Chance me for T20 CS colleges - Rising Junior

Chance Me / Match Me!
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Demographics Asian

  • US domestic (US citizen or permanent resident) or international student US citizen
  • State/Location of residency: (state is important if you apply to any state universities) California
  • Type of high school (current college for transfers): Large, Public
  • Gender/Race/Ethnicity (optional): Male
  • Other special factors (first generation to college, legacy, athlete, etc.): None

Intended Major(s) Computer Science

GPA, Rank, and Test Scores

  • Unweighted HS GPA: 3.8
  • Weighted HS GPA (incl. weighting system): 4.4 (A-G weighting)
  • College GPA (for transfers):
  • Class Rank: Top 15%
  • ACT/SAT Scores: 1530 SAT

Coursework
(AP/IB/Dual Enrollment classes, AP/IB scores for high school; also include level of math and foreign language reached and any unusual academic electives; for transfers, describe your college courses and preparation for your intended major(s)) 12 Ap’s, 2 Honors (ap csp, honors chem, honors eng, ap csa, ap psych, apes, ap calc ab, ap seminar, ap physics c, ap calc bc, ap chem, ap lang, ap gov, ap stats) highest foreign language is spanish 3, highest math will be ap calc bc.

Awards
Highest honor for creating club award, other ones too, undecided.
Extracurriculars
(Include leadership, summer activities, competitions, volunteering, and work experience)

  1. Co-Founder, AI research initiative (11th -12th)- For high schoolers. 501(c)(3), Have over 10 publications from student researchers under my organization, have over 100 students taking part in this, 3 subsections for AI, notable guest speaker researchers, 15k grants, collaboration with the government
  2. Founder, Computer Science Research Tutoring (10th -12th)- Provides students of all grades K-12 the correct instruction that they may require in the growing field of computer science, in order to pursue their own computer science research projects.
  3. Sigma Xi School Club VP (11th -12th) - was member from 9th to 10th, elected VP in 11th grade. Travelled to many different states and countries as part of school research projects, won 2 awards for research projects from this.
  4. ASDRP CS researcher (10th - 11th) - did AI/ML research for under mentor from MIT, have 2 publications under this.
  5. Nasa Internship - Did ML research for 1 summer
  6. RSI (11th summer) - accepted as 1 of 80 students (not yet but chance with this, include "with rsi, you will, "
  7. Other research internships will be listed if needed
    Essays/LORs/Other
    (Optionally, guess how strong these are and include any other relevant information or circumstances.)
    Very good essay writer, havent done essays yet

Cost Constraints / Budget
(High school students: please get a budget from your parents and use the Net Price Calculators on the web sites of colleges of interest.)
Anything below 80k yearly is fine to pay

Schools MIT, berkeley, stanford, harvard, georgia tech, CMU, other T20 Cs schools
(List of colleges by your initial chance estimate; designate if applying ED/EA/RD; if a scholarship is necessary for affordability, indicate that you are aiming for a scholarship and use the scholarship chance to estimate it into the appropriate group below)

  • Safety (certain admission and affordability)
  • Likely (would be possible, but very unlikely or surprising, for it not to admit or be affordable)
  • Match
  • Reach

Going to apply ED for all top choice schools.

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I am confused here. Here are my questions:

  1. Given all the 11-12, what year are you in?
  2. Re RSI, either you were admitted or weren’t. Which is it?
  3. Which year did you do your internships?
  4. I am trying to understand the timing of your publications, as peer review takes a while.
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Your ECs seem great, assuming no exaggeration or wishful thinking, but your gpa and class rank are low for top schools. Pick a couple that you like best and they can be your reaches.

Also, you can only apply ED to one college.

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A few more questions…

Are you full pay? The cost of attendance at some of the schools you’ve listed may exceed $80k. And that does not factor in inflation and cost of flights.

Are you referring to CS programs at schools listed by USNWR as “top 20 national universities”, or the “top 20 undergraduate CS programs”? There’s some overlap but they are different lists. But the broader question is: have you looked at each program to determine fit? It’s unlikely all are a good fit.

Not allowed. Plus some of those “top” schools don’t offer ED.

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In addition to the questions above: What are your AP scores that you have so far?

Calculate your 3 UC GPAs here, paying attention to the directions: GPA Calculator for the University of California – RogerHub

You will need at least one affordable safety school…identifying reaches is easy, it’s much more difficult to identify an affordable safety that you would be happy to attend. What school is that?

Run Net price calculators (NPCs) at all the schools on your list to get cost estimates, here’s Harvard’s: Net Price Calculator | Harvard NPCs may not be accurate if your parents are divorced, own a business, or own real estate beyond a primary home…are any of those the case for you?

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You are a HS sophomore. There’s a lot of wishing-and-hoping listed. You did a very poor job communicating what is real and what you hope to achieve.

Users here will try to guide you as best they can, but the garbage-in-garbage-out maxim applies. At this point, you are simply wasting everyone’s time - especially your own.

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Wow! Ok

All this seemed very impressive. Now I realize it’s just wishful thinking :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

Until OP clears up what’s actually been achieved, we’re all wasting our time here.

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Of course this begs the question…are there clubs gving incorrect instruction in CS?

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I think the schools you listed "

"
are an extreme reach. The GPA is a necessary but not-sufficient marker that you need to hit. You need to fix that before you look at all the other ECs etc.

RSI is exceptionally hard. You shouldn’t assume you will get in. The default assumption you need to make is that you won’t get in. Arguably it is harder to get into RSI than it is to get into MIT.

Even if you get into RSI, the GPA may be the binding constraint for you.

Saying that you have N number of research papers “under my organization” sounds very unserious. Separately, the number of research papers that you yourself have is also not relevant. The quality is paramount. It needs to be validated by a credible 3rd party – like a journal or a reputed conference or a well known high school competition like ISEF etc…

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all of it except rsi has been achieved

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all of it except for rsi has been achieved

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  1. i am a sophomore
  2. i wasnt admitted yet, i am hoping i do so i wanted to get chances with it
  3. already did a few, nasa is this summer
  4. this summer and last summer
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What about this:

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You don’t have a single national level award. Not very high chances.

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If you’re a sophomore the following is in the future, no?

As also a couple of other things you mentioned as having been done in 11th and 12th grade

Also, can you clarify this?

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You have less than a 9% chance, just like most other very successful high school students.

Apply to the programs that interest you but do not assume you “deserve” to be admitted to a T20 school.

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yeah so i got elected as the vice president near the end of 10th grade for the 11th grade year, and the spots are permanent until you leave unless you get kicked. also, yes the rsi part is in the future, but the rest is currently happening. for the last question, I was referring to the top 20 undergraduate cs programs

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that is real

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Then, what you stated is confusing. What do you mean when you say you’re a 10th grader but the activity takes place in 11th-12th grade?

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It’s good you are currently a sophomore. This gives you some time to start building your college application list….build from the bottom up. IOW, find some sure things for admission that you would be happy attending. With an $80,000 a year budget, that shouldn’t be too hard to do. You are in CA, and there are some UCs that have a much better chance of admission than Berkeley.

In my opinion, you need those sure things first. The colleges you posted in your post are extremely competitive for admissions…and there is no guarantee anyone will be accepted at them even with perfect stats and terrific EC. They deny acceptance to a very high percentage of applicants.

There are TONS, and I mean TONS of less competitive colleges where you can get a computer science degree.

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