Chance me for Ivy Leagues, top UC colleges, top International colleges, and others

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

Planned major - Computer Science

Country - USA
Gender - Male
Race - White

GPA - UW: 3.79 Weighted: 4.79
ACT - Composite: 33 (E: 34 M: 35 R: 30 S: 32 Essay: 8 (E/W Composite: 31))
SAT Subject Tests - Math II: 730 (Will retake it), Chemistry: 740, U.S History: 650
AP Classes I took so far - Chemistry, Physics 1, U.S History
AP Classes I will take Senior year - Calculus BC, Biology, Government and Politics, Statistics
I’ve taken all Honor classes throughout high school

Extracurriculars - Play the violin for the school orchestra (9-11 Grade), play the violin for Show Orchestra (10-11 Grade), played 9th grade baseball, played Ultimate Frisbee (11 Grade), Interact Club (10th Grade; I was technically elected treasurer for the next year, but the club discontinued the next year -_-), Speak Up! (11th Grade), Debate Club (11th Grade), Robotics (11th Grade), Asian Culture Club (9-10 Grade), learned various programming languages on Codecademy, Learned C# programming language on my own (I use it to create small games)*

  • Extracurriculars that I will probably do in senior year

Extracurriculars that I’m doing this summer - Learning to play piano on my own, learning to make games with Python on Coursera, learning bioinformatics on Coursera

Work Experience - making English tests for Chinese kids (9-11 Grade), working at USDA as an intern this summer

Recommendation letters - One from my 11th grade math teacher and one from my 11th grade English teacher

Languages - English (1st language), French (9th-10th grade; stopped taking it), Japanese (11th-12 grade, but I taught myself a LOT of Japanese on my own time starting in 10th grade.), can read Korean, Russian, Hebrew, and Arabic alphabet (not sure if this is really an accomplishment)

Colleges that I plan to apply to:
University of Pennsylvania (ED; my mother works there)
Cornell University
University of California Los Angeles
University of California Berkeley
University of California San Diego
New York University
University of Edinburgh
University of Toronto
Penn State University (Back up college)

2

The languages will be an added bonus if you’re somewhat fluent in them. If not, then it’s not really worth much. Your EC’s seem scattered. You have a lot of them, but they don’t focus on anything. I assume that your passion is computer science, but you only have 2 EC’s pertaining to it. Start a computer science club, volunteer to teach kids how to program, etc. To stand out for the schools on this list, you have to set yourself apart. The stats are near the median for the Ivies, and towards the 75th percentile for the others. The Ivies are a pretty big reach for you, the UC’s are a high match, and the rest are also probably high matches. Hope I could help.

3

If you’re out of state I’d say that UC Berkeley and UCLA are high reaches. In fact, I’d say both are almost out of reach because computer science (and engineering in general) is an extremely popular and selective major at both schools. UCSD is a reach too. Also, can you afford the $55,000 a year for these schools? You will get little to no financial aid. UPenn and Cornell are both reaches, while NYU is a match. Edinburgh is a high reach, Toronto is a high match, and Penn State is a safety. You need to search for more match schools, both financially and admissions-wise.

4

What colleges, besides NYU, do you think are a good match for me (that have good Computer Science programs)?

5

You could look at Carnegie Mellon, although it’s extremely competitive.

6

UMaryland has a good computer science program and might be a good fit for you. Probably a little bit lower than your scores but you might get a good chunk of merit there