I believe you will most likely end up at Ole Ole Miss, Miss state, Jackson state, or
Tougaloo college.
Your academics are simply not strong enough to be a competitive applicant at the other institutions. Moreover, you would likely struggle at those places. In order to be a competitive applicant at any of the other institutions, you need to present w top grades as a threshold issue. Then, the other non academic factors are considered…
Just my 2 cents…
https://www.admissions.msstate.edu/sites/www.admissions.msstate.edu/files/inline-files/Freshman-Scholarship-Accessible-v1.pdf gives a list of scholarships based on stats.
It appears that Mississippi State takes HS GPA from HS transcript at face value, according to Scholarship Details | Office of Admissions and Scholarships .
To me, you present as the kind of student who is going to be very desirable to schools where your stats pass the first filter of being in range. As others have said, class rank is the missing piece of info here, as a raw 3.5 GPA would normally make everything outside of your “safety” list (plus UNC-CH) a high reach, but if that’s a top GPA at your school, that could shift the outlook. Barring a top-of-the-class rank, it’s going to be tough to crack admissions at highly-rejective schools with a 3.5UW/3.8W and a 27 ACT. These are very respectable stats, but you are looking at schools that want exceptional rather than respectable.
So, you have already applied to all of these schools? There’s little point in debating your chances at schools you’ve already applied to, but it does seem as if it could be smart to add some “match” schools unless you find that there aren’t “matches” that you like better than your safeties.
Since you have one HBCU on your list, have you looked at any others? NC A&T is a top producer of African-American engineers - excellent STEM school, with ABET-accredited Computer Science (although opinions vary on whether ABET matters for CS). It’s in Greensboro, NC, with cross-registration opportunities at UNC Greensboro, Elon, Guilford, and other area schools. I’m not sure if it’s a safety or a match - would be a safety in-state, but OOS may be more competitive. NC State is also top-notch for STEM - tougher admit than A&T but not as reachy as Chapel Hill.
Are you cost-sensitive at all? Re: your Native ancestry, do you have tribal enrollment of some sort? (I’m thinking that if you’re from the Caribbean, you may mean Caribbean indigenous, which unfortunately wouldn’t gain you free tuition at schools like U of Minnesota Morris and Fort Lewis College, but if you’re a member of a federally recognized tribe, those options could be well worth considering. Morris in particular has good CS, and the option of an internal transfer to the Twin Cities flagship if that appeals.)
Consider St. Olaf College in Minnesota. It’s larger than most LAC’s (since you seem to prefer mid-sized to larger schools) and has excellent CS. And being URM is a strong hook there. If you’re into music (as your AP Music Theory hints at), it’s a wonderful place for musicians.
Lehigh is another mid-sized school with strong CS, where your URM background would be highly valued. RPI is another top-notch CS school, known for its rigor, where you’d doubly have an edge, since they are always trying to improve gender parity and thus have a higher admit rate for women. Lehigh vs. RPI would be an interesting comparison for you to look at, as they are both excellent schools that could be considered matches for you, but they have vastly different vibes socially. It’s hard to tell from your post, what you would prefer.
SMU in Texas could be a good one to look at - also UT-Dallas.
Consider the 5-college consortium in Massachusetts. UMass Amherst is a fantastic CS school. So is Smith, if you’re open to a women’s college. (And if you are, consider both Spelman and Agnes Scott in Atlanta. Spelman has its own CS major, and Agnes Scott has a dual degree with Emory.)
There are many good options; it all depends what you’re looking for in a college environment.
Depending on OP’s school, precalc may be the highest level math offered and a 3.5 GPA may be one of the top few students, and most certainly top 10%. @julia_md12, how do you compare to the other students at your school? Can you get a class rank from a counselor? What colleges has your high school sent kids to in the past? Do they offer any math classes higher than pre-calc?
@aquapt gave you some great advice and suggestions. RPI, by the way, is Rensselaer Polytechnic and SMU is Southern Methodist University.
