College advice for a junior

College Search & Selection
1

<p>I'm going to be a junior next year but thought I might get an early start on the college search process since I already know that I'm going to be studying computer science. Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.</p>

<p>Stats:</p>

<p>My GPA is a 4.22 / 4.33, which means that I usually have 4 A+s and 2 As. My course load is the most taxing it is possible to take at my school.</p>

<p>SAT- I've only taken the PSAT so far, which I got a 229 on with 79 reading, 70 math (due to stupid mistakes, I'll do much better on the actual test), and 80 writing. This is with no prior studying, so I should be able to improve on that next year.</p>

<p>SAT II: I'm planning on taking math II, physics, and probably Latin. Maybe literature. Not sure what scores to expect</p>

<p>IB diploma: I don't know what this is or whether or not it's required. Should I talk to my adviser about it?</p>

<p>So far with AP tests I've gotten 5s on Computer Science and Calculus AB and 4s on Macro and Microeconomics. Next year I'm taking Calc BC, Physics Mechanics, likely both English ones, US History, and Latin. Senior year is going to be E&M and probably Stats. I also might take the AP French exam.</p>

<p>Extracurriculars:</p>

<p>Playing piano for close to ten years at this point. I perform for my school every term (three terms in a year) and also occasionally do more performances in front of large audiences. I haven't entered any competitions or anything like that.</p>

<p>Volunteering at a retirement home this summer for a few hours every week.</p>

<p>I've been teaching myself French for about a year and have attained a decent level of fluency. I can understand almost any written text and can write myself, but my listening comprehension isn't perfect yet.</p>

<p>Along with French, I've learned computer programming independently over the past two years. My main language is C++ and I've been working on making some simple games like platformers. Next summer I'll make a website and put a portfolio on it. I also took CS AP freshman year but didn't learn anything useful from it so I consider myself self-taught.</p>

<p>Looking to get a programming internship next summer, but that might not be possible.</p>

<p>I don't play any sports because practicing the piano is my afternoon activity. I know that this is probably a huge negative, as is the fact that I seem to be very one-sided in terms of only focusing on my studies, but that's because I just love to learn and don't want to take time away from that just to be able to say I'm a varsity athlete or whatever. Will it be possible to make this look less bad to the people reading my applications?</p>

<p>Money is luckily not a factor in choosing a school for me. In terms of location, I really like London but it seems much more realistic to go to a computer science university in the US. The most important thing for me is a good computer science program and great job opportunities. I'd like to have an internship during freshman year and work my way up to a job by junior year. This probably means that California is the place to be, but I'm not sure. I'm currently going to a very small (~500 student) boarding school on the East Coast and like it a lot. The single most important thing for me is for a school to have great teachers and small classes so I can actually learn from them. Going to a lecture with more than a few dozen people seems like a massive waste of time regardless of how good the teacher is and I really don't want to go to a school like that. I've also heard about teachers at supposedly great schools who are so important in their field that they never actually show up to class. I'd definitely be pleased to have experts teach me, but if they're not actually going to be there then I don't want to waste my time.</p>

<p>Please let me know if there's any other information that would help. I've started looking at colleges but haven't narrowed down to a concrete list yet. Mostly I'm looking for guidance on what I should consider safety/target/reach schools and what colleges I should look at in particular.</p>

<p>Thank you very much for your time!</p>

2

<p>Let’s say you should be looking at LACs, liberal arts colleges because they offer the class sizes you say are integral to your learning. The problem here is that so few of them offer compsci in depth. That is, their CS depts have a limited number of tenured faculty who offer only the basic courses and little in the upper limits of the field. You could be admitted to some very fine LACs, but you’ll need to find LACs that offer the depth of field in courses and faculty that usually only larger schools do. This is a frequent topic on CC, so you should do a search for recent threads about CS at LACs.</p>

<p>You could also look at mid-size unis that will have some lectures the first couple years of 100 or so, but that will have much smaller classes in your junior and senior years and a broader list of upper level courses than most LACs can provide. WashU comes to mind, but check to see if they’re still having problems with overloaded courses in their CS department. Vandy is another. Carnegie Mellon, MIT, CalTech, and Princeton might also serve. All are reaches for you and almost everyone else. You have interesting ECs, but not many. ECs are very important at the elite LACs and ivies. I would emphasize the self-starter nature of your personality. Not every junior is taking Calc BC, for instance, but I also mean your teaching yourself languages. Certification in a language might boost your chances.</p>

