I am an American student that wants to apply to Imperial and King’s (maybe Oxford). I also wonder what colleges in the US I can get into with my stats. Yes, I do have a list, but idk if its good. I know how conditional works and I am wondering if I can get a conditional offer (will take bc, physics c, and Compsci). My dream is to study Compsci, but my school doesn’t allow me to take it until senior year (I know it sucks). I took an equivalent course outside of school during the summer but couldn’t take the AP test as it is in may.
GPA:3.52 (its a tough school)
Community college GPA: 3.94 (like 10 courses so far)
ACT: 35
sat:1490
SATII: 800 math, 790 physics, 710 in US history (will retake in October and will take sat chem)
AP Tests: 5 in physics and Statistics, 4 in US history.
Extracurriculars:
One internship at a company
Varsity Track and JV Cross Country
Captain of History Bowl and Vice Captain of Quizbowl
4th place at national history bowl and 63rd place at quizbowl nationals
Attends Hackathons
part of a robotics team
Volunteers at the tech museum and referees soccer games
does community college courses for fun
Won a makethon for the most innovative design in my district
Race: Asian (Indian Male)
For Oxford CompSci you have to take the Math Aptitude Test (MAT); application deadline (and MAT registration deadline) is 15 October; MAT test date is 31 October.
For all of these courses, any offer is almost certain to be conditional on at least the BC score (5); for Imperial I would bet all 3 of your final year APs.
Review the course details at each university carefully: they are more different than you might realize, and there is very little room for maneuver once you are in one.
FYI, the ECs that will matter will be those that relate to CompSci in some way. Your Personal Statement (PS) will be the same for all 3 places (+ 2 more if you want- flat fee), and should speak to your interest in and aptitude for doing a Comp Sci course.
My son is currently reading Maths & Comp Sci at Oxford. As @collegemom3717 mentioned, you would need to take the MAT even for a straight CompSci application at Oxford. My recollection is that everyone does the same multiple choice section and the first long form question, and then CompSci has its own final three long form questions.
Since you don’t have the most important AP scores in hand (BC, CS A and Physics C), the biggest factor in getting shortlisted for interview will be your performance on the MAT. Have you looked at any past papers? How have you done on the multiple choice sections? If you haven’t starting preparing already, it is going to be a tough cram for six weeks before the test date. Also,if you haven’t sorted it out already, figure out where you will take the MAT since there are only a handful of locations in the US where you can do it.
How comfortable are you with logic problems? My son’s interview with his college’s CS tutors was on a set of logic problems he had been given the night before where he had to present his solutions.
Yeah the problem was that I dual enrolled in a community college where I did an equivalent course to AP Compsci, but I really can’t send that.
Takes me a bit of time to solve logic problems, but we get there in the end. And also I decided to apply to Cambridge instead because their test is in June, which gives me time to study.
Are you referring to the STEP papers for Comp Sci with Math? That would be challenging and the timing (finding out results in mid-August) makes it very disruptive if you have a backup US school you plan to attend if you don’t get in. For that reason I wouldn’t advise taking the STEP papers unless you are truly exceptional (AIME/IMO level) and do them after junior year, or you plan to take a year off.
For straight Comp Sci you do the CSAT at interview in Cambridge (https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate/csat/).
Note that you would need to plan to attend the interview in person. Also Cambridge is not as enthusiastic about admitting American undergraduates as Oxford.
You can take AP tests even if you don’t take AP classes and the test scores will be what UK unis care about.
Anyway, for KCL (or any other UK uni besides Oxbridge and Imperial for CS), I daresay you’re in if you hit their minimum requirements (typically some number of 5’s in related AP tests).
You may also want to look in to Trinity in Ireland.
My daughter got into 5 schools in the UK and her stats were no where near as impressive as yours however we feel she got in due to getting 5 scores of 5 on her AP so I would say focus on that. In case you are wondering, the schools were certainly not Cambridge or Oxford but UCL, Kings College, St Andrews, Durham & Edinburgh, She chose Durham due to costs, she liked their history program and that it is a college university, like Oxford & Cambridge. It felt a good way to make friends as she is quite shy.