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College Search & Selection
1

Hi,

My daughter is a junior with a 4.0 GPA and no SAT taken yet.Looking for recommendations on private college with a good CS program preferably direct admit on the east coast which offers good merit scholarships.

Thanks

2

Home state?

Budget?

Do you qualify for need based financial aid?

3

We are in MD and we don’t qualify for financial aid.
The budget is <50k with tuition and housing.

4

UMD is always a good option, though not private.

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5

Lafayette?
Is the 4.0 weighted or unweighted? What math courses has she taken? Any programming experience, ap class, summer camp?

6

It is going to be hard to find a private university for less than $50K / year that is better than UMD for computer science unless you qualify for need based aid. UMD is a very good choice for CS.

MIT is an obvious choice for a student with an unweighted 4.0. It is of course a reach for nearly everyone. They have two choices for a computer science major. The most obvious is 6-3 “electrical engineering and computer science”. However, 18C “Mathematics with computer science” is also a very reasonable choice there (and would be more to my liking). They have no merit based aid at all and without need based aid it will be way over $50k per year. It is also stressful and you have to want to do it.

Other than MIT, I am hard pressed to think of a private university on the east coast that I would prefer to UMD for computer science. I can think of a few that would be very close to the same level as UMD for CS, but they would also be way over $50k/year.

Among public universities, U.Mass Amherst has a very good CS program. It would be barely over $50k per year if you don’t get merit based aid, but I think that they do have some merit aid for out of state students.

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7

Second UMass Amherst. The max OOS merit they offer is currently 16K/yr, which brings the cost down to about 40K/yr in reality for OOS, maybe a bit less for a cheaper double with lesser dining plan.

Very strong Comp Sci. Beautiful new honors college campus right in the center of the campus. Fantastic food. Large, beautiful campus - has the feel of a mid-western “land grant” campus. Safe area. 5 college consortium so even though it’s a large flagship state school, students can take classes at Amherst, Smith, Mt. Holyoke, and Hampshire.

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