Help flushing out/editing my list.

College Search & Selection
1

Hey everyone. As a quick intro, I’m a rising senior looking to study CS/CE in college and I am considering doubling up with Mathematics (although I’m still on the fence about that). I come from a medium sized town just north of Boston, low income generally though I don’t fall into that category->upper-middle class. I have no attachment to the north-east or any place in particular, but I would not like to be anywhere rural.

Jumping into my stats:

UW GPA - 3.83
SAT - 2360 (800M/800CR/760W 1 sitting)
SAT II:
Math 2 - 800
Physics - 740
US History - 730

AP Scores:
Lang - 5
US History - 5
Lit - 4
Physics 1 - 5
Physics 2 - 4
US Gov - 4
Calc BC/AB sub-score - 5
CS - 5

Senior Year Course Load:
Advanced Data Structures and Algorithms, H
AP Seminar
AP World
AP Physics C - Mech/EM
AP Stats
School Newspaper
Linear Algebra (community college)
Calc 3 (community college)
Diff-E-Q (community college, maybe)

Awards:
NM Commended (because MA threshold is crazy high)
National AP Scholar
Dartmouth book club award

EC’s:
Robotics team captain, won a couple of awards last year
Speech and Debate captain, 6th place in MA for GD last year
Computer club co-founder/president

Computer club is my main focus. We do a bunch of community outreach stuff during the year where we try to draw more people into tech/programming like hosting hour of code each year or putting on a build-a-computer day where people can come and learn about hardware. Besides this, I also do a lot of work with my friends in the club on game design and programming. This club also lines up with our Advanced DS and Algs class which is being created this year because of my class. We helped to test out the book last year so our teacher has a better idea about what we can try and accomplish with it next year. I’ll probably be a TA during my free periods for some of the lower level CS classes, and I’m also going to try and pilot the next level course that my teacher has in mind for the year after I graduate in my free time, an independent research type class where I pick some major project and then design and implement the entire system, front-end and back-end, over the course of the year.

Work:
Young Scholars Program at northeastern university. One of 28 selected out of ~150. I’m doing work on machine learning problems related to blackjack and card counting this summer.

So far the schools that I’m looking at are:
UMASS Amherst
Northeastern
CMU SCS
MIT
CalTech
Stanford
UC Berkeley

I’m not really sure which category some would fall in (safety/match/reach) but more importantly, I’m not really sure where to go from here with this list. Do you guys have any recommendations on what I can add or what I should remove from my list?

Thanks for the advice :slight_smile:

2

What can you afford, as low income? Have you run the Net Price Calculators at any of these schools?

Here is NEU’s NPC: https://npc.collegeboard.org/student/app/northeastern

Figure out your typical “Expected Family Contribution”. Figure out what your family can actually contribute.

You might require merit aid, you might require mostly 100% need-met schools, you might preference “need-blind” schools, you might have to strike OOS schools like UCB off your list due to unaffordability, etc.

Give us a good idea of your financial situation. I could suggest dozens of schools, with your stats, but it’s futile if they’re not affordable. Believe it or not, many students actually get to the point of completing the apps/essays, getting their hopes sky-high, then discovering in April that the school is unaffordable. What a waste of time. Don’t go there.

3

I’m not low income (100k+). From what I’ve seen, my EFC is between 20-30k. My parents are willing to help me pay for school while I’m there, although it’ll really be like a loan which they want repaid after I graduate and start working. Besides that I don’t really have too much that my parents ever put away for school, a couple thousand or so. Merit aid would be helpful but it isn’t necessary at a school. In the long run if I am only paying around 30k max a year I could afford it for my whole undergraduate degree. At the same time, I want to get the best education I can and if I have to pay more or take out some loans to go to a school where I feel I would do better or get more out of it, I probably would.

4

What is your safety?

5

Oh your town is low income, sorry. Thanks for clearing up the finances. It sounds like you’ll be in decent shape re your EFC. Berkeley probably won’t be affordable, or other OOS schools, without serious merit aid. With your stats, you shouldn’t need to take out extra loans to find a very good school.

UMass safety, NEU/CMU matches, MIT/Caltech/Stanford reaches.

I’ll have to get back to you on additions.

6

Boston U, Case Western, Duke, Pitt, Rensselaer, U Rochester, Stevens Tech, Tufts. Merit aid will be possible for you at a few of these like BU, Pitt, Stevens, but check your class rank, often you need to be in the top 5%.

7

Thanks for the reply. I’ll definitely look into those schools. Rank wise I’m good (5/~480 but probably higher after this year ended) but it’s good to know that certain scholarships have these sorts of requisites, because I hadn’t realized that before.

8

I don’t agree that CMU for SCS would be a match, SCS has about a 6% acceptance rate. So it’d be a reach. You should add more matches to your list, like the ones @Dunboyne recommended.

9

CMU’s acceptance rate for SCS this year was 5%.

10

Are you asking to “flesh out” or “flush out” your plan?

11

^^^ LOL Maybe the OP wants to give substance to and eliminate. “Flushing out” is a creative choice, in that case. I’d go with the creepier, “Help flesh my list.”