I am a rising high school senior in a highly competitive school in California. Please chance me for UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC Santa Barbara, USC, Caltech, MIT, Harvey Mudd, Stanford, CMU, UIUC, Univ of Chicago, UMich, UW
I am considering CS and any other variations of CSs with data science, sociology, suggestions will be appreciated.
GPA -3.964 (till 11th grade)
AP Courses
AP Physics1
AP Calc AB
AP CS A
AP CSP
Pre-calc H
Spanish H
Senior year -
AP Bio
AP Calc BC
AP Spanish
SAT - 1520, increased by 100 since March
Local community college courses with 4.0 GPA
Statistics
Psychology
Anthropology
Object oriented design in Java
Arts (2D Foundation)
Javascript
Human Biology (Summer)
Internships & Extra curricular activities
UCSB SRA (Summer 2021)
Stanford High school session (Summer 2021)
Data science internship in ASDRP (Summer 2020)
Apprenticeship program at top 100 software company (Summer 2020)
Intro to game design by Google & Microsoft (Spring 2021)
School Archery club president
AI team president
Part of Robotics team
Vex Robotics competition
Competitive archer at National/International level
100+ hours of volunteering
Tough call. Rigor if 8 APs may not be enough. I’ll say I’m UW and UCSB. Reach for the others. Maybe UIUC but it’s a tough one too. Def a good list. Add more target.
Btw I’m basing on CS. If you applied sociology you’d get into more. UIUC for sure. But with CS u need to go in the front door, not the back.
CA Publics are not using test scores. It will make differentiation more difficult.
Speaking of CA Publics, Cal Poly is a no brainer if you’re instate. It is the hardest CS admit in the state though (one poster on another thread said her son was accepted to Stanford and waitlisted at CP). They are expecting over 5800 applications for 200 slots. It would be a reach for CS, but SE is a little less selective and most CS grads do SE anyway.
You also need to think about what you want your experience to be like. You have a bunch of schools unified by their prestige, that are RADICALLY different in what your experience will be like. The only schools that are more dissimilar than UIUC is to HMC might be Texas A&M (larger than UIUC) and Olin (smaller than HMC).
Most importantly, reaches are easy. You’re unlikely to get into most of the schools on your list. It’s not because you didn’t amass a solid record. It’s that MANY more students than they have seats for are applying with similar records. You could hit a homerun, but the odds are not in any student’s favor.
Is that a weighted or unweighted GPA? Also, what is your 9/10/11 and 10/11 capped and weighted UC/CSU GPA?
I hate to be a buzzkill but, with a sub 4 GPA, i think most of the elite privates and UCs are going to be a reach - especially for CS. UCR and UCM perhaps. CPP, SDSU, CSULB and Chico all have credible CS programs and are likely to admit you.
I don’t think 3.964 is appreciably different than 4.0 in most school’s eyes, especially for CA publics that use a capped weighting system. The problem is that for CS there are too many VERY highly qualified applicants, to too few slots.
What is your budget? Will you receive need-based financial aid?
For UIUC, UMich, and UW (assume Washington?) there won’t be much financial aid for OOS students. All of those schools will be reaches for CS as well.
Run the Net Price Calculators at each school to get an estimate of costs. Note the NPCs may not be accurate if your parents are divorced, own a business, or own real estate beyond a primary home.
I agree on both points - and for CS at most of the UCs (as well as the elite privates in the OPs list) you need to be well above the mid-point admitted GPA to be a competitive applicant. At all but 3 UCs, that’s mid point is now 4.1.+ UCSC, UCR and UCM are the exceptions.
Sure, there is some subjectivity to this process but, NONE of the schools on the OPs ap list are likely to admit him. I again encourage him to expand his list, Pick 3 of these - UCR, UCM,CPP, SDSU, CSULB, Chico, (UNR, UofUtah, Or State, Boise State - WUE schools).
I wouldn’t say UCSC is an exception. I was waitlisted there for CS with a 4.5 GPA. I even have friends with a 4.3+ GPA who never got off the waitlist for CS.
As your experience shows, no question CS applicants need to be well above that level to be competitive - which is why I didn’t recommend it to the OP
It really bugs me when students post and ghost. We can’t really say what the OPs chances are because they didn’t supply their capped and weighted GPA both 10/11 and 9/10/11. A 3.964 unweighted, will indeed weight very nicely with the APs the OP has taken and be a competitive GPA in the CA public system. If that is their capped and weighted GPA though, it won’t. Alas, we don’t know because the OP is ignoring their own thread.
It’s probably unweighted? If so- those are nice stats.
I have a question- some high schools have essentially 2 years of Calc (like the OP?) I see Calc AB and then senior year BC? Our school has you choose the more intense BC or just AB. How common is this in high schools and how do colleges account for this in AP counts for kids that do Calc A/BC in one year?
I can’t answer how common it is, but I know some schools force AB/BC in sequence. My son’s school did. Now they’ve changed. Students can choose between AB or BC and they’ve added MVC.
Primarily interested in the UCs, UW, USC, Emory, UMich, UChicago wanted to get feedback if my stats are good for CalTech, MIT, Stanford, UIUC and HarveyMudd.
