Chance an overexcited senior for EE or CS (because I deleted the last one...)

Chance Me / Match Me!
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Demographics: White low-income person from the Midwest, single parent household, diagnosed with ADHD. Have extenuating circumstances for grades including parental incarceration, parental attempted suicide, abuse. I attend a boarding school in New England.

Intended Major(s): Computer science or electrical engineering

ACT/SAT/SAT II: 1470 SAT (760 RW 710 M), taking this month’s ACT as well as August SAT.

UW/W GPA and Rank: Roughly a 3.85 UW GPA, 4.09 UW/4.5 W junior year GPA. No cumulative weighted.

Coursework: School doesn’t offer AP or IB courses, but I’ve taken a courseload of almost entirely Honors. Some classes I’ve taken/will be taking include Honors Computer Science, Honors App Development, Honors Linear Algebra, Honors Applied Differential Equations, Honors Calculus AB, a directed study in computer hardware, Honors Material Science, Honors Advanced Physics, and the Honors Robotics sequence.

Awards:

  • CMU SAMS 2020
  • FRC team awards (2 engineering awards at the NE level)
  • Questbridge College Prep Scholar
  • Bunch of debate awards (top speaker at a tournament, top team, 2nd and 3rd place duo placements)
  • Handful of coding awards (29/20k, 19/900, 70/1000, 90/4000 placements)
  • School award for academic excellence and character, and another for academic and extracurricular dedication, as well as deans’ list for GPA
  • Scholastic Writing Regional Silver Key and Honorable Mention

Extracurriculars:

  • Co-captain of FIRST robotics team
  • Systems technician intern for local company
  • President and founder of computer hardware club
  • President of community service club (300+ members)
  • Co-president of affinity coding club
  • MOSTEC 2021
  • Research in VR at local university
  • Vice captain of debate team
  • School judicial board member (elected position), dormitory prefect
  • Varsity track and field
  • Executive board member of and playwright for school theater festival

Schools:

EA: MIT, Caltech, Purdue, IU, Clark, Case Western, UMichigan, WPI, UPitt

RD: Stanford, Harvard, Columbia, Cornell, Rice, Harvey Mudd, USC, Occidental, BU, URochester, CMU, Tufts, Carleton

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I don’t do chances, but I just wanted to say “Welcome back.” I remember you from the prep school forums when you were applying to BS.

One of the many boarding school advantages is better college counseling. Your college counselor knows you a lot better than we do, and their feedback would be a bit more helpful, particularly for reaches, since you need to have a sense of how strong their rec for you will be vs others applying to the same schools. With that feedback, hopefully you can pare down your list because 22 is a bit of overkill and I do not think the counseling office will support 22.

If Purdue is your in-state public, you have a great option for your field with them.

Good luck.

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Agree with all of this ^.

I don’t have the chops to do chance me threads, and won’t even try. Besides, your list and my son’s has a lot of overlap, so, I really have no business cheering for the competition (kidding).

Go you!!! You sure have made the most of your opportunities, and I hope you feel really good about what you have accomplished.

22 schools! Are you applying to all of them? Yikes! You sure do like to take on challenges. You’ve got this, and I expect you will land in the perfect place for you.

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Hey, thanks so much! Time has passed so fast since I was applying then, it’s almost imperceptible that I’m already a senior.

I appreciate the advice. 22 is definitely a bit much, and I’m not entirely sure I’m applying to all of them; I’m not 100% set on Harvard, Tufts, Carleton, Cornell, WPI, Clark, and UMichigan. We’ll see how it pans out, but I bet I’ll apply to a handful fewer.

I’m definitely super lucky to be in-state for Purdue. Its engineering program is fantastic, and hopefully it’ll be affordable with the reduced tuition plus hopefully good aid.

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Ooh I hope your son gets into his top school! It’s a daunting cliff to be looking down right now, starting the college application process.

I really appreciate the kind comments!! You’re too nice to me. :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes: I am proud of the journey I’ve taken since my freshman year, and even if I don’t get into some top-ranked school, I’m glad I was able to experience what I have to get me to the end of this process.

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I remember you too. You’re a very earnest and helpful person, and that, I am sure will be noticed by everyone associated with your applications. You’ve done exceedingly well and should be very proud of all that you have accomplished. Keep striving.

But striving for 22 apps is striving a bit much! Whittle it down and, if you are at all able, try to visit schools. There’s also tons of online info, and as another poster mentioned, your GCs are there to also help in that process.

I wish you the very best!

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My prediction is that you will have options after the EA round, which will let you drop many in the RD round.

Keep us in the loop, please? I would love to hear your insights as you go.

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Thank you so much for saying this. It’s so easy to get caught up in the wild waters of college stress and only see things in this weird sort of binary light (if that makes sense). I always want to be known as what you said, and so to hear it, well, I almost teared up.

And 22 colleges is definitely a bit overkill. I’m hoping to whittle it down to around 15, but even then, 15 is also a lot. Eek!

