I’m only a junior, so some of these stats aren’t completely accurate but attainable just because they are what I’m aiming for before I get to apply for colleges come senior year, not exactly what I have currently,
GPA: UW 3.97 W 4.6
Courseload: 6 APs; very low but the average at our school is only 3 though.
SAT: 1510
EC:
volunteer work from different places (200+ in hrs)
held two jobs junior year, one online and one at a fast food
deca state officer
math club treasurer
self taught programmer in the process of developing an app
interned at a tech company during the summer
robotics club
cybersecurity club
Some schools I’m interested: both UWs (although I heard DA to CS from oos to Washington is quite near impossible), UMich, UIUC, UT-Austin, University of Minnesota, RPI.
I’m from the state of Nevada, does anyone know anything about the CS program at UNR as that is my ultimate safety if all else fail.
What stats do you have currently? Your parents have the ability and willingness to pay $50k+ a year for four years? If not, how much do they have the ability and willingness to pay? Are you likely to be NMSF?
Arizona State, U of Arizona, Northern Arizona swould be safeties. NAU is in WUE. With those stats you would also get merit aid at all of them (NAU gives merit aid on top of the WUE discounted tuition). Also you would be a candidate for their respective honors colleges including ASU Barrett.
It’s hard to beat the deal that Nevada gives to it’s graduating seniors. You essentially get paid to go to college. With UN-R as a viable option, you have to weigh whether the BSCS diploma from one of the other colleges is worth the $200,000 extra or so it would cost. The discussion you need to have is how comfortable your parents will be with paying that much.
My personal bias, I would get rid of RPI (having problems right now, and a recent grad we know took a year to find a CS job in Seattle) and replace it with some lottery pick schools with well funded CS programs.
There is one piece of good news regarding UW-Seattle if that turns out to be an option for you: CS will be majority direct-admit starting with your year.
^ true. But what do you want to do? An engineering degree will land you in a good income bracket no matter where you go.
My experience shows that if you want to design “new stuff” you need to go to a top school. If you want to answer phones or work at a plant you go to a safeish school. Here in Austin if you go into an R&D dept you’ll find kids from top schools including UT. If you go into tech support you’ll find A&M, UTD, TT.
They are all making good money… just different jobs. Design you’ll be making 10 to 20 more.
Yes, they are willing to pay for the cost. I’m not going to qualify for NMSF, I got a 1410 on the PSAT. Even though we come from a lower-middle class family, my parents have saved up a lot of money throughout the years. I just don’t know if that money will be worth spending on colleges out of state if UNR is an option.
To be honest, I was making my list with little to no knowledge of most of these schools. I just went on usnews top computer science colleges and looked for ones with high acceptance rates but still top 30
Most lower middle class families don’t have $250K in the bank for their kid’s college education. Ask your parents to run net price calculators on the website of each school you are looking at with you.
I got lost at the RPI part. What happened with RPI’s recent graduate? Did it take him too long to find a job after graduating? What does majority direct admit mean, so it will become more likely to get accepeted into UW for CS now? The one main reason I didn’t want to go into UNR was the fact that I was concerned about the area and how uninvolved it might be with tech companies, is that true at all?
@greymeer I agree that some schools may be better because of its location, like Washington where Microsoft or Amazon is. But I heard that employers don’t really care about the college you went to as much as the work you have done relating to it.
@intparent Yes, I’ve told them that it will cost $50,000 each year. They don’t have all 4 years saved up currently but will have at least the cost of the first 2 years covered by the time I enroll for college. The rest could be loaned or I can help pay it off while working a job.
@allyphoe am I better off going to UNR in-state then? Do you know how its computer science program is compared to the schools I mentioned on the original post?