Type of high school: Highly competitive medium size public high school
Gender/Race/Ethnicity: Asian Male
Other special factors (first generation to college, legacy, athlete, etc.): None
Intended Major(s) Data Science/ Computer Science
GPA, Rank, and Test Scores
Unweighted HS GPA: 3.75
Weighted HS GPA (incl. weighting system): 4.3/5
Class Rank: School doesn’t do class rank
ACT/SAT Scores: 1470 - 730 English and 740 Math
Coursework
10th Coursework
2 honor classes (math and science) and rest regular
11th Coursework
AP Calc BC (5), AP Lang (5), AP Chem (4), AP Comp Sci A (5), Econ, US. History
12th Coursework
AP Stats, AP Lit, AP Gov, AP Physics C Mech, Econ, Accounting 1
College Courses from Concurrent Enrollment
6 computer science courses and 1 psychology course (7 total)
School doesn’t really offer any AP courses until junior year, so I took maximum I could at each year
Awards
DECA (Business Competition) first place and top 10 in two events at internationals 2 years in a row (out of 1500+ people)
Several awards at state and district level too (out of hundreds)
US National Amateur Chess Championships 2nd place
California State Chess Championships top 10
Presidential Gold Volunteer Service Award (2 Golds and 1 Bronze)
International business competition quarterfinalist
AP Scholar with Honors
Extracurriculars
Research with Cambridge professor and MIT PhD student
Learned and researched with them over summer for NLP and then solo-authored a research paper; presented at IEEE conference and publishing into a top 50 NLP journal
Founder of Tutoring (Regular and CS) Business
5 figure annual revenue, 30+ clients, 30+ employees/tutors and great community reach
Also was a solo-tutor previous to this for a year working every week for 3-4 hours
Intern at Industry Leading AI Chip Startup
Working directly with VP of Software on machine learning aspects of products - direct impact towards startup’s customers
President of school DECA Club
Has over 130 members and a team of 20 people within leadership; also built app for club for everyone to use
CFO of Robotics/CS Teaching Non Profit
Managing a 5 figure budget and all money mechanisms of org; partnering with the community subsidiaries of large orgs to fund 200+ volunteers and 1300+ students.
Software Developer at Big US Non Profit
Working in backend with actual adults to automate operations of a six figure donations database from 500 donors; direct impact and solo-developed an entire donor submission mechanism
VP of CS Club
Leadership role for school CS interest club that has 130+ members
Professional/Industry Nvidia AI Certification
Worked with Nvidia hardware, developed AI computer vision project
Small Research Project with Stanford undergrads
During covid, worked on AI algorithms that detected covid variants with genome sequencing
Summer Intern at a Silicon Valley Startup Accelerator
Learned from VCs about startup creation process and pitched idea of startup to investors
Letters of Recommendation
AP Lang Teacher (9/10)
Got great grades in both semesters and showed achievable growth which she noticed. Also participated in every class and she has heard good stuff about me from my previous literature teachers.
AP Chem Teacher (8/10)
Had him for Chem Honors as well so long standing relationship. It was a fun dynamic and he knew me in his classes so I would say its good.
School Counselor (9/10)
Advisor for a club that I have leadership role in, so overall good impression.
Cambridge Professor (9/10)
Great relationship and worked hard with him, good recommendation.
For the top schools, you will need to have a cohesive story and a very very good explanation of the incongruency of grades/ECs. Publishing at IEEE and on NLP doesn’t square well with a 3.7 GPA. Similarly, intern at AI chip startup doesn’t sync with the verifiable parts of the profile. I recommend picking a few defensible and verifiable ECs that the student is passionate about, and has been involved for a long period of time.
Your list is heavy on reaches, and you need to pick a couple of good safeties. What is your local CSU?
A 3.75 unweighted GPA is excellent. Don’t denigrate it; it is definitely not mediocre.
If a school offers Early Action, apply EA, unless it’s a Restrica EA (REA).
In terms of your chances, I suspect that Santa Clara, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Texas A&M would be likelies, by which I mean I think your chances of admittance are greater than 60% (but not a near-lock/sure-thing). UC-Merced might be a sure thing, depending on the UC GPAs. Most everything else (outside of California public higher ed to which I’ll defer to others) I would say is going to be a low probability of acceptance, though not impossible.
Top 25%, but school has high acceptance rate to most of my targets and safetys even for my stats (45% and higher), with around 40-50% of applicants being in CS
SJSU is local CSU. Can you explain what you mean by “doesn’t square well” or how my internship isn’t “verifiable” for the other parts of the profile. Just trying to understand
For SJSU, you can assess your chances by calculating your impaction score. See below for the calculation methodology, typically 800 * (10-11 UC GPA).
First calculate the UC GPA using Roger Hub calculator. And then calcukate your impaction score using the formula above and add 200 since you are local, and compare that against the CS and Data Science thresholds (3440 and 2080 last year) https://rogerhub.com/gpa-calculator-uc/
With respect to incongruency, a solo publication about NLP on the back of a summer project feels very sketchy. Not questioning the authenticity of your ECs, but it feels like a red flag to me.
Here are some CSU and UC CS admit rates for 2022. UCSB and UCI are not target schools but more in the Reach Category. If applying to Data Science, then I would put UCSB as a possible target but not UCI based on the admit rates below.
You need to calculate your UC and CSU GPA’s. Just be aware that some of the CSU’s may not consider your DE courses in the GPA calculation (SJSU in the past has only used HS CSU GPA) for the impaction index. Being local is an advantage but you need to calculate your impaction index since SJSU CS is the most competitive major for admission.
2022 CS admit rates if available
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%
Data Science admit rates if available
Campus
Data Science
UC Berkeley
8.25%
UC Davis
No Data but approximately <20% Capped Major
UC Irvine
7.6%
UCLA
10% Does not admit by major into College of L&S
UC Merced
Major not available
UC Riverside
67%
UC San Diego
No data but approximately <10% Capped major
UC Santa Barbara
27% admit rate for College of L&S which does not admit by major
I put my UC gpa on the reply to my original post. All my work (event apart from research) is online and verifiable, published in IEEE Xplore and conference websites too. Didn’t end up paying much focus to my schoolwork which is why my GPA may not match up to my extracurriculars.
A 45%, 50%, 60% or even 70% chance of acceptance does not a safety make. A 45% chance still means that odds are, you will not receive an admit. If your school has such a strong record of getting students into these schools, then your guidance counselor should be able to help provide some insight in terms of the likelihood of your chances at these schools.
For all of your illustrious ECs, you will want to make sure that there is lots of verifiable information that is also corroborated by your letters of recommendation.
There is no way your school had a 54% admit rate for UIUC CS. Its in the low single digits for OOS so your assumption with half being CS majors is probably incorrect. Believe me, UIUC and Purdue are hard admits for CS.
These schools are definitely hard admits to CS and in high target/reach domain, especially for me. School has 54% admit rate to UIUC CS and out of all the applicants in senior year class, around 40-50% are applying CS/DS majors, so I am carrying that statistic as an assumption that at least 30-40% of people getting into UIUC or Purdue are CS/DS centric.
Also, for UIUC, will be applying into DS + X or CS + X programs which have 25% < admit rates. Still a reach though.
I compared my academic statistics through a college dashboard that our school uses and my profile was in the area where there are around half rejects and half accepts, so I put it as high target.
Published all my EC stats on the internet through the organization I am in, with referrals to any coordinators that were within the EC too. Verifiability at my GPA range is a key so I have made sure to make everything transparent.
Guidance counselor recommended those schools as targets asper her experience with my class.