Asian Female//NY
Intended major: computer science
Class Rank: n/a
SAT(out of 1600): 1370
W GPA: 4.1(school doesnt do UW)
Course Load:
11th: PreCalc H, AP Lang, AP US, AP physics C, computer programming H, AP Stats, College spanish
12th: AP Calc, AP Lit, AP Gov/Econ, Robotics, AP Computer Sci, AP Art, College Accounting H
Sports:
XC, Track, Lacrosse
Job Experience:
Peer Tutor 3 years
kumon teacher 3 years
Volunteering:
One to One Learning: teaching immigrants how to speak english 3 years
Clubs/Organizations:
Math Honor Society
Editor of School Math newspaper
National Art Honor Society(secretary)
World Lang Honor Society
Girls in Mathematics Club
Applying for Financial Aid- Yes
Any chance on me getting a scholarship here? & Are there any other schools(in the Northeast) that you may recommend in my range? Thank you!!
I’d say you have a good chance. Your EC’s could be a bit better, but I’d say that if you write a good enough essay you can get a scholarship. Apply and see what happens!
CompSci is tough to get into at any school, just keep that in mind. Your 1370 should be fine but could you please post math/cr separately. I think your ec’s are actually great and in line with your intended major. My DS had only track for ec’s and got in. He showed interest and that he could clearly handle the courseload and rigor by taking ap classes similar to your courseload. He had a 1390 (760m, 630cr).
One thing that I think is very important is that you register for a tour/visit during common app time. Make sure that it is registered because THEY DO check! This is a form of showing interest.
With regard to getting a scholarship I believe you surely will get a scholarship with your scores. DS got 25k scholarship with a 1390 so if you take your SAT again and just lift up a couple more points to 1400, you should get atleast that if not more. You will love RPI and I hope you get in, good luck!
Small suggestion, don’t register early decision unless you plan to do athletics. ED should only be used if you have no worry about Financial-Aid.
The only other school I’d recommend for CompSci is Carnegie Mellon which is the #1 rated for compsci. DS got accepted to Carnegie Mellon but their scholarship for him was 8k, so out of pocket would have been 62k since they didn’t offer institutional grant aid. The other thing, unless you got near 1600 on your SAT, you can’t get into CMU. In the northeast, I’d only recommend CMU, RPI, and WPI but RPI is better than WPI in CompSci, so your best bet is RPI since I believe you can get in. Getting those few extra points on your SAT will make the school thousands of dollars more affordable so the extra effort would really be worth it. So with RPI and WPI as your matches, I’d suggest StonyBrook as your safety. I know about RIT and NYU but they each have their problems that I wouldn’t want to try to explain. Good luck!
@reformedman I wouldn’t say you need close to a 1600 to get into CMU. NYU’s CS program is very good, as long as it’s not NYU Tandon - but I’d agree there are issues, and it’s not as rigorous as RPI or CMU. Stony Brook honestly has a better CS program than WPI at this point, but is easier to get into/get money from. Stony also is less rigorous for CS, I help my friend sometimes with his Intro CS homework and it takes me like 15 minutes to finish one of the problems. At RPI, you can easily expect to spend hours on CS1 and days (20-40 hours) on data structures and these are introductory courses.
@joedoe thanks for the clarification on StonyBrook. @artist03 I might not have been clear with my post about my son and his acceptance to Carnegie Mellon. He got accepted to Computer Engineering with a 1390, not Computer Science. So for Computer Science you will need a very very high score because this is the top school for CompSci so you’d have to have a top notch application. I work 5 minutes from Tandon NYU, not a good place to be. There are deeper issues going on in the administration which I won’t get into. I toured StonyBrook 30 years ago when I was searching colleges for myself. I think the campus looks great and it’s in a good crime-free area. The rankings have gone down over the years, I think it was rated somewhere like 50 in the Gourman’s Report. That was our college ranking system in those days, haha.
@Davids70 Tandon isn’t in a great area, they’ve been cutting money from research, a lot of professors don’t have doctoral degrees, and, overall, they haven’t been funding the school the way they should. I know someone that goes there and enjoys it, but I’ve heard there are a lot of very deep issues with the school’s administration. RPI has some ongoing issues with communication with the administration, but nothing even close to Tandon where the issues have to do with actual problems with the school itself.
