I’m a junior in High School
SAT II: 800 (Math II), 800 (Physics), 780 (Chem)
ACT: 35
GPA: 4.4 (My school doesn’t do UW GPA or rank)
AP Scores: 5 on AP Calc BC (10th grade), 5 on AP Human Geography (10th grade)
Taking 5 AP classes this year (AP Physics 1&2, AP English Language, AP US History, AP Comp Sci, AP Chemistry)
Senior year: AP Econ (Macro & Micro), AP Literature, AP Physics C, AP Psychology, AP Stats, AP Spanish, Honors Organic Chemistry(if it fits in my schedule)
EC’s:
Varsity Soccer
DECA (Planning to get leadership next year since only seniors can hold leadership)
Organize and Ran a free summer camp intended on exposing younger children to CS.
Won our regional Hackathon (Plan to be on the organizational team for next year)
Patent Pending
Tutor and helped organize an organization that helps elementary students from underprivileged families discover and explore STEM.
Speech and Debate (Plan to be an officer for next year. Octofinalist at Harvard National Speech and Debate Tournament)
Key Club
NHS
Demographics:
Gender: M
Race: Asian (Pakistani)
State: PA
No FA
Your basic data is good enough for anywhere. But this does not mean you will get in everywhere. With patent pending you might want to consider some smaller, innovative universities like Cal Tech, MIT, and WPI. These smaller universities understand the concept of exploring options and programs are designed to do so… Tufts is a also a great place to explore STEM options.
MIT has a special program just for options (see http://uaap.mit.edu/research-exploration/urop/options) and WPI is all about options from day one (see https://www.wpi.edu/project-based-learning/wpi-plan) . They want dialogue in place of catalog for planning your entire program. Both Tufts and WPI are very directed for interdisciplinary thinking. They are more along the lines of Harvey Mudd with a wider range of choices.
With all the directions CS can take you and ABET accreditation issues you need frequent and easy exchange with informed dialogue. Look for this and whatever else you define as important to you in your search. Don’t get lost in the forest of rankings and “chance me.” Smaller sizes help here.
MIT has a very large graduate school, but only a little over 4,600 undergraduates. As you probably know, Cal Tech, MIT, CMU, Georgia Tech and UC Berkley would be reaches for anyone in CS. U Chic, Northwestern, Columbia and UPenn are also reaches for any major. You need less reaches and more in the middle.
You can do the work, if motivated, at any of these institutions. They are all very competitive on admission, especially in CS. The easiest would be WPI and Penn State. WPI Has an average unweighted GPA of 3.89/4 across all students in the current first year class. Pen State at University park has an average GPA of 3.58/4, but it is higher for CS and may be more difficult if you are an out-of-state resident.
Accepted so far:
UIUC
Purdue
USC
Yale (likely letter)
Deferred:
GaTech
Rejected:
Cornell (ED, I still don’t get why)
The college application process is whack. I got into a HYP but didn’t get into Cornell applying ED. Just take the entire process with a grain of salt. Sometimes things won’t turn out how you expected.
Went hunting on UMass, Amherst site to see what I could learn. It is interesting that the average entering student GPA for both Universities is tied at a respectable 3.89 across all majors. Access UMASS CDS @ https://www.umass.edu/search/#stq=CDS+2017-2018&stp=1
Because I was interested in face to face contact with faculty, I looked in section I ( Instructional Faculty and Class Size) of the common data sets for both universities At UMASS the ratio is 18 to one, at WPI the ratio is 13.1 to one and at Tufts University the ratio is 9 to one. That is a fairly big difference which reflects on my earlier discussion regarding strong access to well informed faculty in the the context of exploration of the STEM fields. It is an economic reality that access does drive up cost. I would argue that most larger Universities do not enjoy the same level of access and dialogue for undergraduate students. The MITs and Stanfords of the world have remarkable endowments which helps accomplish great ratios. To me, that is more important than the nefarious rankings.
It is also true that the cost of UMASS is lower. A point not to be ignored, but there are no free lunches!
Last I heard from an article about UIUC written in the fall, CS direct admits were at about 10%. The university in general has a much higher rate, though.
If class size is a criterion, try looking for colleges’ on line class schedules to see if class sizes are listed. CS is popular these days, and many colleges have increased class sizes to allow interested students to take the CS courses.