Class of '23 here! : How am I doing for BU, NYU, etc.?

Chance Me / Match Me!
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hi everybody !!! i’m currently a high school sophomore just starting to think about college.
i’m interested in computer science and likely minoring in or double majoring with something like poli sci/journalism/economics. here’s some info about me:

demographic:

  • black female
  • daughter of two immigrant parents from ethiopia
  • middle class for my area (100k annually), from a white and asian suburban area in new jersey
  • 1000k students in my high school, 300+ in my class, mostly white and asian, competitive

freshman year stats:

  • 3.68/4.33 unweighted gpa, all honors classes
  • B in biology, B- in algebra 2, As in everything else

this year’s stats:

  • 1st semester → 3.97/4.33 unweighted gpa
  • all honors classes, APUSH (only AP available to sophomores)
  • all As, B in chemistry, chem grade may drop
  • definetely top 50% of my class, likely top 25% as well (school doesn’t rank)
  • took the PSAT 10 blind, scored a 1300/1520

future classes:

  • junior year → definetely taking AP Lang and AP World History next year, possibly AP Calculus AB
  • senior year → AP Lit, AP Calculus BC, AP Comp Sci Principles
  • not sure if i should continue with french, i already speak a second language (amharic)

extracurriculars:

  • 7 years of clarinet, will continue until senior year
  • 1 year of marching band (national champions) and indoor percussion, will continue until senior year
  • 1 year of newspaper club, 1 year of black student union, will continue until senior year
  • 1 year of theater, quit this year
  • might create an african students association
  • no volunteer work, internships, research, camps, or jobs (big uh oh)
  • no awards (i don’t even know where to start for this)

financial situation:

  • i have no idea, my dad refuses to tell me anything, wants me to ignore money when applying

potential schools:

  • parents want a T20 school or an Ivy, very unrealistic
  • aiming for schools like Boston University, NYU, American University, etc;
  • safeties → Rutgers, NJIT, Penn State, Stevens Institute of Technology

how well am i doing so far? what can i do to improve my chances in the future? what other colleges would be a good fit for me stats-wise? any advice at all would be super helpful.
sorry for the lengthy post!

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In general, Sophomore year is wayyy too early to try and figure out these things, since you don’t even have 2/3 of the classes that you will have when you apply for college. You also had a good increase in GPA, so it would be better to wait until you have Junior year grades.

Also, what is your GPA on a 4.0 scale?

The best thing that you can do is keep up that upward trajectory of your GPA. Your PSAT is pretty good for a sophomore (a 1300 PSAT taken blind is excellent, but focus more on your grades).

Clarinet, marching band, newspaper club, and Black student union is a good set of ECs. Why did you quit theatre? A physical activity may be a good idea, mostly for your own good.

Awards usually start around Junior year.

What are you looking for in a college? Do you have any idea yet what your want as your major (don’t worry if you don’t)? Focusing on specific colleges at this stage is premature, but it looks like you are exploring general categories, which is good.

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Thank you for the reply!

My school doesn’t do GPA on a 4.0 scale: an A+ is a 4.33.

I quit theater because it is all-year, with a fall play and a spring musical. This would interfere with marching band, which is a fall “sport” at my school, and indoor percussion, which is in the spring. Rehearsal times overlap, so I had to decide which I liked more.

I can’t pick up a sport in school because it would, again, inevitably overlap with marching band and indoor percussion, which are activities that have rehearsal every day for their duration. I’ve also never been traditionally athletic, so an actual sport is something I’d rather not do, but I do bike on my free time so I assure you I’m healthy! But thanks for the concern.

I am pretty sure I want to go into Computer Science and either double major with (like a CS + X program) or minor in a humanities like Political Science or Journalism. I live in a suburb, but I visit New York City almost every weekend, so I definitely want my school to be in a city. I’m extroverted, so I’d like a large school with a big, diverse school population. Other than that, I’m not super picky, but maybe I just don’t know my tastes yet).

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CS is one of the most competitive programs out there, so you need to get that GPA up.

I also wonder why CS? It doesn’t seem to be something that interests you, and that B- in algebra, while you were getting As in other subjects, suggests that your strengths may lie in other directions.

Recalculate your GPA, so that A+ and A = 4, A- = 3.7, etc, and see what your resulting GPA looks like.

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Truthfully, I’m basically cornered into doing STEM by my parents. I know I can get the hang of math if I actually put my mind to it and it’s not something I dislike (?). Plus I think it’s a major I can pair with a humanities that I’ll actually be interested in. It’s basically an avenue to be able to do what I want since I can’t study straight up humanities.

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Sorry to hear that. See what you can do within those limitations.

