@GoBears2023 I have a feeling it’s Michigan-they have a top rated Engineering program.
You will do fine at any school you go to. I would definitely admit you if I were an AO.
And since you have UDub on your list, let me tell you a story. One of my son’s friends had a pretty high GPA and 2350 old SAT and was rejected by Cornell ED for CompSci while a kid who had worse grades/standardized test scores got into Cornell (for sure a legacy). Very unfair I admit. Pretty much everybody at son’s school thought it was ridiculous, but I suppose money talks…
Son’s friend ended up going to Washington for CompSci. And I have a feeling that he’s going to be more successful than the Cornell legacy.
My math teacher would always tell us that if you qualified for USAMO, you would be writing your acceptance letter to any college you want. No matter what college you end up going to, you’re going to succeed. I have never seen so many accomplishments from a single person in my life.
Ok, thanks @Hamurtle . I honestly think legacy is a bs excuse to keep the wealth within the 1%. All colleges should be like MIT who admit you based on merit and nothing else (some affirmative action which I’m fine with). Oh well, not much I can do now. And yes, I honestly am fine with going to UIUC or whatever school I end up choosing as long as I can either get the opportunities I need or I can create them myself.
@compSciLover
USAMO is good, but it is definitely not a ticket into any school. Thanks for the compliment btw!
UPDATE:
The people that went to the Bay Area got some funding! We will be building their company now. Any advice on what to do with seed companies? @hgrad2010
@GoBears2023 sorry to clarify is your question on what the founders should do with their seed funding?
Basically build and prove out their product as much as possible, using as much “self-serve” of a go-to-market strategy as possible. That’s biz speak for, make your distribution as cheap as possible 
happy to provide more pointers in DM.
Let us know where you get in
@hgrad2010, I will PM you shortly.
@curiousamber I will let you know where I get in as time goes on. I provide “UPDATE” posts when I remember to.
What is your logic for getting all worked up over a school USNEWS ranked as a top 20?
Is it grad school placement? Is it employment opportunities? Will life’s dreams go crashing to the ground f the university you matriculate at is number 21? Will your growth and opportunities really be stunted?
Save your energy. Your future is not in the hands of the USNEWS rankings. You are a free citizen and evidently smart regardless of what some admissions committee tells you no matter where they happen to be. Don’t let USNEWS hold you back with a jacked up popularity race.
No, it’s because I may be either going into academia (haven’t decided yet) and I heard that your undergrad degree is somewhat important when applying for grad school and becoming a PhD candidate. I am perfectly content with going to a school outside of the T20 but I would like to attend a T20 if I can. Thanks for the insight though
@GoBears2023 wow, you are definitely very impressive, I am shocked that Cornell reject you.
and what is UDub?
To the extent that your undergraduate school may matter in PhD program admission, it will be reputation in major and reputation of the faculty members writing your recommendations, not general rankings. Also, different PhD departments may have different ideas of what CS departments’ BA/BS graduates have been good PhD students in their experience.
UDub=University of Washington Seattle. One of the best public schools and highly rated in EECS…
@Apple349 Refer to @Hamurtle’s comment about UDub.
@ucbalumnus
So basically it depends really on my recs and which professors I research with. I’ll keep that in mind when I start looking for internships.
I’m a little confused. Did you ever run the net price calculators for all of your schools? You talk about needing a lot of aid, but don’t seem very familiar with the financial side of the application process. You don’t have to shotgun to figure that out - you just run the net price calculator on each school website. It won’t necessarily tell you about merit, but you can figure out in various ways whether a school might give you merit.
@intparent I have run npc on all the private schools that I applied to. It says that I need to pay about $10 - 15k per year, which is quite a lot given that my income is $50k per year. I am banking on either merit scholarships or additional scholarships outside of the school’s financial aid to pay the tuition.
And yes, I am pretty unfamiliar with the financial side of the application process. My guidance counselor hasnt helped a lot in terms of deadlines and guiding me through the application process. I basically bank on online resources to finish everything.
You probably should do the same on the publics. Those are likely to be your unaffordable choices. Also, most of these schools do not stack merit. So they often just replace some of their need based aid with the merit, and your COA stays the same. Even outside merit can be handled that way. Colleges are cagey about it, too. They don’t put much info on their websites about it, and even if you talk to them their description can be confusing. Be sure you understand exactly what they are doing before accepting any college’s offer.
Re: #73
Obviously, you also need to do well in your courses, particularly upper level ones relating to your graduate study interests.
@ucbalumnus
Of course. Also, I didn’t receive a supplemental request from any of the UCs. Is this a bad sign?
Ok, thanks for the advice!
Thank you for your reply. I apologize for my late response. It is cold in Maine and I have been collecting wood!
Your response is right on target. This is an important step in setting up your research model. You start by identifying your goals and then identifying related data. There is a difference between identifying reliable, related data and someone’s opinion. You are using the USNEWS rankings as a proxy. It is like the difference between professional news reporting and substituting someone’s opinion.
Why not find out where those students who elect graduate school go for graduate studies from the university otherwise of interest to you? Another input might be to research the educational background of the teaching staff at a University you respect in your chosen field… one where you might like to be employed. This public information is generally available to the data directed student. Go directly to the related data once you have defined it.
“Ucalumnus” has also suggested how, in fact, these hiring decisions are made. “It will be reputation in major and reputation of the faculty members writing your recommendations, not general rankings.”
I am picking my university, WPI, as an example as they have a large CS department and I know my way around the website.
There are 38 faculty listed under CS department at WPI. When looking at their undergraduate background, there is a sprinkling of CMU, MIT and Ivy graduates. The vast majority are not from these universities. This is a good sample size and it may be an eye opener to see their education from the Bachelor to the PhD level. See where they started. A fair number were from overseas universities you probably never heard of and they often ended up at the big name graduate school.
One of the most prestigious awards given out by the National Science Foundation to young faculty is called the NSF Career Award. Three of these faculty have won that distinction at WPI in this department. The three winners did their undergraduate studies at Kyonggi University (Korea), Goethe University (Germany) and Ohio University (they accept over 70% of their applicants). They earned their PhDs at Texas A&M, U C Irvine and Indiana University. The Harvard, CMU, MIT and Stanford CS faculty have not won such awards, they have done research and published. PhD’s from U Mass, Amherst are well represented. U Mass and has recently generated a strong reputation in the CS field. This would not be reflected in the USNEWS rankings.
You might also find interesting the broad range of activity now going on under the heading of CS. AI, Big Data, Biomedical applications, cybersecurity, et al.
See https://www.wpi.edu/academics/departments/computer-science/faculty-staff
Enjoy!