Hello! I am currently in a debate with my parents about which school I should be EDing to. It’s my opinion that with my profile, I won’t be admitted to CMU CS or IS and should be EDing to Rice CS. They think otherwise saying that I should be EDing to CMU and that Rice CS isn’t worth EDing to as it’s on par with or worse than UT Austin CS. Would appreciate some thoughts on the situation.
Asian male from Texas
Competitive high school in suburban Houston
Looking to major in CS with some sort of minor/double major in business or economics
Upper-middle-class family (200k+)
SAT: 1540 (740 EBRW 800 MATH 16 WRITING)
SAT 2: 800 MATH 740 CHEMISTRY
GPA: 4.59 UW, 3.94 W
Rank 62 out of 838 (Top 7.4%)
9 APs by graduation
almost all honors and AP courses
4-year HS soccer player
club soccer team qualified for the US youth soccer national league (won’t be competing as I tore my PCL)
NHS member
science NHS member
CS club member
chess club treasurer
volunteered in China for 2 weeks as a summer camp counselor teaching kids game design, robotics, and 3-d printing
volunteered at a Chinese immersion summer camp for 2 weeks, taught kids Chinese and about Chinese Culture
organized a free weeklong soccer summer camp for kids in the community, had 30+ kids show up on every given day
work part-time as a youth soccer referee
You are a strong candidate. Which school is the best fit for you? Can you afford to attend CMU or Rice if you are admitted ED and do not get any financial or merit aid? CMU is very well known as a top CS school. At Rice, you do not have to apply or be accepted to a certain major. You apply into one of the Rice schools, but once admitted, you can choose any major(s) you want including CS (except for architecture or music which require portfolio or audition for admission). UT’s computer science program is great but is also a hard admission. Are you in the auto admit to UT percentage? The ED admit rate at Rice is 20 percent versus the regular admit rate of 10 percent so applying ED has some advantages. However, Rice does not fill as large a percentage of its class ED as some of its peer schools. If you would attend CMU happily if admitted there ED, apply to CMU ED, UT rolling, and Rice RD. If Rice is your best fit, apply to Rice ED, UT rolling, and CMU RD. Since you are local, take the opportunity the admissions office offers seniors to spend a night on the Rice campus and attend classes. That way you can gauge your fit at Rice. You can also sign up for an on campus interview. https://riceadmission.rice.edu/portal/visit-overnight
I have young adults at Rice and GT. Both are worth your consideration based on your CS and business interests. GT’s tech entrepreneurship and incubator program recently was ranked second behind Stanford’s, and Rice is aggressively developing its own jointly with the City of Houston.
If the finances are there, ED at Rice and EA at GT both make sense.