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I really hope this happens!!

Also, I will definitely keep you in the loop, no matter how apps play out. :smile:

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My DD is a year behind you, @CavsFan2003. So she is just starting to scope out colleges online as she starts to think about where she wants to go. She still has junior year and the standardized tests to go, but she’s done amazingly well.

If she came to me and said she was going to submit 22, or even 15, apps, we would both be very upset. She: because she had to fill in so many apps; me: because I would be the one paying for it all!

There are other CCers who are far more knowledgeable about this than me, but one thing I’ve learned is to break the school lists down into safeties, matches, and reaches. Do a little bit of research on the numbers (UW GPA and standardized tests being the most important) and then take your interested list and categorize the schools as safeties, matches, and reaches. Then see which schools you really want to go to and, if possible, see if you can visit them. Whittle out the ones you don’t want to apply to from there.

I would spend some time each day on this, but you should also be prepping for the SAT and ACT, since both of those are coming up in August 2021. Your SAT score, while good, should be a bit higher, especially for math, to get into some of your reaches, but your GCs can advise better on that or Naviance, if you have access to it. And please don’t sell yourself out by not having reaches. They will be difficult for you, but they will be difficult for anyone. However, if you don’t apply, you’ll never know. And your list of reaches, matches, and safeties might change if your test scores go up.

The other thing is that the Common App goes live on August 1, and some schools have already announced their supplemental essay prompts. As soon as you get the prompts, I would at least start making quick outlines of what you plan on writing about in your essays so that you are not spending all your time writing essays from scratch during the fall of your senior year. School will be resuming soon, so at least plan on how you would write your essays so that you are not overwhelmed with starting the apps just as school starts. But keep the focus on the standardized test prep, rather than the apps. Once the tests are finished, then focus on school, the apps, and still being a kid!

The key to all of this is time management and work. If I were you, you might consider making a calendar of each day of the summer from now until you take the standardized tests and then school restarts. List out what you want to accomplish each day and leave a bit of time in case things don’t go to plan. And most importantly, make sure you leave enough time for fun stuff! It is summer, after all. If you do that, it becomes less overwhelming and sort of a map for the next several weeks.

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Are you applying through the Questbridge match? That could help a lot, especially with financial aid.

I also would not mention the ADHD in your application.

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First of all, 3.85 is a pretty strong GPA, though CS is a pretty competitive field, so that may be an issue. Second, if I am not mistaken, you attend a high school which is known for avoiding grade inflation. The high school is also well known enough that colleges will see your GPA in the context of such grading policies.

However, as others have said, your high school has really good counselors who are far better than we are at figuring out how competitive you are for each of these colleges. I generally do chancing, but I think that you should rely on your counselors - bring them your list and let them help you decide.

I will comment though - on your list you have a wide array of types of college - private colleges of different sizes and types, liberal arts colleges, and large public universities. What are you looking for in a college?

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Not clear as to how Occidental College fits in your list of schools since you want to major in CS or EE.

For some of your target schools, you might need a higher SAT math score than 710 (especially for CalTech).

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CS is definitely a competitive field, so I’m TERRIFIED of applying into it! But, I’m not going to sacrifice studying what I want for a better chance of getting in, so I guess I’ve just gotta settle with maybe a couple more rejections. Oh whale.

My counselor’s recommended me a lot of schools to look at, and I’m pretty sure we’ll have an actual sit-down and whittle-down session once we go back to school. I guess we’ll see what that looks like!

To answer your question about what I want in a college—that’s a darn good question, and honestly, I’m not sure if I have one single answer to it. Some parts of me want to have the big college experience, going to football games and all that. Another part wants a tiny liberal arts vibe where I spend my Wednesday nights going to open mic nights and sit in lowly-lit coffee shops playing board games with my school friends. Another part wants some combination of the two. It’s been really difficult for me to tell exactly what I want.

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I really like Occidental’s campus and general vibe, and they’ve got a cool 3-2 engineering program with Caltech where I could major in CS at Occidental and then get 2 degrees in 5 years from the two schools.

And I’m also worried about the math score. I know Caltech is test-blind this cycle, but for like MIT and the other STEM-heavy schools, I know it needs to get up. I’m retaking the SAT and ACT, but I don’t feel all that confident about getting the score up. I guess I could go test-optional as a last resort, but I don’t really want to.

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It’s great that you can see yourself being happy in any of those types of college. You really don’t need to decide now. In fact, I think that keeping that attitude will really help you flourish wherever you end up.

Good luck!

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For 3+2 programs, find out how transfer admission and FA at the “2” school work.

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Agreed. Also…paying for five years of undergrad (even if you get two bachelor’s degrees) is not likely to result in a ‘better’ job than if you have one BS degree. YMMV. Point being coming out of the CalTech 3-2 program, you will be interviewing for the same set of jobs that the 4 year CalTech students are. IMO, If you want to major in engineering you should go to an engineering program.

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