UC’s - all but Santa Cruz, Riverside, Merced and Davis
3.86 unweighted GPA,
4.29 weighted
35 ACT - 36 English, 34 Math, 34 Reading, 36 Science
800 Math, 720 Physics
Courseload this year: Ordinary Diff Eq, AP Statistics, Ap Government, AP economics, AP Literature, AP physics
Total Honors/AP over 4 years: 15
UC GPA: 4.41 uncapped weighted, 3.96 unweighted, 4.26 capped weighted
Engineering/CS major application
EC:
Varsity Volleyball 3 years, regional and Norcal champions Soph year, runner up last year
Top 10 Club Volleyball team
MIT supporting application for vball
2 year marching and symphonic band member
Started clothing business sophomore year
Extensive volunteering with Local Seniors association
Rec from 2 year English teacher and math teacher that Also coached me in water polo
And counselor
State-CA
Gender Male
Ethnicity - White
Schools
Top UC’s, MIT, Harvard, Princeton, Carnegie Mellon, NYU, Stevens institute of tech, Stanford, cal poly, Rensselaer poly, northeastern, u Washington, u Michigan, cooper union
@Volleybro1017 My S18 is looking at MIT for football. We’ve met with coaches. They seem to indicate that athletic support doesn’t really offer much…that you have to get admitted by admissions on your own. What type of conversations have you had with them on support and how it changes admission rate? Did you apply early to MIT?
UCB EECS, UCLA CS, UCSD CSE, Washington CS should be considered reach for direct admission to the major. UCSD and Washington may admit to campus but not major, but then getting into CS later will be difficult.
My S is a freshman now at Stanford and he played volleyball but was not good enough for them to look at him. Have to talked to the coaches for regular and beach volleyball? My son’s friend is on the beach volleyball team. No scholarship since it is a new sport but maybe that might be a way to get in assuming your beach game is okay. I don’t know if it matters but so many kids want to do Engineering/CS at Stanford(even though you aren’t required to pick a major until your sophomore year) I would chose a different major just to standout a little more unless that is part of your essays.
@Volleybro1017 My S18 took the ACT as a sophomore and scored a 35. He took the November SAT as a Junior and scored a1560. All math and science sections were perfect scores. He took each only once. He has taken SAT Math I and Math II and scored 800 on both…will take chemistry SAT in June. He has a 4.0 unweighted GPA (4.5 weighted) and maximum rigor. He is a 3-sport varsity letterman (football, soccer, baseball) and is an all-conference kicker/punter and has gotten national recognition. He’d love to play football (and possibly other sports) in college (D III/Ivy level). He also is 1st chair cello in school orchestra. Academics are first and would sacrifice athletics for academics if that’s what had to happen in order to go to the right school. He literally wants to be a rocket scientist/engineer. He’s doing a research project right now with a Harvard post-doc he met last summer on the birth of planets, which will be something he works on through next summer if not beyond and may lead to publication. He really wants to focus on space engineering (aero/astro Course 16) with a dual major/minor in astronomy/astrophysics. LOVES MIT! We’ve been there a number of times. He simply feels at home there.
@ucbalumnus , who, pray tell, safely gets into UCB EECS, UCLA CS, UCSD CSE, Washington CS directly? With that ACT score and that 800 on the math SAT he’s a reach at all of those?
I can only speak for UW … we have family and other mere mortals who are admitted and pursuing their CS degrees w/o a red cape. Yes, for sure, all of them were admitted initial admission to the university.
as to the OP, if you’re getting support to go to MIT and you get in, I’d take a long hard look at that opportunity. MIT is a door opener. there are people who know where the top CS departments are and all that, and with them going to Stevens, RPI, Cooper, etc. will fly just as well. there are a whole lot of other people out there in real life with whom you’ll have to navigate your career, and of those other people, 100% of them have heard of MIT and assume, correctly, that every single student there is super really smart.
No one should count on these as safeties. Note that subjectively graded aspects like essays are considered, so it is not like stats alone can assure admission when the popularity of the CS major is so high that the schools are flooded with top-stat applicants for the CS major.
Obviously, some students do get admitted, even though they schools/major are non-safeties.
@ucbalumnus , understood. With that said, I’d think the circumstances in which UW would reject a kid with an 800 on the SAT math section would be the exception, not the rule.
UCB is referring to the chances of an OOS applicant being offered direct freshman admission to the CS major at Washington, which is reserved almost exclusively for the top instate applicants.
thank you. thank you. you’ve all been wonderful tonight.
for @ucbalumnus and @UWfromCA , since you both seem to know CS well, I’m wondering, is the OP’s 800 perhaps not as big a deal as it strikes me to be? a quick search gave me hits that focus on the rarity of an 800 on both the math and CR, which of course one would expect. but w/ relatively easy access to test prep now, is the math 800 no longer a special thing as it once was?
one more question. as we’ve discussed in other threads, the top publics, like UCB and UW, tend to be less test rigid and more GPA focused. is the same true for highly competitive CS departments, where math skills are clearly important?
i’m just trying to isolate on the OP’s 800. as we know, in admissions, having that one stellar qualification that jumps off the page can really color the way the rest of the application is reviewed. my instincts are that the 800 is a kind of hook for the OP, but maybe not.