3

<p>Thank you very much for your reply, this will definitely help in focusing my college search more! I’ll make sure to search around on here like you suggested.</p>

4

<p>so that GPA is a 4.22 out of a possible 5.0 or 4.5?</p>

5

<p>It’s a 4.22 out of 4.33. At my school, 4.33 would be having all A+s and 4.0 would be all As.</p>

<p>I’ve been looking around here for liberal arts colleges with good computer science programs and was wondering about whether that would be the best idea based on what you mentioned with regards to the class sizes at universities and the relative depth of knowledge at most colleges. What would be typical of my junior year at university in terms of the number of students in a class if I’m taking the highest level possible? It seems like it may be more prudent to just bear the larger classes as an underformer in exchange for the ability to learn more as an upperclassman.</p>

6

<p>CS is in high demand not just in terms of majors but in terms of non-majors wanting to get some CS experience. I’m sending you a link to info about the 2012 problems with class sizes and faculty numbers at WashU not to pick on WashU but to give you some idea about what is happening in CS departments in many places and what the numbers of faculty are at a properly functioning dept and what class sizes can get to be at an institution functioning less well than it would like to at a particular moment in its history.</p>

<p>In general, at larger universities, one should expect compsci sections of 100-400 students in first-year courses and 25-40 students in upper-level courses. At mid-size, 75-150 and 20-30 students. But again the demand for CS is increasing and all departments with this increased demand are struggling to find qualified faculty to cover the demand. Colleges do not react quickly to change, and academia as a whole reacts on a generational timeline. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it messes with student expectations that their demands be met quickly and without increases to their tuition.</p>

<p>Make class size part of your research for any school you might apply to. You can sometimes find this info in their online course catalogue/registration information.</p>

7

<p>I don’t know that one learns more as an upperclassman. Certainly there’s a different skill set required of a small class than a large, but most large lectures are broken down into smaller sections taught by TAs. TAs can be some of the best and worst teachers you’ll ever have. Often they are much better teachers than the lecturer. But so much of what you learn as an undergraduate comes from teaching yourself. You’ll spend 3 hours each week with the lecturer, an hour with a TA, and then another 6-8 hours on labs/teamwork/programming (in your case), review, and prep. (Yes, I know, that adds upto more than 40 hours a week on studies. And how much money are you spending for this education? I should think the hours well spent.) If you can learn to take good notes in the lectures, engage the TA and your peers in recitation and teamwork, and set aside time each day for review and prep, you’ll do well no matter how large your courses are. So much of college is about you and not about the college.</p>

8

<p>Thanks again for your insight, you’ve been a huge help and given me a lot to consider, especially with regards to what I should be expecting from college courses. The learning method you talked about is very different from what I’m used to and will certainly impact how I approach college. It’s good to hear that having small classes is not necessarily as important as my work ethic because that will help make finding a good college more feasible.</p>

<p>I’ve been spending some time making a broad list of colleges that seem to have highly regarded computer science departments but I’m having trouble understanding specifically what I should be looking for when deciding whether or not something is a reach/match/safety school. Are those distinctions solely based on the acceptance rate and where my SAT scores lie relative to the scores of the accepted students? From what I’ve been reading, it seems like reaches are where the acceptance rate <25% or your scores are below the 50th percentile, matches are where the acceptance rate <50% or you’re below the 75th percentile, and safeties are where the acceptance rate >50% and you’re above the 90th percentile. Is this accurate or should I change my criteria? I don’t want to make a list of schools that I like only to realize that they’re all reaches where I have almost no chance of getting in.</p>

9

<p>Any school where the admission rate is below 15% (some would say 25%) is automatically a reach for everyone. These are the ivies (except in some cases Cornell and Dartmouth) and the near ivies which include Chicago Berkeley, Swarthmore, WashU, Duke, Amherst, Bowdoin, Northwestern, and twenty other school over which CC blood has been shed. Some school have majors that are near ivies, like UWash’s and CMU’s computer science programs.</p>

<p>After that, we look at a school’s “middle 50” scale. The reach/match/safety scale goes like this: 1-25%/25-75%/75%-99%. That is, take your SAT scores, either the 2400, 1600, or individual scores, and compare them to what the school says are its admitted students. </p>

