Chance/Match Me: CA resident 3.94/1560 for CS

Chance Me / Match Me!
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Indian

  • Green crD
  • CA (BAY area)*
  • public high school*:
  • Female*:

Intended Major(s): CS

GPA, Rank, and Test Scores

  • Unweighted HS GPA: 3.94 (all b’s in freshman year)
  • Weighted HS GPA approx 4.4 (our high school’s highest possible is a 4.45:
  • Class Rank: n/a
  • ACT/SAT Scores: 1560 SAT

Coursework
*AP Euro, APUSH, APphysics 1, AP Calc AB, AP Calc BC, AP Stats, AP Spanish, AP Chemistry, AP CSP, AP CSA, AP Bio, APES, AP Gov/Econ

Awards
FRC team worlds qualifier all 4 years
Got a lot of awards at regionals (finalist, impact, control award, etc.)
VEX Worlds qual awards
AP scholar
national merit scholar

Extracurriculars
leadership team at FRC
captain/prez of High school team
started NGO (decently reputed? on some news channels)
blog/podcast
own research published
research w/professor about to be published
intern at congressman
GWC SIP, ATDP (TA and took course), COSMOS
intern at CS company (was startup)
started club at school

Essays/LORs/Other
essays: 8/10
LORS: prolly a 6-7/10
Cost Constraints / Budget
none

all my b’s occurred during one semester; i had covid right before the finals which basically messed up all my grades (going to mention this)

Schools

  • Safety (certain admission and affordability)
    UC Merced
  • Likely *(would be possible, but very unlikely or surprising, for it not to admit or be
    UC Riverside
    SLO
  • Match
  • Reach
    Stanford
    MIT
    Berkeley
    UCLA
    Princeton
    U chicago
    NYU
    Harvey mudd
    Yale
    columbia
    UIUC
    Georgiatech
    Brown (and other ivies)

Any other top-ranked schools you think I would have a good shot at?

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So your test won’t matter for UCs.

You’ve got a 3.94 UW GPA. Do not excuse Bs. It’s fine to have Bs. It’s not fine to make an excuse though. That’s a bad look.

Why are your LORs so unimpressive - you have a 6-7.

That makes your reaches even more so.

Will you be happy if it’s UCR or UCM ? SLO may not be as easy as you think.

You might add a school with a gender imbalance, such as RPI. Your list is very top heavy and adding a Purdue, UMD, UMN, Col School of Mines, Lehigh type schools might be wise - unless you are ok with UCR/UCM.

Best of luck.

Ps - while you have no cost concerns, you could still score a great scholarship and fund a great job if you wanted. …an Arizona for example.

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You need to add match schools to your application list…you already have a ton of reaches.

4

SLO should be in the Reach category for CS. The estimated admit rate is around 9%.
UC Riverside should go in the Match category based on admit rates for CS.

You need to focus on more Match schools and cut your Reach school list.

CS admit rates if available for 2022

Campus CS
UC Berkeley 2.9%-L&S EECS-4.5%
UC Davis No data but <20%
UC Irvine 5.8%
UCLA 3.8%
UC Merced 85%
UC Riverside 36%
UC San Diego No data but <10%
UC Santa Barbara No data Historically 5-6%
UC Santa Cruz 60%
Cal Poly SLO 9%
Cal State Long Beach 54%
San Diego State 40%
San Jose State 31%
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5

Just noting that Cal Poly SLO is a difficult admit for CS. I would keep it on your list since it’s a great school, but it is not a likely for anyone, because of the tricky way that SLO GPA is calculated. I would put it in the reach category, but that will depend on your SLO GPA.

SLO also won’t look at your SAT score, and is non-holistic (so your ECs won’t make a difference).

Have you calculated your UC and SLO GPAs?

(looks like I was posting at the same time as @Gumbymom :smiley:)

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What are your UC recalculated GPAs? Use GPA Calculator for the University of California – RogerHub to calculate them.

CSU recalculated GPA is the same as the weighted-capped UC recalculated GPA if you do not have college courses taken while in high school. If you do, recalculate, but count each semester college course as two semester courses and two grades.

The UC and CSU recalculation uses only grades from 10th-11th grade, so your B grades in 9th grade will not affect their recalculated GPAs. The exception is for CPSLO, where 9th-11th grade are included.

For SJSU, will you graduate from a high school in Santa Clara County?

UCs and CSUs do not consider SAT or ACT scores for admission.

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UCs and CSUs generally do not use LoRs (except in a few cases where applicants are invited to send optional LoRs), so they largely do not matter there. Obviously, they do matter for some of the non-UC/CSU schools on the list.

