@JohnDope I deeply feel you. My son got DA to CS as OOS and he doesn’t have 4.0 as you. I’ve been worrying about his several Bs from English and Spanish. He has similar test scores as you, 36 ACT, 1590 SAT, NMF and Presidential Scholars candidate. I guess he distinguished himself as a musician. He was also accepted to the School of Music as a violin performance major and he also plays the viola. He auditioned on both and they wanted him to be a violin performance major. He does have strong interest in computer science for sure and he prefers CS over music.
pdxtigermom
Which school that your son is attending?
He is attending a public school in Portland Oregon.
Oh, he is OOS. Thx
JohnDope
Please update us if you hear back from UW.
@John Dope Agree…it seems those that got DA to CS at UW had little interest in CS (it just “sounded like a good major” or “it gets good jobs” vs. kids that spent all of HS self-teaching programming and even having real project or work experience to show for it, plus leaders on Robotics teams etc. Honestly, that made my son NOT like UW…so it was easy to hit that decline (for “Pre-Sciences”) button!!!
@sunnyschool my son is heavily involved in computer science and programming. He has taken all the CS courses that his school offers and has leadership positions in his school’s programming club, math club and science club. He won several local programming competitions and also tutors math and programming. What I want to say is that other than all those activities, he’s also heavily involved in music. He has leadership positions in his school’s orchestra and choir, has won music scholarships and competitions as well. He volunteers and mentors in our local youth orchestra. He feels fortunate and grateful for his opportunities since both CS and music are his passion and he’s trying his best to pursue both.
@pdxtigermom I didnt mean your student…I meant others I read about on CC and Reddit. @JohnDope also saw those posts. Those applicants had FAR lower test scores and grades, didn’t participate in any CS-related EC’s, and just “picked CS bc it’s a good major” but weren’t even sure if they were truly interested in CS.
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@sunnyschool after reading all the posts from deserving students, I feel more and more fortunate and grateful for my son’s acceptance. He’s a strong candidate but there are so many equally strong candidates didn’t get the opportunities. My son is a full IB student and takes the most rigorous course load possible. I think he’s the only one accepted in his school but I’m sure he’s not the most qualified one because he doesn’t have a 4.0 GPA. I guess part of reasons is that he is a more well rounded candidate than his friends. He practices his violin and viola at least 3 hours everyday.
@pdxtigermom Your son sounds very deserving of DA, he is not the type of person I am talking about. Also, especially with you being out-of-state (almost no DA to CS is given to out-of-state people), you should be very proud of your son, he definitely stood out a lot in the application process.
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@sunnyschool Yeah, it’s very frustrating to see so many qualified students not get in. There are definitely deserving students like @pdxtigermom son and some others I know, but it seems like around half, if not more, of the people who got in are very underqualified for it. It’s quite odd how there are not many students who kind of are qualified. It’s either definitely qualified or definitely not. This whole fiasco has harmed my image of the UW too and if I didn’t like the school so much, I would be done as well. I’m hoping they are able to partially fix this with appeals, but it’s going to be interesting seeing this dichotomy of qualified and unqualified students as they go through the CS program.
@Bebu19 Yep, I will definitely let you all know. So far I don’t have any response (4 weeks and 3 days since I submitted now). I’m wondering if they are going to release appeal decisions in a large batch or as soon as they finish them. With the timeline being by the end of the month, I’m kind of worried it will be April 30th or something. Oh, well, nothing to do but wait, I guess.
@JohnDope
Have you heard from them today?
@JohnDope
Did you call them today?
@Bebu19 No, I didn’t call them or hear from them. I was planning on calling today but I ended up being pretty busy and never got a chance. I might call them tomorrow just to check though
I wish you guys the very best! And I still believe that you could get into the CS major after a year.
@JohnDope, any news?
@Bebu19 still no response from UW. Forgot to call again though.
I called today and the admissions rep said we’d hear back before May 1st and that as soon as your appeal is done being evaluated, they will notify you, so they are not waiting to release all appeal decisions at once.
@JohnDope best of luck to you and all the others who appealed!