<p>If the school says that its 25-75 range on the SAT 1600 is 1230-1400, then you know that 50% of the students admitted had SAT 1600s between 1230 and 1400. If your SAT 1600 falls BETWEEN 1230-1400, then you know the school is a likely “match,” meaning you have a realistic chance of admission but could still be turned down. These are not terribly accurate instruments because holistic assessment is most often used by admissions officers. If your score is BELOW 1230 then this school is a “reach” for you; only 25% of the students had scores this low and most of them were students with a hook: a coach wanted them for a sport; they were legacies or underrepresented minorities; they were special in some unusual way the school valued (region of origin, exceptional flautist, etc.); or they told a great story that the school wants to support. Basically, the school is saying we’re not really sure you can cut the mustard here; you’re a risky admit perhaps, and we’ll have to pour resources into your academic preparation for a couple years, but we really like [this] about you.</p>

<p>If the school says that its 25-50% range is 1230-1400, and you have a score ABOVE 1400, then the school is a “safety” for you, meaning it is more likely than not that you will be accepted. It is certainly not a guarantee by any stretch of the imagination, however.</p>

<p>So, to reiterate:
below 25% the school is a reach for you
between 25 and 75 the school is a match
above 75% the school is a safety</p>

<p>Of course, there are all kinds of mitigating factors, and we can argue to death any score for any one school, but in general people use this scale. Then CCers like me take into consideration the other factors in an applicant; most important of these is unweighted GPA–if the GPA is out of line with the SAT, then we add an element of confusion; if a student is applying to major in STEM but has low SATII scores in math and science, we’d scratch our heads and maybe demote the student to match or reach. </p>

<p>Have I been clear?</p>

10

<p>I think you’re a perfect fit for Harvey Mudd: CS is exceptional (top recruited with Stanford), it’s a LAC-with-engineering, classes are small, it’s in a consortium with other colleges so you have a lot of choices for classes.</p>

<p>Try to get your French learning certified by an Alliance Française, or consulat. Take the SAT subject during junior year, too, unless you feel ready to take AP French.</p>

<p>I got concerned when I read this this:

Don’t overdo it. BC, Mech, English Lang, APUSH, and Latin would be fine. Or, if you feel confident with your French, take AP French in addition to AP Latin, since this is quite rare and doubling up in foreign languages at the AP Level AND having both BC and Mech is even rarer. Take AP Lit senior year, and make sure you find dual-enrollment or college-level classes past BC and Mech (Calc III, etc.) See if you can find a research project you can be mentored on and start drafting your junior year then work on as an independent research project during senior year, with a goal of presenting it at a conference or a science fair. Since you’re at a boarding school, you will probably find teachers who had PHDs and will be happy to help you. You’ll have to present your idea and defend it, most likely, which is a learning experience in itself.</p>

<p>I’m stricter than jkeil when it comes to classifying schools for the college list:
-First, 2 schools you like, can afford, admit more than 30% students (40%+better), and where you’re well-above the 25% mark. Those will be your safety and are likely to involve your state flagship’s honors college, or another honors college, plus another school you like (for you, it’d be a LAC ranked 45+). I’d say Santa Clara, UCSC, and UAlabama CS/Honors/ (match for CBHP or stem-MBA) would also be in that category.
-Second, 3-5+ schools you like, can afford, admit more than 30% students, and where you’re at or near the top 25% mark.
Those 5-7 schools will be the hardest for you to find and because of your high stats, they’re likely to think you’re not “really” interested, so you should pay them lots of attention, emailing admissions (or calling - those are recorded in your file), filling out the “request info” or “join our mailing list” forms, taking the campus tour, perhaps requesting an alumni interview.

  • After those, you can add all the dream schools in the world - Harvey Mudd, Amherst (consortium), Tufts, Haverford (for the Penn partnership), Olin, Grinnell, URochester, CalTech, CMU… (I chose very different schools on purpose :p)</p>

<p>Personally, I do think small classes matter, because they’re interactive and they make you quickly volley ideas back and forth, sustaining points, looking for/at new perspectives that are brought up by classmates and professor - whereas a lecture involves taking notes, mostly (you can ask questions of course, but a lecture isn’t interactive and doesn’t involve your thinking as much). </p>

11

<p>Thank you, that was perfect! Just one last question, if it’s not too much trouble: are acceptance rates only important when deciding whether or not a school is a reach or do they also come into play for safety schools?</p>

12

<p>Considering your stats, your safeties should have 40% admission (30%+ if you push it.) For lower stats, I would recommend 50%+, 60%+, or 75%+ admission rate. However, with your scores, anything that’s 40% or more should be safe.</p>

