Okay. I’m going to skip over the UC chancing question because Gumbymom can answer that far better than I can.
Rather, let me lob some OOS options at you and see which ones sound the most appealing. I’m basing this off a 4.05 weighted GPA estimate, including 9th grade.
First, there’s the small, project-based school category. These can be really good for students like you who enjoy bringing ideas to fruition. Rose-Hulman in Indiana would be a low-match/safety for you. I have known Bay Area kids who have gone there, loved their CSE education, gotten Silicon Valley internships and returned to CA with jobs at those same companies after graduation. Could be a great option. Slightly more competitive and a bit larger, but still a match for you is WPI in Worcester, MA. It’s in a small city that’s on a commuter rail line outside of Boston, so lots of access to Boston-area tech. It’s very entrepreneurial and just built a large, new makerspace. Colorado School of Mines would be a match for you in this category too, in a great natural setting in the Rockies and tons of cool student traditions https://www.mines.edu/about/history-and-traditions/
Then there’s the larger, co-op school option. RIT has great CS/engineering and an exciting range of programs and majors. http://www.rit.edu/emcs/admissions/academics/majors Co-op work experience is normally part of the program. It’s on a suburban campus outside of Rochester NY. It’s a solid match for your stats too. (It might look like a low-match/safety if you look at the averages, but stats for STEM students are higher.) Drexel is another co-op school, more urban than RIT, that would be a low-match. U of Cincinnati, which claims credit for inventing the whole model of co-op education, would probably be a safety, maybe match for more competitive programs. They all offer great work placements alternating with academic semesters, in their co-op majors. (Northeastern would be the most selective of the co-op schools, but it would be a high reach for your stats.)
Then there are the STEM programs that are extremely well-regarded even though they’re not very hard to get into. Why? Because you have to earn your way into your major by doing well in deliberately-difficult “weeder” classes. Iowa State is the prime example of the “easy to get in, hard to get out” STEM school. Purdue is a bit this way too - harder to get into than Iowa State but in range for you. These large schools have all sorts of exciting engineering-related EC’s to get involved in, and their programs are great - you just have to be prepared to work really hard to earn your place in your major of choice. One advantage you would have is that by having taken such advanced math, you’d be able to place out of some of the most notorious “weeder” math classes, so that’s a plus. Virginia Tech is another great school in this genre, perhaps a little kinder and gentler than the other two.
And then there are the OOS flagships and near-flagships that have excellent STEM but aren’t the most elite programs (like Berkeley, UCLA, UW-Seattle, UIUC, UT-Austin, UMich, UVA, UNC, UF, Georgia Tech - these are probably all too reachy). Choices that have great programs (and in many cases great honors programs) and would be appropriate targets would be CU Boulder, UMass Amherst Commonwealth Honors College, UMinn Twin Cities, U of Arizona, Arizona State Barrett Honors College, Pitt Honors College, U of Utah Honors College, Oregon State Honors College, Michigan State Honors College… I’m sure I’m forgetting some good ones but you get the idea.
Lastly there are the mid-sized private U’s that a lot of applicants choose in hopes of getting good merit - Case Western Reserve U. and U of Rochester. Your stats are right around median for these schools, and their admission rates are fairly low, so I would call them reaches given your lack of a “hook,” but they’re not unrealistic reaches as long as you’d be okay with paying full price in the likely event that you did not get merit aid. These schools are great for students who aren’t totally sure what they want to major in, as it’s much easier to explore and change programs than at larger public U’s where you must be accepted into your major. U of Miami is another, larger than the other two, but also in range stat-wise. In CA, Santa Clara would land in this category too.
Oh, and then there are the LAC-plus-engineering schools like Lehigh, Bucknell, Lafayette, and Union. (You’d be considered URM at Lehigh, odd as it seems coming from the land of Asian overachievers!)
So… from among those broad categories, what genre of school appeals to you most?
