Dilemma: U of Washington or NYU? (Comp. Sci.)

<p>An int'l student here, hoping to major in computer science (yes, I've set my mind on that major).</p>

<p>I'm still deciding between U of Washington or NYU, though.
I know that U of Washington's computer science program is prestigious.
However, the problem is that you are nothing but a "pre-science" major during the freshman and sophomore years, and you will officially get in the major only in junior year, while the "getting in" process is a really fierce competition depending on the GPA and a personal statement. (How fierce? Huh, the fiercest in the university, in fact. The computer science major admits merely 200 students and the acceptance rate is like 30%~40%.)
Hence I feel stressful and anxious whenever I think of "what if I didn't get into my major" thing…
(But other than this, I don't really have anything else to complain.)</p>

<p>That's why at this moment I'm somewhat leaning toward NYU, whose computer science program admits me, although I'm not very sure.
The tuition of NYU is, as you all know, sky-high comparing to UW (or almost any other college). Yet, the money matters are secondary (not unimportant, but just secondary) to me.</p>

<p>So, I'm really in need of some advice/insights/suggestions. Any comments are greatly appreciated.</p>

<p>If the money matter is truly secondary then NYU is a viable alternative. I think their CS is supposed to be quite good and applied math. Or at least the grad school is so I assume, I hope rightly, undergrad strength follows.</p>

<p>This question comes up a lot for UW. Have you looked at the list of suggested alternate majors for students that don’t make the cut at UW and do you think you would be satisfied with one of those? There are some interesting related areas. Are you a very strong student compared to average UW applicants? Very strong in math?</p>

<p>@BrownParent Thanks for your reply.</p>

<p>UW does offer a bunch of alternative majors in case you don’t get into CS, like Informatics, Information Science, Human-Centered Engineering, etc. I might as well like them, but after all an alternative is an alternative…
Besides, all of those majors are also very selective (although less selective than CS).</p>

<p>I won’t call myself a very strong student — not the cream of the crop anyway. That means I won’t be 100% confident to say, “no prob, I can definitely get in that CS major.”
I’m not interested in pure math majors, though. (Too boring for me personally.)</p>

<p>If you’re not in the top 10% stats for UWA (look at college data U Washington, click “admissions”, and scroll down), you’re unlikely to make it into CS. Therefore, it’d make more sense to attend NYU. However it wouldn’t make sense to get into considerable debt for NYU.</p>