Chance Me: Dude from CA applying for Bioinformatics/CS [3.97, 1560]

[ldw1]

Demographics: Male, East Asian, California, Large competitive public school, US Citizen

Bioinformatics/Bioengineering/CS

GPA (havent begun 12th):
Unweighted HS GPA: 3.97
Weighted HS GPA 4.7ish /5 (3 college courses not on hs transcript yet)
SAT: 1560 (760 RW/ 800 math), psat semifinalist (i dont remember what it’s called, havent applied for next stage either)

No rank but I’m guessing somewhere around top 10/800?

Coursework: All ap scores were 5’s, School is relatively known to have hard classes

9th: No AP allowed but took 3 honors and other required freshman classes
summer: took a bunch of prerequisite classes for ap’s

10th: AP CS A restricted to 11th+ so I took a college equiv outside, 3 AP’s in school (bio, calc ab, world) + band + required language classes (no honors english or 2nd language allowed)
pay to enter summer camp (waste of my parents’ money, got to tour the east coast ig)

11th: 4 AP’s (english, bc, apush, physics C) + honors language.
Summer: multivar calc at cc, biology course at a UC

12th: 5 AP’s (chem, english, stats, micro+macro econ, gov)

Awards: Don’t want to specify for anonymity but
AIME Qualifier
3x USABO semi or equivalent
Volunteers hour awards (congressional gold + the other stuff)
2 awards for school sports (3 awards given each year for my sport, i got the leadership ones because I sucked at the actual sport)

Extra Curricular (only reporting the main things):

1. Volunteer Organization (3+ years officer, current pres)
   large volunteer service group (300ish members)
   Led events which donated around $20,000 to $50,000 and other events which I don’t know how to quantify without giving away to many details

2. Biology Club President
   around 200 members, do competitions, teach stuff.

3. Volunteer tutoring classes
   president of a volunteer group teaching around 100 kids stuff. Organized material, led classes, and also did fundraising through it. been leading for around 2ish years and teaching for around 3 years.

4. freshman + jv sports.

5. A lot of volunteer work in various organizations that I don’t want to specify

6. more basic stuff like participating in clubs or whatever

Essays: I think my essays will be around a 7-9. I’m not an Pulitzer prize winner but I believe I’m a decent guy with decent writing capabilities (hopefully).

LOR:

History Teach: (8/10) participated a lot in class, others blatantly used exam details online, I blatantly studied, I led every group project in the class, made improv speeches when peers were unavailable, was directly given leadership roles from teacher. Teacher was chill and happy w/me. Teacher will have a lot to write though so I put a 8 instead of 9.

other rec teach (related to my majors): (10/10)

Counselor: (5/10) She has 500+ kids under her. Gave her a few gifts over the years and she was relatively impressed with my coursework but I’m sure she won’t recognize my face without an ID.

Cost constraints: none, my parents been working hard recently and really value education

Schools (I’m posting this because I’m not sure where these go. I’m not really sure if I rated them correctly. Also will probably cut the school list down or include more safeties. Any advice would be great )
ED/EA: CMU EDI, MIT EA, UChicago EDII (legacy)
Reach: UPenn, Duke, Princeton, Harvard, Harvey Mudd, Stanford, caltech, mit (applying at bioinfo for those switchable to cs, and general bio for those who dont care abt declared major)
Hard Target: USC, LA, Berkeley, UT aust, Umich
Target: UCSD bio something
Safety: other UC’s

I have a general idea of what to do and all that but just wanted advice on where I stand relative to all these young geniuses who are just absolute ballers. I am more than open to advice regard which colleges to apply to or how to apply to them. Please be brutally honest on anything you note. I don’t plan on taking offense to good advice and valuable perspectives.

[Gumbymom]

Congratulations on being a competitive applicant. I will only address your chances at the UC’s.

First you need to calculate your 3 UC GPA’s:

https://rogerhub.com/gpa-calculator-uc/

As a CA resident, I am sure you are well aware that your excellent SAT score will not be considered in the UC application review nor for merit scholarship consideration along with your National Merit status. UCB is the only campus that will ask for LOR’s but is by invitation only.

Your PIQ’s and EC’s/Awards will set you apart from the many 4.0+ GPA applicants which makes the UC’s unpredictable but it is important to spend time formulating good essays and activities list.

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%

Based on these numbers for CS:
UCB/UCLA/UCI/UCSB and UCSD are all Reach schools but still Reachable.

UC Davis a Target school while UCR and UCSC are Likely schools. UCM would be a Safety.

For BioEngineering/Bioinformatics, only UCSD has a standalone Bioinformatics major while several campuses offer a minor or UCSC has a joint Bioengineering/Bioinformatics major.

Campus	Bioengineering
UC Berkeley	9.1%
UC Davis	No data but <39%
UC Irvine	34.2%
UCLA	6.4%
UC Merced	92%
UC Riverside	90%
UC San Diego	No data but approx <10% Capped major. Bioinformatics no data also a capped major.
UC Santa Barbara	Major not available
UC Santa Cruz	66%

So for Bioengineering, Reach schools are UCLA/UCB and UCSD. Target schools UCD and UCI with UCSC,UCR and UCM as Likely/Safe schools.

Best of luck and I am sure you will be a successful applicant with many choices.

