I wouldn’t characterize it that way at all. A reach is defined by the likelihood of acceptance, not necessarily by the ability of the student. A student could be more than academically capable (e.g. in the top quartile of the distribution) and yet still be rejected by the college.
IMO, the best academic environment for a student is one where s/he can be sufficiently challenged by her/his peers and is able to keep pace with these same peers.
At most colleges, admissions is primarily by prior academic credentials as predictors of academic capability (of course, different colleges choose different combinations and weights of such, and no prediction is perfect). Most students assess “reach” (versus “match”, “likely”, “safety”) based on how their prior academic credentials compared to the college’s enrolling students.
Yes, there are colleges where non-academic criteria are magnified in importance in admissions (sometimes due to the ceiling of typical prior academic credentials with respect to the most selective colleges), but these do not set the general rule.
In addition to excluding reach colleges, this criterion would also mean that most students who need big merit scholarships to afford college will find an unfulfilling academic experience because they are in the top few percent of students by prior academic credentials.
Not necessarily. Some schools attract a fair number of higher achievers via Honors Colleges and multiple good scholarships.
I believe College Board has an area where one can see percentages of students with X SAT/ACT scores.
For colleges that admit by stats, the concept of a “reach” doesn’t make sense in most cases. An applicant would know a priori whether s/he is likely to be admitted. Some public unversities may use different criteria (or formulae) for OOS applicants so they may be viewed as “reaches” for those applicants.
I explicitly excluded any other consideration besides academics. For applicants who need merit scholarships, or any other requirment (such as athletics), they’d obviously have to make compromises.
Only for colleges that determine the stat threshold beforehand. Some colleges admit by stats, but set the threshold competitively each admission cycle. Many CSUs in California are examples.
He may want to reconsider Purdue, maybe apply and see what happens. Of these four colleges, they do best wrt FAANG and then probably Maryland (Google co-founder went there).
First off, CS is not a major where you need a grad degree, as others have pointed out. When you say reset, are you implying cancelling the four years at UA and replacing with more or better knowledge? Reset usually implies changing fields, not unlearning what you did in undergrad. There are a lot of good suggestions on this thread, I’d say apply to USC (potential scholarships), UT-Austin, maybe a couple schools that give merit - Case, RPI and take it from there. You want to be in a position to compare financial aid packages or if you’re full-pay, compare the costs.
This is the exact approach we took with our son. You can only know so much about final costs until you get an acceptance and award letter. If money is tight, apply to schools that have a reputation for generosity with aid and see what he gets. That’s of course in addition to any where the benefit is defined by GPA/test scores, NMF, etc.
I mean geographical reset.
As I have said, USC is out of financial reach, even with NMF scholarship. UT-Austin does not award merit scholarships to OOS students (by comparison, A&M does).
However, for Texas A&M, computer science or computer engineering students enter as first year engineering students who then have to earn a college GPA high enough to meet the automatic secondary admission threshold (now 3.75) or enter into a competitive admission process (ETAM, see General Engineering Class of 2025 Requirements | Texas A&M University Engineering ). Computer science and computer engineering were extremely competitive majors in ETAM ( TAMU ETAM statistics - #172 by pbleigh ), so a student entering Texas A&M intending computer science or computer engineering needs to chase the 3.75 college GPA.
Fully aware of this.
@Peruna1998, Most do not realize what a heavy lift this is at most universities for engineering/CS. They make assumptions about GPAs based on the rampant grade inflation in high school. I don’t know how strictly A&M grades, but the average graduating GPA at my son’s alma mater for his major was 2.7. It is a highly selective program. Nearly everyone who gets in has a 4.0 or close in HS. I certainly would not want to have to make a 3.75 just to move forward!
There’s no way to know if a college is out of reach until you apply and see what the financial aid/merit awards are. The point of having a few offers is to negotiate between the colleges for a better offer. USC has a decent amount of money, to say the least, so them increasing the award is not unreasonable.