Chance of getting into CMU SCS ED and UCs

Chance Me / Match Me!
, , ,
1

Demographics
US Permanent Resident

  • State/Location of residency: California
  • Type of high school: Public Highschool
  • Gender/Race/Ethnicity: Asian
  • Other special factors: None

Intended Major(s) Computer Science

GPA, Rank, and Test Scores

  • Unweighted HS GPA: 3.97
  • Weighted HS GPA (incl. weighting system): 4.56
  • Class Rank: 29/379
  • ACT/SAT Scores: Optional

Coursework
9th: Integrated Math 2H (Only B first sem) / English 1H / Biology Regular / Spanish I / Computer Lit / Business Finance/ PE

10th: Integrated Math 3H / English 2H / AP Physics 1 / AP World History / APCSA / Track & Badminton

11th: AP Lang / AP Physics C / AP Calc BC / AP Stats / APUSH / Spanish II

12th: AP Bio / AP Chem / Digital Electronics H (CS pathway) / IB Lit HL / Econ H & AP Gov

College Courses (Chronological order):

Modern Biology at CMU (B)

Discrete Math Applied to CS at a community college (A)

Linear Algebra at a community college (A)

Introduction to Data Structure at a community college (IP)

Advanced Java Programming at a community college (IP)

Multivariable Calc at a community college (IP)

AP Scores:
AP Scores (for what I included):

AB / BC / AB Subscore: 5

Chinese: 5

Physics C: 5

Lang: 3

APUSH: 4

APCSA: 4

Stats: 4

Awards
Honors of Distinction (at school, 4.0+ weighted)
AP Scholar of Distinction

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

Essays/LORs/Other
Essays:

CA: 9/10 - Meh I guess it’s alright, showed a story of my journey from gaming to cs

Writing Supplements: 9/10 - I think I did a good job demonstrating why CS and how CMU can help my CS career

PIQs: 9.5/10 - Put most effort on and I believe they effectively demonstrated my personality

Letters of Recs:

  1. Counselor (we don’t talk about this she probably just put a templated one and called it a day) (?/10)
  2. Math teacher (I had her for 10th and 11th and she knows me really well so I think she put a good recommendation for me (at least that’s what I felt after reading it), especially at 10th she roasted me for wanting to self study Calc AB but I pulled it off and amazed her at the end) (10/10)
  3. Internship boss from the CMU startup (I’m hyped for this one because she’s also a CMU alumnus) (?/10)

Additional Info on CommonApp:
Couldn’t really pick my own courses at 9th grade because of my ELD status (basically your English is bad and school thinks you can’t handle honor / ap courses)

School goes “Integrated Math” pipeline so it’s impossible to take Calc BC as a junior unless you self study AB (which I did among 2 other friends out of the entire class of 2022)

Schools

  • Safety UC Merced
  • Likely UC Irvine
  • Match
  • Reach UCB UCLA UCSD CMU
2

Sorry, forgot to include my extracurriculars:

  1. Sectional Captain at school computer science team, taught members fundamentals of web development and led a few competitions like ACSL and CAC
  2. Web developer intern at a startup, utilized Vue, Spring, Redis, etc. to restructure the system and improve performance (avg. response time from ~1600ms to 300ms)
  3. Research Assistant at a University under a professor (Civil Engineering), used R Lang and python NLP framework to collect and analyze data. Researched on change of people’s reaction towards COVID-19 over time
  4. Web developer intern at a CMU startup, developed an app that helped Carnegie Mellon University students socialize with React, Expo, NodeJS, Apollo GraphQL
  5. CMU pre-college
  6. Business selling game performance improvement patch and earned over $5,000
  7. Led a small team developing an anime streaming application with Electron / React / Redux / Torrent, 230+ stars on GitHub and 3k+ unique daily views at peak
  8. Coding camp hosted by the team at my school and taught people about fundamentals of web development (JS, HTML5, CSS)
  9. ACSL - made to final with 39/40 but I wacked the entire final competition probably due to the timezone (had to wake up at 5 kinda sad) or I’m just bad
  10. Machine Learning summer camp at UCLA - learned CNN with Keras / Tensorflow and developed a program to identify certain anime characters with given pic
3

There are other posts on the chat board related to UC - I think @gumbymom posts a table depending on the UC GPA. Obviously, the TO won’t hurt at UC since they are test blind. I’ll assume there are multiple UCs for you given your fantastic record.

So congrats on your achievements - very well done. I’m so impressed by all the folks who post, the amazing things they’ve done.

As for CMU, I don’t think the odds are great but ED will help. Also, you have a lot of CMU in your ECs and perhaps that’s a game changer as you’ll be able to package as to why CMU is for you and the value you can add!!

