Those are some legit ECs, and your stats are still pretty good. Unfortunately, you don’t have a lot of EA on that list, and some of the RD schools are much tougher to get into through RD than EA or ED. Nothing you can do about that now.
I would add a couple of safeties just to preclude disaster, but I think you will get into some of the schools you applied to.
Actually your gpa is not “low” - it’s an unweighted A- plus you have a strong upward trajectory. Your SAT score is excellent and your ECs seem very strong. That being said, your list of schools is heavily weighted to reach schools which are difficult admits for almost every student. You need to add more matches and safeties. This is particularly important because CS makes every school a tougher admit. I think you have a pretty good chance at Purdue and maybe at UT Austin, as you are in-state, but the rest will be really tough.
But, you need at least one affordable safety school on your list. Do any other TX publics appeal? Maybe UT Dallas? OOS safeties (assuming affordable) would be U Alabama, Arizona, ASU, Kansas, Iowa, Iowa State.
Regarding the rest of the list, are these schools all affordable? Purdue is probably a high match, the rest are reaches, most of them high reaches.
I don’t think that is true for schools like Dartmouth that are not historically strong in Computer Science and do not rank high in most rankings of CS programs. On the flip side, why bother applying to a school that is both hard to get into and weak in their major when they have such a strong overall resume?
Yes, UC’s do not consider 9th grades on their GPA calculation but still look at Freshman grades during the application review. They are also test blind so GPA will still be a major factor. UCLA and UCB would be Reach schools for CS and OP needs Safeties and Matches along with being $67K/year with little to no FA.
Did you include applying to the Turing Program at UT? It’s even more selective than the standard CS department, but it ensures a review by someone that can completely comprehend the depth of your EC’s.
@momofboiler1 could comment on Purdue. I suspect a 3.75 will make CS a reach, but I don’t know if they use 9th grade and I don’t know if CS students compete outside the general engineering pool.
As for TX, being instate isn’t the help one might think. @ucbalumnus knows the stats, but TX grants auto admits to lots of students with high class rank. It doesn’t leave a lot left for the rest.
The OP has a list of impressive ECs, but if one pulls the CDS for all of them, GPA will tall in the most important category where as ECs almost certainly won’t.
That looks like an all reach list. Presumably, your safety is starting at community college.
UT Austin fills about three quarters of its class with in state top 6% rank applicants. An applicant with top 25% rank faces stiff competition for the remaining spots. The CS major is additionally competitive.
Fair points. I do know kids who have gotten into Purdue for Engineering with those stats (and SATs not as high) but CS may very well be tougher. Of the schools he has listed, though, it looks like his best bet. I agree he needs to add more realistic schools to the list which is extremely top heavy.
I 100% agree with what you mean by having more safeties. I haven’t mentioned it in my original post, but in one of my replies I have my safety schools which I already have been accepted into.
Note that Texas A&M general engineering students must earn a 3.75 college GPA (which is generally much harder than earning a 3.75 high school GPA) in order to be assured of getting their engineering (including CS) major. Those with lower college GPAs need to enter a competitive secondary admission process (ETAM), where CS is one of the most difficult majors to get admitted.
Yup, many of my friends have told me horror stories about ETAM. Although they said I should be fine as I currently go to a very competitive high school and apparently the school “trained” me to get a good GPA.
That being said, I don’t want to go to TAMU anyways. I know UTD is much better for CS and it doesn’t have ETAM, etc.