You may also want to consider:
As computer science (CS) is one of the most popular majors, and many colleges do not have enough faculty to teach the courses, there are often limitations on how many CS majors they will take. Thus, it is often significantly more difficult to get into a popular computer science program than it is to get into the university as a whole. Entry into a CS major can either be direct entry (you’re accepted into the major when you receive your college acceptance) or there may be secondary admission requirements, such as meeting GPA requirements after taking certain prereqs. Make sure you look at the CS major carefully for every institution you apply to, as you probably don’t want to go to a college planning to major in CS and then realize that you can’t get into the major.
One list of schools that are strong in CS that you may want to look into further is: Computer Science Programs for "B" Students – College Transitions. Although you are an A/B student, and not just a B student, these are strong CS programs where you have much better odds of getting in to the CS major.
But it does not really matter if precalc is the highest math, does it? The point is that the applicant does not appear to be a very strong student generally (3.5 GPA and 27 ACT), and would likely struggle at any of these highly rejective schools. Wouldn’t the best fit be a school where the average student has similar academic qualifications, yes? What am I missing?
First of all congrats on your many fine accomplishments. I’m sure you will be an asset to whatever college you attend.
That said, I do think you have mis-classified your college list.
–I agree with your safety schools with the exception of UNC Chapel Hill which is a reach (they only accept 18% of their students from OOS so it is a tough admit).
–I agree with Howard as a match school. Note that the UCs accept by major and CS is exceedingly competitive.
–IMO rest of the colleges on your list should be classified as reaches. With very low acceptance rates these schools must be considered reaches for any unhooked applicant.
It is perfectly fine to apply to a few reach schools – you never know how things may turn out. But you may want to consider cutting down on the reaches and adding in a few more match colleges.
Good luck.
A 27 ACT score is considered 85th percentile (source). A 3.5 GPA is only considered a not strong GPA here in CC land. Are these types of stats typically going to get a student into a very competitive college? No. Is there a way that these stats might still stand a chance at a highly selective institution? Yes. OP hasn’t given us much info about her high school. But I know of many public high schools where the average ACT score is around a 14. 90+% of scores are below 16. There might only be two or three students in an entire graduating class who break 20, with the best of them around a 26 or 27. Now, if OP attends such a school where most people are scoring a 14 and she’s pulled out a 27, perhaps one of the highest that her high school has produced? That might interest a selective college.
Do I think that it’s in OP’s best interest to go to an uber-competitive university where she will have tons of catching up to do? Probably not. But it really depends on the type of individual she is. Some people thrive when they’re a big underdog and playing that catch up game. Other people find it dispiriting and tend to give up, or feel much lower self-esteem even if they don’t give up. I don’t know which type of person OP is.
Apart from her safeties (excluding Chapel Hill) and Howard, her list if a bunch of reaches for all applicants (i.e. small chance of admittance), much less for someone with her stats. If she attends the type of high school I described above, then they might not be impossible reaches. If she attends an upper-middle class college prep high school, then they probably are impossible reaches.
All that to say, OP should definitely vet the supports available at any universities she applies to, particularly those where her stats are well below the 25th percentile.
I don’t think that UMass Amherst Comp Sci is going to take someone with an UW/W GPA of 3.5 and 3.8/5, and an ACT of 27, even if they are a female URM. I think that applies to all the other reaches on this list, and frankly, to anything above Safety on their list, and to UNC Chapel Hill, also.
Most likely true. Since we don’t have an answer to the class rank question, I was trying to propose a range of possibilities. UMass is a more likely reach than any of OP’s non-safeties. Barring distinguishing attributes that we don’t know about, though, I expect you’re right that it’s an unrealistic suggestion. I believe UMass Amherst does consider race (unless that has changed since 2015?), so that would help a little, but likely not enough. (UMass Lowell is up-and-coming for CS, though, and likely attainable, if being in the Boston metro area would be desirable for the OP.)
What are you looking for in a college, besides a computer science degree? I don’t really get a sense of that from your list.
You are obviously a strong, ambitious student but I think your list is extremely reach-heavy. I think that CC posters can help you build a more balanced list if you give a wish list of the attributes you want. There are so many amazing schools that would love to have you.
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