CS @ USC, UNC, UVA Chances

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

I wrote up a long, formatted Chances thread on Reddit, but didn’t get many takers. It’s long, but that’s how it seems they do it over there. The original link is here if you want the pretty bolding and such, or you can read it below.
https://www.reddit.com/r/chanceme/comments/3gvjxh/cs_usc_unc_uva_chances/

Basically, I’m looking to get into a school with a good computer science program that meets need. However, as you’ll see, Ivies and such are really out of the question. If I can’t get into any of these [USC, UNC, UVA], then I’ll probably have to settle with debt and UMD, NE, NCState, lower-ish UC’s (the way they calculate GPA really screw me), maybe Rutgers or CalPoly (haha).

USC is top choice, but unfortunately they don’t do ED or EA. Thanks for the help.

Rising Senior:

GPA: 90.07 UW, 93.55 W. My school is weird, they don’t do a 4.0 or 5.0 scale, that would just make too much sense. My counselor tells me that according to the school’s chart, these translate to 3.7 and 4.0 (both out of 4.0), respectively, but I feel like those are higher than what they really should be.

Rank: Nope. Too many smart kids, my HS is sort of your standard rich white suburbia land school.

SAT: 1960, 1990. Superscores to 2050, planning on taking again and actually studying. Projected (hopefully) 2200-2400.

Subject Tests: Going to take Physics + Math II, maybe US History too. Projected: AT LEAST 750 on basically everything.

APs: Physics[4], going to take Calc BC, Chem, and CompSci. Economics and such not offered at my school, going to take the college course through my HS. Basically, I’ve taken the hardest possible track for Math and Science at my school, and one of the hardest for History + English

Misc. School Stuff & ECs (years): Concert + Pep + Marching Band (2)
School Mascot (3)
Spanish (3)[HS course since 8th grade]
[Local] Honor Roll every year so far
Took a bunch of CS classes
Ukulele Club Co-Leader?
Freshman soccer team
Joining robotics club for senior year [with actual interest in it]

Out of School ECs & Whatever: Work: [2013-Present] Grocery Store Cashier since 15, Promoted to Customer Service Office at 16, occasionally performed front-end “management” roles, 20+ hours a week, basically year-round.
Recreational guitar playing since 3rd grade.
Various volunteer stuff, but not much - maybe 50 hours total, if that.
Doing some work for my dad’s software dev. business.
YouTube channel: 70k Total views, 10k+ views on some videos, going to pass 1k subs + sign to a network [actually a pretty small channel in terms of YT, but sounds kind of impressive]

Other: White, Male, basically smack-dab-middle class, no sob stories, New York State (No way you’ll make me stay in state though).

Essay: Luckily, I can write pretty well. Should be good.

Letter(s): No former presidents or anything. My old English teacher (who liked me), and maybe a manager from my store.

Trying to think of other stuff to add, will update if I do. Thanks again.

2

OK then. If you want to use the link, copy+paste, and replace “****” with “reddit{dot}com”

3

I get 3.6 UW and 3.74 W. Look up the Common Data Sets for schools you are interested in and pick ones that put you in the upper 75% of accepted students.

NC schools only accept about 25% from out of state. VA schools 30% OOS. The OOS students are usually top performers. CA schools do not give much aid to OOS students much less meet need. Can your guidance counselor suggest schools students with similar stats have been accepted to from your high school? You really need to have a couple of safeties if you need money. I hope you realize you can only borrow $5500 freshman year without a cosigner. Don’t apply anywhere ED if you need money. If you are accepted ED you MUST withdraw all your other applications. You will never know if another school will give you money. Good luck.

4

Ha, yeah, my parents have definitely informed me about the financial situation. I do know that the CA public schools don’t really do any FA for OOS, but I know for a fact that USC meets need, and after going through the net price calculator, their $55k tuition turns into about $11k for me/my family. Most of the other privates in the state do, but they’re a little too selective for me to get into - they rhyme with “Stanford,” “CalTech,” and “Harvey Mudd.” By the way, out of curiosity, how did you get those GPAs? I think that USC recalculates based on 9th-11th courses anyways, but I’ve seen so many different conversions from the 100-4.0 scale.

I’ll check with my counselor, but after going to them a few times, I realized that they don’t know much about west coast schools - i.e. I think I was teaching them stuff when I brought up UC GPA. I don’t really blame them though, as ~85% of students from my school go to SUNYs/stay in state, ~14% stay in the east coast, and ~1% go elsewhere. Usually that 1% of kids are going to Cal, UCLA and such either on an excellent GPA + Course Load + SAT, etc. or a sports scholarship. I’m a super minority, and there’s no way I’m staying in NY (both I have no desire to, and my parents are moving to VA anyways).

Unfortunately, the real kicker here is that all of my safeties are probably going to cost more than my match/reach/whatever those top 3 choices are. So it’ll be interesting. Most of the schools I’m looking at don’t even offer ED, so that’s not really an issue.

Thanks for your help.

5

Bump 10char

6

No chance at all at UVA for OOS… This is a very typical application… Same with UNC. I think you’ve got maybe a 50% chance at USC.

7

@tigerrocks13 Alright. Thank you for being honest. I don’t mind too much since I haven’t even seen UVA yet, and didn’t like UNC all that much. Would you happen to have a decent guess as to how much a serious bump in my SAT score would help? Obviously a higher GPA would be better, but I can’t really change that now. I’ve heard, however, that USC in particular likes high SAT scores so they can brag on their stats.

8

What I know is that in general, UVA accepts about 15-20% out-of-state, which is similar to the acceptance for UNC. Additionally, the SEAS, which is where CS is under, is pretty tough to get into by itself. Maybe if you improved your SAT score to your desired range, then your chances of getting into those three schools would be higher. As for your other choices, I know little about them.

9

USC does like larger SAT scores, that is true. A bump would help your chances greatly.

10

Post bump for 1-2 more opinions.