13

<p>Thanks for letting me know, you have both been really helpful!</p>

14

<p>Oh, I didn’t even see your other post MYOS! Thanks for that.</p>

<p>Harvey Mudd was definitely on my radar, it sounds really good and I’ll make sure to look into it further.</p>

<p>I’ll try to get certified in French. Unfortunately taking the AP class wouldn’t work because my sixth course is Greek and I’m not allowed to take a seventh graded course at my school. I’ve heard that AP tests don’t have as much weight as the classes, so I might just take the subject test instead in French. My school has Humanities AP so I’m not sure how we actually take the AP tests for that. It might be one of the English tests junior year and the other senior year. After BC, we have Graph Theory and Math Seminar rotating yearly which would be the next and highest level of math possible. In senior year, do you think taking French AP or Stats AP would be better?</p>

<p>The research project sounds really interesting but I’m not sure where to start with it. What programs in particular should I look at to present for? Should I focus on computer science with that? There are some really excellent math teachers at my school but I don’t know for sure if there are any who are accomplished in the field of computer science.</p>

<p>I’ve also heard about schools rejecting more than qualified applicants to try to get their numbers up. If this is seriously a possibility for me, how safe would a safety school really be? The last thing I want is to end up with twelve tiny envelopes and no prospects for the future.</p>

15

<p>–I’ve also heard about schools rejecting more than qualified applicants to try to get their numbers up. If this is seriously a possibility for me, how safe would a safety school really be? The last thing I want is to end up with twelve tiny envelopes and no prospects for the future.–</p>

<p>It does happen. A safety school at which you look suspect because you’re overqualified needs to be reassured that you’re interested in the school. You can visit, you can sign up when the AO comes around for a fair, you can call the Admissions Office and ask questions that demonstrate your familiarity with the school, you can email the AO. All this will reassure them of your interest. Don’t just apply and leave it at that. If they ask for a “why [this college]?” then by all means write that essay. So your safeties need to be reassured, unless they’re your large state flagship, perhaps.</p>

16

<p>Showing interest will definitely be on the top of my priorities list then. I was planning to visit all of my potential schools anyway just to get a feel for them and schedule an interview so that should help.</p>

17

<p>French is considered a “solid” AP, Stats is considered a “light” AP, so take AP French if you can. If you can’t take French at your high school, is there a community college where you could take French 3 (the most likely to prepare you for a year of AP French, although you’d be better off if they had Fr 3 in the fall and Fr4 in the Spring - often numbered 201, 202?)
A school with excellent Latin/Greek instruction is Holy Cross - check out their CS dept.
A research project would stem from something you’re interested in, a question you hav that you want to investigate, for which they’re no ready answer. </p>

18

<p>Research projects can begin with an observed problem: why does the apple always fall to the ground? is there some irreducible law of nature that causes this to happen? what does the apple have in common with all the other objects that can be seen falling to the earth? Newton knew there already were answers to these questions, but he wasn’t satisfied with those answers–so the investigation begins. You may learn that your dissatisfaction with the received answers can be resolved after some reading and pondering, but if the received wisdom doesn’t seem to hold up to inquiry you yourself might have an opportunity to propose a tentative solution. The testing and re-testing of your solution is part of the process and what makes for good inquiry: have you considered this? or that? or what X says? or what about this possibility? When you’re satisfied with your having looked at the problem and solution from as many sides as you can, and some of the other authorities in your field of inquiry tentatively are satisfied, you might have something worth the inquiry of a wider public. Most problems are not so grandiose (nor as simple) as Newton’s, of course, and inquiry has a tendency to produce as many problems as it solves so that there’s little chance of our running out of problems any time soon. </p>

<p>Another example from another field: It has long been thought that Hawthorne’s short stories are interrogations of the (moral) behavior of his Puritan ancestors, but there are elements in this story and that story (YOU observe) that suggest Hawthorne is writing about his contemporaries and their lives rather than those of the Puritans. YOU now have a problem that with further thinking and reading might be worth trying to resolve, something significant enough that you might want to make public your research and tentative solution to the problem. You really don’t know what you have in a research project until you start digging and testing, but you learn by trial and error and the advice of your friends and colleagues in the field (read: your professors) to trust your nose about what kinds of problems matter and will produce an idea worth arguing.</p>

<p>An academic mind is one that is always problematizing the world around it and testing the explanations offered by the “authorities,” including their teachers’. Out of such habits of inquiry research projects grow.</p>