March.
You might add Rice to your list. It is a top 20 with good CS and does not admit by major. Students can choose to major in anything including CS (other than music or architecture which require audition/portfolio). Being from the west coast might give you a slight geographical advantage. Rice offers good financial aid.
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