I guess it depends on how you define “worth” and “best”. This is a ranking from FreeOpp that looks at ROI in CS.
Not taking anything away from the schools you refer to as “best” but certainly based on ROI the Ivies (and Cal Poly shout out @eyemgh) appear to hold there own in terms of financial worth.
Lastly this was a chance me thread why are we discussing the “worthiness” of Ivies? OP already applied ED to Columbia (deadline was yesterday) why would we undermine this binding decision.
OP your daughter is impressive and accomplished and will be competitive for any of the schools you asked about. Good luck and hopefully Columbia comes through.
No need to undermine. Columbia is a solid choice for engineering, and I hope OP’s daughter gets in.
But backup plan for RD: they need to expand their list beyond the Ivies. Yes, there’s UPenn and Cornell for engineering, but they’re even more unpredictable during RD. So it helps to add other top CS and engineering schools to the list.
Do you need financial aid to attend these very expensive elite colleges? If so…apply for financial aid. An acceptance without sufficient money to attend is not going to work.
Also, you are a senior now who has already submitted an ED application. So…just wait and see.
As noted above…get your RD decision applications either submitted or ready to submit. Just in case you need to do so.
And I agree…you are a strong student…but so are the vast majority of others applying to the schools on your very top heavy list.
Your kid sounds competitive to me. It’s a crapshoot though because top engineering programs are murder to get into. Columbia Engineering is a great choice for computer science. They have one of the top placement rates in FAANG and in start-ups in Silicon Valley. My niece is there now. Had 1st author conference pubs and 3 years of research in a university engineering lab. No APs because school didn’t offer. 4.0 GPA UW, 36 ACT. Was waitlisted everywhere else (Ivies, Stanford, Berkeley) except rejected by MIT.
I would not wait until Dec 15th or so to send other apps. She should have some EA and rolling schools on her list….and those apps should already be in. If not, get on it.
Does she have any affordable acceptances yet? What is her affordable safety school(s)?
I don’t do chances, but if you want to do computer science at Carnegie Mellon you have to apply to it separately. The information is no longer anywhere obvious on the website, but they used to print the average GPA and SAT scores for all the schools along with the admissions rate. SCS required much higher scores and at the time its acceptancs rate was also much lower than any of the other schools. (I think 4% compared to a then over all rate of 20% or so.) My son loved the program. It was not originally his first choice, but in retrospect it should have been.
This, and this list should include matches and safeties. While your kid is a strong candidate, absent winning/placing highly on some recognized national/international competition, you just never know, especially as an ORM. There are too many high achieving academically equivalent applicants for too few spots that it often comes down to the essays and LoR’s which will be in many ways a subjective evaluation. Are there safeties on your list?
Personally, I think it’s far more useful to do the opposite, figure out what they want in fit, and then provide a list of names. If someone asked me what the best car was, I’d want to know how many kids they needed to haul and whether or not they’d be towing a boat before I said Porsche.
There’s something goofy with their data. I went to LinkedIn (where this site says their data originated) to see Cal Poly (my son’s alma mater) because it didn’t show up on either list. Using Google alone, they’d rank #9, just ahead of UCLA. Taking their top 2 employers only, Apple and Google, and no other company, they’d be #1. I’d want a better handle on their methodology, especially considering the absence of Olin, Rose, Cal Poly, Pomona, etc.
You are out of state for both of these. I do not think that they are safeties either, although they may be matches.
You need to make sure that you have affordable safeties. These are likely to be in-state public universities. In New York there are some very good affordable public universities that would be safeties.
I just want to add emphasis to @DadTwoGirls’ good point. A safety is a guaranteed admit, that is also guaranteed to be affordable without relying on hopeful aid.
