CS at UCB is of course a very hard admit even for in state students, even harder for out of state students. But I think you have a shot with your stats - you will really need to sell those ECs in your PIQs. The other question of course is whether you can afford full pay out of state tuition at UCB? It’s going to be around $70K/year (tuition plus housing). If that cost is comfortable for your family, then it’s definitely worth a shot. If that would call financial stress for your family, honestly, it’s not worth it.
Definitely a Reach school but your profile looks competitive. Remember they are test blind so your ACT will not be used for admission or merit scholarship purposes.
You should calculate your 3 UC GPA’s which are all considered but UCB emphasizes the Unweighted and Fully weighted UC GPA. Note only AP/IB or UC transferable DE courses are weighted in the UC application so HS designated Honors classes do not get the extra Honors point bump.
CS and Econ are both High Demand majors so you need to apply directly to one of these majors for the best chance to purse that major. UCB does not offer an Econ minor so you need to determine if just taking some Econ courses will be sufficient for what you want to study.
Most of the kids I know who have gotten into Georgia Tech as OOS applicants have been either valedictorian or salutatorian of their respective high school classes.
I understand U Wash and UT Austin have really low OOS rates, but why would you move VT to a target? Most of the people I know with similar/worse stats have got in for engineering degrees, so i thought it would be a safety.
My family could afford it, but being reminded of just how much 70k kind of makes me second guess if I would go based on the ROI of being close to high-paying internships and jobs. I will definitely still apply because I would like the option if possible, but thanks for the information.
Also, everyone else, I just realized that I wasn’t supposed to make individual replies. Sorry.
You can apply for any of those jobs/internships from any university. During the year, if at UCB, you will be in competitive classes and trying to get a strong GPA: You really wont have that much time to do the local internships while in classes/session.
Those internships will be in the summer but, you probably wont have housing. Housing in CA is very expensive. It is extremely high in Berkeley and Silicon. You wont get the “high-paying” salaries during your internships because you wont have your degree yet.
Some companies will provide housing for interns because in NorCal it’s hard/difficult to find temporary housing for 3 months. Even Air B & B’s are ridiculously priced because they can get their rates. These companies have interns because they don’t have to pay the going rate for non-degreed personal, so it’s a win for the companies because they get grunt work out of you for inexpensive salaries.
You can get the same experiences by attending any college outside of California and do virtual or interview onsite for those Silicon jobs. They have students from all over the country.
If your school is a T50 in the country, then speak with your guidance counselor. Usually when I chance people, I’ll use a few extra categories and give my sense of chances like this:
Extremely Likely: 80-99+%
Likely: 60-79%
Toss-Up: 40-59%
Lower Probability: 20-39%
Low Probability: less than 20%
For me, I translate a “safety” as a school in my extremely likely bucket. However, with the admissions results from the last couple of years, I’m not sure if anyone has greater than 80% odds of admission to Va Tech for engineering. I’d probably put it as a likely for you. Why? Take a look at some of the results threads from the last two years. Some of the results are astounding as to how strong some applicants were who did not receive admittance.
And even though those threads say ED, most of the EA results poured into the same threads when those results came out.
If you look at the Institutional Data page for Va Tech (select college/department in the upper right hand corner), for class of '23 seniors, the engineering school accepted about 54.9% of applicants.
https://udc.vt.edu/irdata/data/students/admission/index#college
I would not be at all surprised if you’re accepted to Va Tech…I’d probably expect it more than not. But because there have been some amazing candidates left out in the cold, I would no longer be shocked if you wouldn’t receive an admit either. Which means that to me, this is not a safety.
No worries at all! Either way is fine. But if you want to quote multiple people in one post, you can start drafting a reply and then highlight the words from someone’s post that you would like to respond to. A little hovering “QUOTE” option appears that you can press, or you can just press Q and it will then enter into your reply. Do that for as many people as you would like to respond to!
