Demographics
Upper-middle class
White male
Connecticut
Stats
3.75 Unweighted GPA(ok so my school includes all courses minus wellness in GPA so if I recalculate w/ only cores I get 3.4)
4.5 Weighted GPA
11 total APs
-Bio 5
-Comp Sci Prin 5
-Lang 5
-US Hist 5
-Chem 5
-AB Calc 5
(Will have 4 APs on senior course load)
1570 SAT
780 Biology E, 800 Math II
Class Rank around 10-15%(top 50 public schools)
EC’s
6 varsity letters
Team MVP for track, league all-star 1x and champions 2x, and school record holder for 2 records
-could possibly be slightly recruited athlete at jhu but at the least a strong EC(so let’s just say a strong EC)
Research Position at medical school was invited back for paid internship throughout summer to continue research, rec letter from PI
-Research initially molecular biology which I later moved into a computational biology project(a passion of mine)
Founded Right to Repair Community Organization impacting hundreds of individuals
Multiple State Science fair accolades
-before research position did research on machine learning and quad-copter movements
Top 10 robotics team in the state(qualified for international competition)
Founded Data Science team at school to compete in Kaggle Competitions(strong top 10% finishes)
Random fun side projects like developing a program to automate a process that netted me over $2k
Currently, I’m debating applying to JHU or Brown ED. While Brown would be ideal, I’m not sure if I’m an ivy league caliber applicant, and I feel like my research and other ECs may hold more sway providing me with a greater chance of admission. I’m not too sure of my odds without ED. My assessment is that I have pretty good testing and EC background, my GPA is not ideal, so I’m afraid I may not gain acceptance into some of the more elite CS institutions.
What do you guys think for the caliber of an institution I could reach.
Hopkins and Brown will be equally challenging. But they really couldn’t be more different atmospherically. Why these two?
Why are you focusing on “caliber” instead of fit?
What would “caliber” give you? Do you care to be happy and comfortable?
What goals do you have?
And how did you ever decide that Brown is higher caliber than JHU?
A bunch of unspoken assumptions behind your post are mystifying to me.
JHU and Brown CS are high reaches with a 3.4 unweighted core course GPA—those are the only courses schools will count. Yes, you have good rigor, but many applicants will have much higher unweighted GPAs with similar rigor. IMO applying ED to either of those schools means you give up your one ED bullet to use at a school where you have a more realistic chance at acceptance.
Focus on fit, and make sure when researching schools for CS you look at the CS acceptance rate (usually lower than overall acceptance rate, sometimes significantly so), as well as profiles of accepted CS students in terms of gpa and test scores. Obviously you will be fine on test scores. Good luck.
With a 3.4 unweighted GPA in academic core courses, JHU and Brown are high, probably unrealistic, reaches.
You may want to investigate what colleges are more realistic for admission, as well as affordability.
I would look in to ED’ing to LACs
Both schools are obviously good schools but neither is very highly rated for CS. You may want to look more at schools with better reputations for CS like Northeastern or NYU, or public schools like UMass or Maryland.
@ProfessorPlum168, I disagree that neither are highly rated. Brown has a strong CS department and JHU grads (OK, grad school CS grads) do well.
@PurpleTitan it’s all pretty relative. Both are in the 25-40 range in ranking depending on what ranking you are looking at. Which I suppose is pretty good, but a lot of schools out there with a bigger and better reputation for CS. To me, when someone wants to go for CS, those 2 wouldn’t be the first that comes to mind.
Brown’s CS program is very closely related to Northeastern’s to the point of sharing both research and teaching curricula, so those would be close. I’d but JHU a small step down but if it’s a good fit I don’t think ED for CS would be a mistake. Still, I do imagine you could find options with similar traits to JHU that were higher regarded for CS specifically, depending on what makes JHU appealing.
While CS admissions are tough, Brown and JHU are equally tough. If you’re going to try for these you might as well go for the stereotypically well known CS schools. The very stark differences of JHU compared to Brown also point to me that ED is probably not a good idea here.
Like with anyone, the best move here is a well-balanced list with lots of matches.
I would say CS at Brown is a step above CS at JHU considering how much they’ve pioneered in the industry of graphics and looking at the success of their graduates at various tech companies (high ranking executives at Facebook, Uber, etc.). The employment for each school can be checked on Linkedin to see where people work by the way. However, both are good and getting a degree from one instead of the other won’t hold you back much, although you might get better recruiting and opportunities at cool startups from Brown.
If you’ve visited both, ED to the one that you like best and will be the best fit for you, knowing that both of these are a reach for pretty much everyone. Your unweighted GPA will be your application’s weakness (and I only use that word relative to many other candidates for these schools); however, your test scores are good enough to compete with the best of them. If you have a first choice, I say go for it. Both excellent and very different schools.