My “hesitation” is -

  1. SCS has a 7% accept rate.

  2. Going TO - they say it won’t hurt and I looked for data to find out what % of students go in TO and I couldn’t find it - including in the common data set. Perhaps with a perfect 800 in math as the average, the # using tests is low. However, I personally believe there will be a bias toward test takers and most schools that have published stats seem to show test takers get in at a higher rate than non - although that’s school dependent of course.

In general, you have to show you belong and clearly you can do that.

The ED helps as well.

So a chance me is not really fair and you’ll know soon enough.

But a 7% overall admit rate doesn’t bode well for anyone - but it will for 7% of the people and that might be you!!

Best of luck to you.

4

Thank you for your honest opinion. As for the % of students went test optional I only found this from their fact sheet last year:

image
image767Ă—229 35.6 KB

Honestly, I’m not surprised that colleges prefer people who submitted the test scores. They only submit if they feel confident themselves which is usually the case of those people already being qualified.

1 Like
5

so you’re a senior? you’ll know in a few short weeks since you did ED.
Which UCs did you apply?

I saw what you are showing - but what you don’t know is the acceptance rate for that 1241 vs. the other 24%.

I would assume it will be higher but one never knows.

The good news is - 24% didn’t submit (an SAT), etc. and why not you?

Stay confident. But you will excel wherever you go and if it’s CMU that’s great and if it’s not, you’ll still be fine.

1 Like
6

Yea I am a senior and I keep stressing about this lol.
I got 800 in math but my reading score was meh and would probably disqualify me from CMU immediately so I went optional.

7

Why stress?

No reason to stress.

Guess what - whether you go to CMU or Arizona State (just naming a random school) - you’re going to be a huge success.

You, not your school, will make you. So don’t fret.

If it works, great - and if it doesn’t, not a huge deal - you will excel anywhere.

Where have you applied thus far besides CMU?

1 Like
8

Thank you, I know that I would be myself no matter where I go it’s just I can’t stop the nerves lol

I applied to UCLA, UCB, UCSD, UCI, UCSB, UCRS in addition to Cal Poly Pomona as backup of the backup of the backup.

By the way, I heard CMU does not factor in your freshman GPA, does that make my weighted 4.83 and unweighted 4.0 in AO’s pov?

1 Like
9

I did a quick look (it’s late) so not a thorough one. I think I’ve read that on here but I didn’t see where it says that.

Nonetheless, everyone is obsessed with perfection. it’s unhealthy. When I graduated, a 3.0 was top 25%.

While the CC is fun, it’s not healthy - you applied, and you’ll know in a few weeks.

Not sure of your finances but you could score big time at some of the OOS publics…just saying…go for cheap and still end up a huge succes sin life.

I wish you well…go to sleep, stay busy, and the time will pass in a hurry.

1 Like
10

Congratulations on being a very competitive and accomplished applicant.

You need to calculate your UC GPA’s since all three are considered: GPA Calculator for the University of California – RogerHub

Based on your Unweighted GPA, I would assume your Capped weighted GPA is 4.2+.

2021 admit rates are not yet available but will post the 2020 admit rates below and GPA ranges.

CS is one of the most competitive majors at the UC’s so admit rates will be much lower than the overall rates listed. UCLA for example has around a 5% acceptance rate for CS.

2020 Freshman admit rates for UC GPA of 4.20 or above capped weighted and not major specific:

UCB: 37%

UCLA: 38%

UCSD: 78%

UCSB: 81%

UCD: 86%

UCI: 60%

UCSC: 92%

UCR: 97%

UCM: 98%

2020 UC capped weighted GPA averages along with 25th-75th percentile range:

UCB: 4.22 (4.13-4.30)

UCLA: 4.25 (4.18-4.31)

UCSD: 4.16 (4.04-4.28)

UCSB: 4.15 (4.03-4.27)

UCI: 4.11 (3.96-4.26)

UCD: 4.10 (3.95-4.25) Updated for 2021

UCSC: 3.94 (3.71-4.16)

UCR: 3.88 (3.65-4.11)

UCM: 3.68 (3.40-3.96)

Best of luck and you will get into several UC’s.

11

Hi, thank you for the data.
According to my school grades portal my capped UC gpa is 4.42 (only 1 b in freshman year) but I’m not sure if that changes anything.

12

UC’s do not have a Capped weighted GPA admit range above 4.2 so your 4.4 capped weighted is the maximum Capped weighted GPA which puts you in a great position, just no guarantees.

13

This is for Fall 2020, when standardized testing was mandatory. I haven’t seen similar data released for Fall 2021, when testing was optional, yet.

But having hung around CMU for 30+ years, I suspect they will be like MIT where testing is heavily considered.

With a 7% acceptance rate and the metrics as published, CMU SCS is a very long shot for pretty much everyone. My daughter has about every advantage possible, and I still think she is doubtful, but possible.

But some of those long shots are admitted and enroll. That’s why students have Reach schools.

1 Like
14

This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.