Chance/Match a junior for reach schools in DS/EE

Chance Me / Match Me!
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Demographics

  • Us Citizen
  • State/Location of residency: SoCal
  • Type of high school: Public, pretty competitive
  • Gender/Race/Ethnicity Asian Male
  • Other special factors * N/A

Intended Major(s) EE or DS, will probably vary depending on what school I apply

GPA, Rank, and Test Scores

  • Unweighted HS GPA: 3.88 (Bs were in freshman and early sophomore year, all of them were in humanities courses, not sure if that’s a good thing or not)
  • Weighted HS GPA (incl. weighting system): 4.32, UC GPA: 4.16(I have ELC)
  • Class Rank: Isn’t shown, but it’s pretty easy to find out that 10% of our school has UW 4.0s :confused:
  • ACT/SAT Scores: 1530 SAT

Coursework
Wind Ensemble at school, finished foreign language(AP Chinese), Math up to Calc BC, taking Calc3 next year, AP stats, AP Physics 1 & 2, AP Chemistry, AP CSA, around 10 AP classes in total so far, I’ve gotten 5s on world history, chem, calc, and chinese so far.

Awards
AP Scholar
USACO Silver
CM Piano Level 10 State Honors
National Merit Commended probably(SI 218)

Extracurriculars

Machine Learning & Data Science Club secretary(helping on projects and hosting a summer camp teaching ML)
Wind Symphony outside of school + Saxophone quartet group
Volunteer at a nonprofit refurbishing and scrapping computers
Math tutor job
Piano
UCSC SIP
School club where we play an obscure sport
Random coding/ML projects
Idk if I should include this, but I ran an online business where I sold video game items/accounts which is against their TOS, made around $1-2k.
Was T500 in overwatch a few years ago

Essays/LORs/Other
I’m not the best writer, but I have experience with some of these college essays through applying to summer programs, and I have a few ideas on what to write about.

Cost Constraints / Budget
No constraints thankfully

Schools
My list is all over the place right now, but I’m definitely going to be applying to the UCs, SDSU, and Cal Poly SLO, though it kind of sucks they all don’t accept SAT scores. I’m also looking at a few out of state schools, like BU, GT, NEU, Tufts, and Umich, even though I know they’re all getting pretty selective especially for engineering.

Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks!

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So a few things:

  1. Pick a major. These two aren’t the same so when you say depending on the school I get worried.

  2. You say no cost constraints but if your folks could spend $30k instead of $85k, would they eliminate the $85k ? If so, you need a budget.

  3. What do you want in a school ? Tufts is vastly different in size and environment than any other school you list ?

  4. What are your safeties ? A poster had a rejection at SDSU but got into UCB. Are you ok with Merced ?

  5. What size, weather, environment - urban, rural do you want. Any parts of the country ok besides the West and Boston and the ATL?

Given the major there’s little pedigree advantage meaning you can go to name a school - Arizona and likely get a similar outcome ( job and salary) as UCLA.

So lots to think about - mostly what you want and what your parents desire to pay vs what they are willing. I am a full pay parent but still set a budget.

Let us know.

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Thanks for the reply, I’m definitely leaning towards data science a bit more. My parents have saved a decent amount for tuition, and given that they don’t know much about colleges in the US, they probably would choose the 85k school given the program was better. I’ve visited most of the schools that I listed, and I liked most of the campuses, and I’m pretty comfortable with the weather in all of their respective environments. I definitely agree that name brand isn’t too important for my major though–just looking for options that can provide an adequate experience and network.

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So in some cases date science may be more stats based and other cases CS based. So I would look at curriculums.

So let’s get a few things straight -

cost doesn’t = better.

UC doesn’t = better. It may or may not be better. Now, people give it a “pedigree” but you should look at outcomes. Also, if you don’t want a 20,000 or 30,000 person school…so UCLA and Tufts are polar opposites. So it’s fine to look at UCs, etc. but you see what I’m saying.

Are you a 4.0 UW GPA?

So I go back to - what will your safety be? Are you ok with Merced.

So you have a fine list -Let’s say you do:

Cal States - CPSLO and SDSU

You do - UCSD, UCB, UCLA and hopefully more.

You do GT, BU, NEU, Tufts, and Michigan.

It’s fine - no issue although Tufts stands out as odd to me.

But what is your safety? Your safety is the most important school.

It has to be one you’d love to go to but you’d get in.

UCR? U of Arizona? Arizona State? Oregon State? CU Boulder? Utah

So this has to be your focus - finding the school that you say - you know, if it’s all I get into, I’d be proud to attend (as you should be).

You also need to review the offerings at each as all data science is not created the same…and you want one that fits your desires.

Good luck.

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