im applying to columbia and cornell and not the others for example just because i have cousins that went there and lots of family in new york. they’ve all told me its tough but survivable, and i’m definetely not the person to melt down over a bad grade in my first sem like some of them have told me because i’m used to it lol.
i was also a little worried about how i would compete with the people going to these schools but that’s no reason not to apply.
yeah the biggest hesitancy with ed2 is because of the “what if?”. imo, i probably wont get into any of the ivies. the people im competing are probably 4.0 gpa 1550 sat kids who discovered a love for cs at childhood and have a great story to tell while i figured it out last year. that’s why i feel comfortable applying ed2 elsewhere.
thank you!
Many schools include home equity because the assumption is your parents can tap the equity to help pay.
You’d have to check each school in how they calculate but this is a sample listing / explanation linked below.
You keep putting out different schools but it’s likely many or most will not come near your budget, perhaps due to this.
As long as you are ok with Rutgers then you can stop .
For CS are you guaranteed for Rutgers? I don’t know. CS is not like other majors at most places. We’ve seen kids on here with your stats get turned in CS at Rutgers level schools. In my mind it’s always good to have a second safety. Especially for CS.
As an aside, my nephew went to U of Arizona for Poli Sci and works for a top tech in the city. Where he went and what he majored in wasn’t relevant. Passing all the tests they gave him was.
My son is a senior in engineering and I have to count but has interviewed with at least 20 firms all over and has two offers topping both $80 and $85k and one comes with a profit bonus of up to 21% additionally. He has a few other offers as well, very competitive.
My point is- find the right school for you. If it’s Rutgers, then great. It’s wonderful. But if you’re a city person, find an urban school that might meet budget. They are out there. Even in the NE. Some will have minority scholarships (with deadlines that may still have time).
In this major especially, I would focus less on name. And more on what’s the right place for you. One name is not going to yield better results for you than another short of the very top schools.
But as you seem to love Rutgers, that’s great too. Best of luck.
rutgers does not admit by major. i applied for the school of arts and sciences, where cs is, and you need to pass certain classes to declare the major!
thank you for the advice. i know i probably won’t be able to afford many of these schools, but some people similar to me have gotten great packages (tbf, they EDed) which is what gives me hope.
I saw on the Rutgers about the pre reqs but at least it’s not competitive admission to the major like other schools. You do the work, you are in.
Since ED is binding, you can’t ED in hopes of getting merit. And anecdotally far more merit per student will go non ED. If they admit you ED, you are bound, even if it costs more than you desire. Need based aid will be same regardless as NEU and BU meet need. Perhaps that’s what they got.
Pitt, which you said no to, is urban and has the Cathedral of learning diversity scholarship. It may or may not be too late but don’t assume that other schools can’t’ achieve the Rutgers price if you did have interest.
Good luck no matter where you end up. You’re an impressive candidate.
At the schools on your list (in the OP) that don’t give merit, it is unlikely your financial aid package will be materially different than the NPC (provided you filled out the NPC accurately).
OP, if you qualified for the College Board Recognition Program for African American students based on your PSAT score, you might be eligible for competitive (i.e., not automatic) merit at BU and Northeastern.
I’ve done more net price calculators than I can count over the past 6 years and often our income was in the same range. Never have we had it show as high as 60k. Please check again with a tax return and don’t over inflate your home value or add in the value of retirement accounts.
With your stats you should get good merit at out of state public schools as well, possibly bringing the cost close to Rutgers, but cs could be a problem anywhere they admit by major. Rutgers SAS is a great option. Hopefully you’ll hear soon from New Brunswick!
we’re doing the css right now (with the proper forms!) so hopefully this will clear things up. i’ll run an npc right afterwards as well to double check.
okay, i did the myintuition college cost calculator for bu (not sure if its different for every school), but it says i’ll either pay 23k, 34k, or 44k (low, best, high). should i do it for the other schools?
You should stick with each school’s own net price calculator, not myintuition…as you can see, a range of results is not helpful.
The NPCs take more time, because they are more detailed and are likely to give a more accurate answer. Also, some school’s will honor the NPC result (given accurate inputs), but not sure any honor MyIntution (again because it can be incomplete). Make sure to save NPC results either directly to your computer, or keep screen shots.
I also want to reiterate to have your parents help with the NPCs, unless you have their complete tax return, supporting documents, and financial statements, and understand what the NPC is asking for. For example, some people forget to add back their annual 401K contributions (from their W-2 Box 12) to income on the NPCs (if it’s not asked for separately).
i have most of the information because i have the css profile i did with my dad saved on my laptop and can just pull the info from there, unless the npc calculators ask for something else i don’t know about? then i’ll ask my dad for help!
If you’re going to major in CS then it really doesn’t matter much where you attend college. Most employers will want to know that you can code. Some even accept people without college degrees in CS.
But either way, I think your best value is attending Rutgers New Brunswick. Instate tuition, great location for internships, etc.
I don’t see any harm in throwing in an ED2 application, just as long as you know you will be held to the agreement. On your ED2 list the only ones which I think might be worth paying more for are JHU and Northeastern (Co-op). I don’t think extra money for BU or NYU are worth it. Wash U would be good too, but it sounds like it would be too far for you.
Some schools, including BU (I don’t know about the others on your list) will not give any merit aid for ED2 – Their application deadline for Merit aid is December 1. BU will meet 100% of need but the package will likely include loans. I do think you’d be a strong candidate for admission at BU, NYU and Northeastern. I’d consider WashU and Johns Hopkins to be reaches but not impossible.
It can matter, because some colleges’ CS departments to very small and may not offer all of the usual upper level courses. This is unlikely to be an issue with the OP’s list, however.
Another potential issue is if the department is not large enough to accommodate all students who want to major in CS, so it must ration entry to the CS major or CS courses (e.g. through secondary admission).
Yes, self-education may be accepted, but if you are going to college, you may as well choose a college with a full set of CS offerings where you can learn with the assistance of instructors and curricular structure.
My daughter is applying to CS programs too. She has a a lot of experience with CS- three classes, won competitions, and her Cs current internship. What she’s found that you have to look at the schools to see what type of CS programming is - some are more theoretical (prob less learning how to make apps etc)., while others are more applications. But even theoretical ones are good for those who are very conceptual and can learn that way. Some have a BA and BS degrees- more math and engineering BS less of that the BA. Some top schools are more theoretical while others aren’t. You have to do the research. Also find out how easy it is to switch from BA to BS vice versa. It’s prob easier to switch BS to BA but not vice versa. My nephew is at Columbia BA in CS in CC and he said it was very hard trying to change to BS, which is in SEAS- he wanted to switch to a BS after his exp with his summer internship but he couldn’t.
can i ask why she wanted to switch to bs? did she find that there were less opportunities for ba vs bs or was it just a personal interest thing? i looked everywhere online and was told that ba and bs are equally employable
He’s at Columbia BA for CS. He had a summer intern where I live last summer but wasn’t invited back. I think that was one of the reasons he wanted to change to BS CS- I think the BS is harder. My DD is not
Planning on doing BA CSc only applied to BS programs- it probably is more technical and probably do need more math. CS is very hard and I’ve heard students dropping the major. CS comes naturally for my DD so she wants to pursue the harder CS route feels it is more employable. We went to another to 20 school visit and she asked about BA and BS the Dean told her if she applied to BA it would be hard to switch into the engineering BS - prob means some courses are different. .
is it more employable in your opinon?
i’m applying for ba nearly everywhere only because bs programs (usually in school of eng) just has a lot of “science for engineerings” and stuff like that when i’m mostly interested in programming, math, and design.