Chance me for UIUC Transfer: Transfer Student, CS or CS+Math major, Illinois resident, 3.97 GPA

Chance Me / Match Me!
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So long story short, a couple of years back before I was on my adhd medication I was a complete different person. I did horrible in high school, and did a couple of weeks of a semester in college in 2019 before (unofficially) dropping out and getting Fs in 2 basic courses. Since then I gained a ton of maturity and motivation, decided to get on my adhd medicine, and go back to school. After my first full year I received an A in every class, including my previously failed courses (except a B in a 1 credit intro to college course) and now have a 3.97 gpa, with classes including calc 1, calc2, economics, English 1 and 2, and more, all while working 40 hours a week (and taking calc 1 and calc 2 in the middle of my work shift for my lunch break).

I want to transfer somewhere for Computer science, and UIUC is my dream school, but I know how competitive it is especially for a transfer student.

My main concern is my past, and also the fact that I can’t take very many classes compared to most students… Last year I took 30 credit hours, which isn’t bad but a lot of them were prerequisites, this semester, I’m only taking 7 credit hours (calc 3 and intro to psych, receiving an A in both) due to my work schedule and most classes falling in the middle of it.

Demographics

  • Live in Illinois
  • Average small public community college
  • Male, half white half black*:
  • Other special factors (first generation to college, legacy, athlete, etc.):

Intended Major(s)
CS or Math & CS

GPA, Rank, and Test Scores

  • College GPA: 3.97

Awards

  • $5,000 Scholarship, which was apparently a prestigious scholarship for our school, and is only given to 3 students in the school for academic performance, essay answers, and a great letter of recommendation from my calc 1 teacher who said my work ethic is insane.

  • $500 scholarship for STEM Major at my school

Extracurriculars
(Include leadership, summer activities, competitions, volunteering, and work experience)

*Founder and President of the Computer Science club at my college.
*Recording Secretary in the National Honor Society at my college.

Essays/LORs/Other
(Optionally, guess how strong these are and include any other relevant information or circumstances.)

I would say pretty strong. Even though my terrible past can be a really big negative, according to my one of my scholarship readers, it makes for a pretty good essay.

Cost Constraints / Budget
A scholarship would be nice, however I’m not too concerned with the standard tuition

Schools
University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana

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UIUC has one of the most competitive CS programs in the country (on the level of Ivy+ schools) with an undergrad acceptance rate of just 6.7% (compared to the overall acceptance rate of 59%) In-state should help a bit but not sure how much it will. I don’t know too much about the transfer competition in particular but I will assume that its difficulty is not too different. So give it your shot, but if you really want to transfer out of your current college, I would definitely look into other schools as well. Don’t bank on getting in UIUC CS, because it’s so competitive that nobody really can.

1 Like
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Yeah, I think I’m shooting for the cs+math program, which I heard the cs+x courses have around a 20% admittance rate. Still competitive but a lot better odds than 6%. Thanks for the feedback!

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Np! Are you only looking in-state? UIC and IIT are options if you’re just looking in-state.

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Transfer GPA Guidelines, Undergraduate Admissions, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign indicates that a 3.5 college GPA is needed to be a competitive applicant for any CoE major (including CS) or any ___&CS or CS+X major in LAS. The only concern would be how the “Fs in 2 basic courses” may be counted when UIUC evaluates your GPA.

If you go to Transfer Handbook, Undergraduate Admissions, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and click on the CoE and LAS sections, you can check the course requirements for the majors you are interested in to verify that you will have them.

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