See how math works for you when you continue to Pre-Calc. Sometimes a crappy teacher, or one who simply does not work for you, can mess result in underachieving. My kid hated her Pre-Calc teacher, who wasn’t all that good, and ended up with a B on that class. On the other hand, she got an A the next year in AP Calc BC even though the teacher was much more demanding, as was the material, but the teacher was much better.

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I’m doing really well in Pre-Calc right now with straight As! It might be because Pre-Calculus is also a class filled with a lot of lazier seniors, so my teacher could be going easy on us, and the class is mostly review of Algebra 2. I’m planning on pre-studying AP Calculus over the summer so I’m prepared for the class next year.

I’m taking programming as an elective next year (intro to Java) and I’ve already been looking it over. I don’t think I’ll hate programming, especially since it’s something that I can use to actually make things. I can make Computer Science not horrible by pairing with something I’m actually interested in. I’ll be okay as long as I keep up my math grades right?

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Keep on pushing those grades up. Usually, you will need at least a GPA of close to 3.9/4.0 to be competitive, though 3.85 will also work if you manage to attract attention in other ways.

But, as I said, recalculate your grades by translating the letter grades to a 4.0 scale. That way you can see where you are and how what direction you are going.

You can start thinking about colleges which have that CS + X programs. Liberal arts colleges are also a good direction to go. Places like that will allow you to train for a career more along the lines of your interests, rather than following the path that your parents have decided for you.

At your stage in high school, generalities are good for college, like things that you said - you would like a colleges where you could have a humanities minor, you prefer city colleges, etc. Select a couple and take closer looks at them to get an idea as to whether these are indeed, the sort of things you want in a college.

However, don’t focus so much on college that you do not enjoy you time in high school! Enjoy your ECs and take classes which you enjoy (but also which challenge you!)

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Last year I had a 3.68/4.0 and 1st semester of this year I had a 3.86/4.0 using this calculator.
I’m not sure I can manage a 3.9 since my classes will only get harder from here, but I’ll try my best! I only put Boston University and NYU because I looked at their average GPAs which seem to be 3.71 and 3.69 respectively according to Prep Scholar, but it seems that it’ll be higher for CS.

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GPA doesn’t always go down as classes become more challenging. My kid’s grades in her junior year were far better than those in either her freshman or sophomore years.

Also, don’t look at prep scholar for information, see what the colleges themselves report. If the colleges themselves do not report GPA, prep scholar is using estimates based on things like self-reporting by students, which is unreliable.

Also prep scholar treats all of the reported GPAs on college’s Common Data Sets as though they are unweighted, but many colleges report their weighted GPAs, without actually mentioning that these are weighted (they will actually further confuse the issue by stating that the GPAs are on a 4.0 scale).

NYU’s average GPA also include the students who are accepted to Tisch, whose primary qualifications are their portfolios. So they are accepting a good number of students to Tisch with pretty low GPAs but top-notch portfolios.

To be competitive for the colleges that you are looking at, you want to have an unweighted GPA of at least in the mid-3.80s range or better. You may not be able to get to 3.9, but a GPA of 3.85 is well achievable, if you keep on the way your are going. Again, it may be a real challenge for you to get into a CS program, but being accepted to good liberal arts college which has a CS major is something that is far less of a challenge, and it will likely put you in a better place to pursue your own goals.

Start playing up liberal arts colleges to your parents. Since the liberal arts college concept is almost unknown outside the USA, many international parents will often look down at them. However, many LCs are considered “elite” undergraduate institutes by any prestige-minded business, and the rate at which liberal arts colleges send graduates to grad schools is far higher than that of most research universities. LACs make up almost 70% of the undergraduate programs which have the highest rate of student who end up with PhDs, including 7 of the top 10.

Liberal art college graduates include a number of presidents including Hayes, McKinley, Coolidge, Nixon, and Reagan, other politicians such as Nancy Pelosi, Eileen Chao, Condoleezza Rice, and Hilary Clinton. Founders of tech companies such as John McAfee, Peter Norton, Larry Sanger, and Tom Oreck, as well as the CEOs of dozens of companies.

Oh, also Kofi Annan is a liberal arts college graduate (Macalester 1961).

You can also enumerate the large number of Nobel Prize winners in science who did their undergraduates at a LAC.

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Ah, thank you for letting me know about the GPA thing!

I haven’t even considered liberal arts colleges. I have no doubt that they’re probably amazing, but my parents are into big-name schools, and I’m used to hearing about LACs being very small. I’d prefer a larger urban school. However, I’ll definitely look into them!
I’ve heard of the top ones like Pomona College, Colgate, Bowdoin, and Vassar, but I’ll have to do more research.

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