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Calculate your UC GPA’s here: GPA Calculator for the University of California – RogerHub

If you’re applying to UCSB for CS, consider also applying to the College of Creative Studies computing major, which has its own additional application: Computing | UCSB College of Creative Studies

When you apply to SLO, make 100% sure to include all high-school-credit classes you took in middle school, in the correct spot on the application. Every year, we see otherwise-qualified applicants slip below the acceptance threshold because they forgot this.

Talk to your college counselor at school before the end of this year, and discuss the issue with the semester when you were sick. It is better for this to be explained in the counselor recommendation than for you to mention it. Use your application for the positive stuff, not for extenuating circumstances, which will play better coming from the counselor.

If you’re interested in MIT and Mudd, are you also interested in Caltech?

If you like Mudd and the Claremonts, you might consider applying to Pomona as well. (I would have recommended Scripps as well, in the past, but it seems that the ability to choose an off-campus major in CS through Mudd or Pomona is no longer assured.)

If you like Columbia, you could apply to Barnard as well.
UMich could be worth a look. (They have CS both in L&S and in Engineering)

Are you considering applying to USC, to see if you land one of the big NMF scholarships? If you like the Boston schools, Northeastern has strong CS and a pretty generous NMF award (it used to be a guaranteed 30K - not sure if that’s changing). There are also good CS schools that you could attend for free with NMF - UT Dallas, for example, or Arizona as TSBN suggested - these could make good safeties. (If it came down to it, a free ride might beat paying 35K/year for Merced, for example.) There are good safeties with WUE reciprocity that would also give you merit - Utah, for example, or UNR.

You’re a strong applicant and you should have good options - just make sure you apply to a range of schools and that you have safeties you could be happy with. Is there anywhere that you want to apply Early Decision, or would you prefer your most-desired UC(s) and/or SLO over the schools that have ED?

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As a CS major, you should be guided more by the list of top CS schools than the list of USNWR “best undergraduate schools”.

UChicago, NYU, and Brown for example, aren’t particularly strong in CS so I’m not sure why they’re on your list. Vs, for example, Purdue, UMD, and UWisconsin.

Will you enjoy doing a lot of very rigorous math courses? (at MIT) or a lot of required core courses outside your area of interest? (UChicago and Columbia).

In any case, do you really need 15+ reach/super-reach schools? That’s a lot of essays, and it’s hard to carefully tailor that many essays for each school.

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Is a green card holder treated like an international applicant or domestic applicant for the purposes of college admission? If it is the former, chances are going to be lower at many of the reaches. Either way, more matches need to be added to this list. As it stands, there are too many reaches. I second adding some schools that are stronger in CS than some of the reaches he has here. UMass Amherst has a very good program that is somewhat easier to be admitted to - it would be a match (and there are quite a few kids from CA in the program).

11

You are the hiring manager, so I respect your view on this. But I’d happily send my kids to Brown, for CS, over Purdue, UMD and UWisconsin :-). Certainly not to NYU though. And maybe not to UChicago.

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Sure. There are many reasons to like Brown.
But from OP’s list I don’t get the feeling it’s a carefully curated set of schools based on what each offers. Plus, a very long list of reaches and super-reaches with no matches, is not a good strategy.

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The other thing is that a bunch of these schools need ED to have a good chance. And you can ED to just one private.

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14

If you would be happy attending UC Merced, UC Riverside or SLO, fine.

Otherwise, you have a list of reach schools where you might get accepted…and you might not.

15

What would you like your college experience to be like? What are your preferences about a college (besides a penchant for prestige)? You have very small schools (Harvey Mudd) with huge schools (Berkeley). Apart from Georgia Tech, the schools you’ve selected all appear to be in places that tend to vote Democrat, but I don’t know if that’s an intentional selection. You have urban schools with very remote ones. It’s hard to determine what other schools should be suggested based on looking at your list.

Additionally, is there a particular area of CS that you’re interested in?

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If yo want to attend a Big 10 university for free or for minimal cost, consider Raikes at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. Lincoln is a great location for your interest in CS.

17

Out of curiosity, why are you specifically suggesting Big 10 universities? I believe you did this in another thread as well… when neither OP mentioned a preference for Big 10 that I noticed. Are there some specific programs in that athletic conference that you feel are especially worth bringing attention to?

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Please reread my post more carefully as I specified a particular program (Raikes) for CS students interested in business as well as CS.

19

I thought Raikes only provides for free room and board (and that’s not guaranteed for all accepted to Raikes)?

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No, Raikes students are eligible for all other scholarships on top of the award of 4 years of free room & board for the specific Raikes dorm.