[ldw1]

Wow, thank you so much. I’ve met with paid college counselors and got a general idea of how the UCs worked, but your forum reply really clarified the standings of these colleges for me. I knew that applying for CS would reduce my acceptance chances but I had no idea it was to that degree, especially for UCI. Thanks again for helping me quantify my chances for these schools .

[Gumbymom]

More information regarding the UC’s and the admission process.

The UC’s use 13 areas of criteria when reviewing applications which are linked here: How applications are reviewed | UC Admissions

For CS and Bioengineering, you really need a direct admit into the majors since many campuses have made it difficult to impossible to switch into these majors later.

UCB has 2 CS majors: CS in the College of Letters and Sciences which is considered a High Demand major or EECS in the College of Engineering.

UCLA admits directly into the College of Engineering for CS and Bioengineering.

UCSD admits into the University first and then into the major. When applying for a Capped Major like CS or Bioengineering, the recommendation is to select a non-capped major as an alternate. You cannot change into the CS major if admitted into your alternate.

UCI admits into the University first and then into the major and they do consider an alternate major if listed. Changing majors can be difficult but not impossible.

UCSB admits directly into the College of Engineering and will consider an alternate major within the College of Letters and Sciences only if not admitted into your 1st choice major.

Edited: UCD admits directly into the College of Engineering and starting Fall 2024, their CS major is now in the College if Engineering and no linger in the College of L&S. Changing majors is possible but not always guaranteed.

UCSC admits into a proposed major and for CS you need to apply directly for that major. You cannot switch majors later if admitted into an alternate major.

UCR admits directly into the major and will consider an alternate major. Changing majors is possible but not guaranteed.

[ldw1]

Thanks again for sharing this information. Will definitely be something I refer to when deciding how to apply for the UCs. I hope both sides of your pillow stay cool and your coffee is never too hot .

[tsbna44]

The good news is you’ll be competitive at many top schools. You can hope for your UCs but there’s an entire world out there too. And if you like the UC for costs, with your stats, a lot of great publics will be very competitive.

One thing is that while your stats are great, your test doesn’t matter in CA. If you are NMSF, then you should go for finalist which can open up free schooling and / or great partial scholarships at schools like USC.

Good luck.

[ldw1]

Yeah, I actually would prefer to go to USC or an eastern or midwest private school, particularly UChicago, CMU (bioinformatics), MIT(bioinformatics), or UPenn since I had a good impression of these schools upon visiting. My brother is currently at UChicago and is in the top ten of his class and my father did his graduate studies at M.I.T. I know M.I.T is a crazy reach for me but I really wanted to know whether UChicago would be a hard target or a massive reach. I will EDII, have sibling legacy, and my school has around 5-10 students accepted to UChicago each year. My brother’s academics were relatively worse than mine (4.3W, our school has pretty difficult AP courses) but I am guessing things have changed since when he was accepted in 2020 as well as him being an edge case due to his essays. If you have any sort of knowledge regarding these schools it would be greatly appreciated.

[AustenNut]

I think you have a legitimate shot at any school in the country (apart from women’s colleges). I wouldn’t be surprised if you were to get in to MIT or U. of Chicago or any other school. Of course, I wouldn’t be surprised if you don’t get an admit either, simply because those schools have far more qualified applicants than they do spots. They’re reaches not because they’re out of your league, but because they’re so popular with strong students.

The part of your list that concerns me is that you have the UCs as your safety. Would you be happy at UC-Merced? If not, I would look for some alternative schools that would not only be an extremely likely admit, but that you would be happy to attend. Some schools you may want to consider include:

• Arizona State
• Iowa State
• Loyola Chicago
• Marquette
• Oregon State
• Rensselaer Polytechnic
• Rochester Institute of Technology
• U. at Buffalo
• Worcester Polytechnic

[ldw1]

In my situation, it would be more beneficial for me to attend my local community college, which has the highest transfer rate in CA to the UC’s (Where you can transfer), than attend Merced or Riverside. I will likely be applying to ASU as you have mentioned, but I would be more than fine with the community college transfer route if all else fails. Thank you for the suggestions regardless.

[tsbna44]

The issue with the cc route is you’d lose the four year experience.

So I hope you don’t consider that.

If other UCs are not acceptable then why apply?
I wish you luck. You likely get into one or more of your list of reaches but there’s plenty of other great schools too that are impressive as well. It’s not just big names that are great.

[Aimlesscat1]

You have great stats and as others have mentioned you are competitive anywhere. I see a lot of people treating the CC route as a back door into UCLA and UCB but it really isn’t. Admit rates are higher but you miss out on the 4yr experience as @AustenNut mentioned and you don’t really improve your chances into CS at UCLA or UCB if they are your targets. For UCB you’d need to spend two years getting perfect grades (which should not be a problem for you). Then you would still have a low single digit chance of getting into CS. There will be great schools that want you so I would ask you what is your plan if you go the CC route and after two years you are looking at UCLB as your top UC admit? Great school but I doubt you would consider it a success.

[AustenNut]

It was @tsbna44 who talked about the residential 4-year experience, but I totally agree with both of you on that point!

[ldw1]

I really have not planned for that tbh. I’ll go discuss this with my counselor and see what they have to say about the safeties. Thanks for bringing this up.