Currently a junior and thinking about colleges (Instate school is Washington)

Chance Me / Match Me!
1
  • 3.9 GPA Unweighted
  • 27 ACT (Gonna retake hopefully get a 28) -No APs but taking college classes at my local college for an early high school program Here are the equivalent AP classes I have took AP Calc AB (Math 151 Derivatives and Math 152 Integrals) and AP Calc BC (Math 153 Multivariable Calclulus and Math 154 Vector Calculus. AP Comp Sci (Comp Sci 210 and 211). AP US History (History 147)
  • I did skip a grade in math and am currently taking the equivolence of AP Calc
  • Cisco Certified Network Associate
  • 140 hours of community service (Got an award)
  • President of a club
  • Part time job
  • In JSA club
  • In a leadership program where we do various things such as fundraising
  • Recreational Soccer
  • Planning to major in CS (Program in my free time (Java, C++, C#, Python, HTML, Javascript)) Schools I'm thinking about
  • UC schools such as UC Irvine, UC Davis, UCLA, UCSB, USC
  • UIUC
  • UW Seattle (My top choice, Instate)
  • Purdue University
  • UT Austin
  • UMass (Main Campus)
  • UW Madison (Wisconsin not washington)
  • Penn State
  • UMich Ann Arbor
  • And any other recommendations for schools you can give me based on schools for my major that are a good match! (Doesn't have to be a public school or large) Thanks in advance!
2

I would think more about a 30-31 on the ACT. A score in this range would place you “solid” on about 80% of the schools you have listed. A sub 30, will cut that down to 50% and below.

3

My original score was a 23. Simply getting it up to a 27 was a challenge for me

4

UC Irvine-Reach
UC Davis-Reach
UCLA-Reach
UCSB-Reach
USC-Match (Do you mean Santa Cruz or Southern California? I’m assuming Santa Cruz because it’s a UC)
UIUC-Low Reach
UW Seattle-Match
Purdue University-Match
UT Austin-Reach
UMass-Match
UW Madison-Low Reach
Penn State-High Match because GPA (they care a lot more about gpa than test scores)
UMich Ann Arbor-Reach

5

I understand, but given the schools that you have targeted, you either need to get higher scores (for a legitimate application) or select schools that are more symmetrical test score wise.

6

What’s your budget?
You will not get financial aid at most of the OOS public universities and you can “only” borrow $5,500 as a freshman.
Run the Net Price Calculator on all these.

7

I don’t need fin aid

8

Even if you “don’t need financial aid”, make sure to run the NPCs and show the results to your parents. You have to make sure they understand what costs are involved - a couple years ago, the most expensive private colleges were 40K and today public OOS universities top that; costs have doubled or even tripled in-state, so your parents may have no notion of how much college costs, or may not be willing to fund you for OOS full costs, etc. Ask for precise numbers with the NPC results in hand.