Chance me for Rice ED, UCLA, UC Berk, Duke, Carnegie-Mell, Caltech, Emory, and Caltech

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

Background:
Chinese, Wealthy family, West Texas, goes to a normal public school with 1100 students (275~ per grade)

Grades:
ACT - 34
GPA - 101/100 weighted, unweighted - idk, our school weird
Class Rank - 4/275ish
PSAT - 1460 (enough for a commended scholar, but not semifinalist in Texas)
SAT - 1470 (didn’t do as well as ACT so I think imma go with ACT score but ill retake in Oct)
AP tests: (my school only offers 6 APs)
Chemistry, Physics 1, Calculus BC and AB subscore, Comp Sci A - 5
Statistics and English Lang - 4 (small question: I didn’t have AP stats or compsci at my school, so will I get some leeway if I only made a 4 on stats cause I self-studied?)
SAT Subject: Math 2 and Chem on AUg 24th, idk how I’ll do)

Extracurriculars and Volunteering:
Varsity tennis player for all four years of highschool. Im the captain now and am a state-ranked player in Texas with a UTR of 8.3, Won team tennis championship in 2016, 2017, and finalists in 2018 (4A,4A,5A) - big EC

Started AMC at my school. I myself started math competitively around 7th grade and was on the AMC honor roll in 10th and 11th grade I qualified for AIME and got a 7. I’m the captain of our math team and we went to UIL state and placed in math, calc, and number sense - main EC

Computer Science team - we were second at regionals, 4th at code quest, even though we didn’t win a lot, it was very fun competing at going to various places.

I worked with a local professor on various open-ended math problems. Even though we never researched anything, I learned a lot on the thought process behind various complex math problems.

Have like 40 hours of volunteering for NHS from a food bank. I’m going to try and volunteer as a teacher/helper when school starts for another elementary school.

LOC:
probably the professor I worked with and math coach at school

2

Since your full pay the UC schools will be a more of a match for you and you aren’t at a disadvantage there for being Asian. Caltech will be tough your below the average admit as far as the ACT goes. The rest are reaches since you will be in the RD rounds. Rice is small and getting more popular so its really hard to say there even though your ED.

3

I think you have solid stats for UCB and UCLA. If you are applying to EECS at UCB, that program has a <10% acceptance rate. UCB College of Letters and Science has a higher acceptance rate and students can apply to CS once they meet the minimum GPA requirements in the pre-reqs. Also CS and UCLA (also in College of Engineering) is very competitive. I would not call either school as a match. We are instate, but I watched acceptances closing when my kids were applying during the 2014, 2016, 2018 application cycle.

4

I agree that you are competitive for UCB and UCLA but neither is a Match if you want the direct admit into CS.

UCLA CS ADMIT RATE 2018: The admit rate for CS for the fall of 2018 is 8.2%. The average CS act score is a 35 and the SAT is a 1550 average.

5

Best chances are at Emory. Others are reaches. I assume you are an auto-admit at UT Austin.

All schools prefer that the primary letters of recommendation come from your actual high school instructors that have taught you in classes.

6

Since you gave no information about your high school’s weighting system or your unweighted GPA, there is insufficient information to give any chances other than schools that do not use GPA (e.g. Texas publics that use rank instead).

7

Sorry, we get a +5 for honors/pre-AP on our transcript and we get a +10 for AP classes

8

UCLA has a dismal 24% enrollment rate for OOS students who are accepted, this is partly due to the unaffordability of UCLA for OOS students which will not affect you. The acceptance rate overall is 22% for OOS vs 12% in state, I imagine that ratio carries into CS, nothing is guaranteed but for me match means around a 50/50 chance of acceptance. Never underestimate the enticing power of a full pay OOS student, don’t have any figures on that but I’ll guess that if you check the no FA needed box your chances go up dramatically for an OOS student.