Hi, thanks for taking the time to read this! Please tell me some schools I shouldn’t apply to as my list is too long. My college list is attached below.
Academics:
4.6 Weighted, 3.9 Unweighted GPA
35 ACT
6 AP tests – three 4’s, three 5’s
Rank: top 1-5%
Junior course load: AP Calc AB, AP Lang, AP Comparative Gov&Pol, APUSH, AP BC Calc, Spanish 4
Senior course load: AP Stats, Calc 3, AP Human Geo, AP Chem, AP Spanish, AP Lit
Honors/Awards:
AP Scholar with Distinction
National Honor Society
Spanish Honor Society
Presidential Volunteer Award
National Merit Semi-finalist
NCWIT National Award Winner
Extracurriculars:
School Newspaper, Vice Editor-In-Chief
Soccer (Varsity)
Track (Varsity)
Runs/founded an organization teaching girls how to code. (President)
Built an app currently on the Android app store
Member of School Musical Cast
Research at a local university
Science Olympiad (President)
Internship with local politicians, helped them on their campaigns
Volunteer:
Over 200 hours at local hospital
Other:
Ethnicity – Asian
Sex – F
Intended major – Computer Science
School – Competitive Public School
State – Wisconsin
My College List:
uw madison
dartmouth
yale
northwestern
uchicago
washU
notre dame
vanderbilt
brown
cornell
stanford
harvard
rice
emory
princeton
harvey mudd
columbia
nyu
upenn
boston college
duke
mit
caltech
This list is crazy reach heavy. What do you want to study? What’s your preferred location? Preferred size of school? Rural or city? Other than “prestige”, I see no common thread with these schools.
Congrats on your hard work and success in high school!
U Wisconsin is a safety – every other school is a reach for anyone. Are you okay if that’s your only choice? Not saying it will be by any means but picking some less reach-y schools will give you more options.
Also, many of these colleges only offer need-based aid so it’s important to know your family’s EFC and what your parents are willing to pay. Getting into a college that costs $70k when you can only pay $40k can lead to great disappointment.
Not only is your list too long, other than UW-Madison most every school you have listed is a reach, even with your objective statistics. My suggestion is to apply to no more than 9 or 10 schools: 1-2 “safety”, 5-6 “match”, 2-3 “reach”.
If you want to start culling some of your many reaches, remove Duke, Emory, NYU, BC, and Vanderbilt from the list, as well as most (if not all) of the Ivies; you can get into better computer science programs for less money elsewhere.
Look in Fiske’s Guide, or some comparable publication, to find a list of public universities that have good computer science programs, and add them to your list as “match” schools. Virginia Tech, Pitt, and Purdue would be a good ones to consider. Also, perhaps a private school such as Case Western Reserve University.
@gandalf78
Why would he remove those schools from his list when he has a great chance at getting into them?
CS at those schools are good enough. The namebrand of the school would be enough to fill any potential lapse in the education when it come to employment.
That’s a strange list: one match/safety and then all reaches for everyone - no normal reach, no match.
A better list, assuming you’re from Wisconsin, would likely include UMN (honors) unless you’re 100% sure you want to stay n Wisconsin.
I’d add Northeastern and Case Western for sure.
Then, think if the atmosphere you want.
Brown and Dartmouth are polar opposite, as are Northwestern and Chicago.
Do you want Greek life and work hard/play hard, or do you want a more studious intellectual student body?
Why BC or NYU for CS?
Religious colleges (with philiishy and theology requirements) ok?
Once we know what you want beside prestige in rankings, we’ll be able to help out cut the list.
UW Madison is a great university for computer science. I used to work with a few people there who were doing a software project that I was involved with and I was very impressed by the quality of the people there. It was also a very nice location to visit.
Having one really good safety to me takes a lot of pressure off for the rest of the list. I would be tempted to add a second safety although if you are really confident that you will get into UW this isn’t really necessary. You should however cut the list at least in half.
If you are interested in computer science, then you should look very hard at the quality of the computer science program at all of the schools on your list. I think that I would drop NYU, Chicago, and all of the Ivy’s except for Cornell. If I had the opportunity to attend UW Madison for CS, I don’t think that I would even bother applying to Boston College, Emory, Notre Dame, or a few others on this list.
Caltech, MIT, Stanford, and Harvey Mudd are obvious top schools for CS.
“Other than “prestige”, I see no common thread with these schools.”
This is my feeling also. If you want to study computer science, then IMHO you should look for universities with strong programs in computer science.
@emorynavy: See comments of @DadTwoGirls. Also, while the computer science programs at the schools that I suggested the OP remove are, in your words, “good enough,” that’s the problem – they are “good enough” but there are ones that are better; and I think that employers who are hiring computer science grads are going to be familiar with those computer science programs that are more than “good enough” and not be blinded by prestige.
But if it’s about prestige, and puffing up one’s ego (and one’s parents’ egos, as well), then by all means settle for those computer science programs that are “good enough” – but not the best.
@DadTwoGirls I’m not entirely dedicated to just computer science. Harvey Mudd, Stanford, Caltech, and MIT all offer Computer Science + X programs, which is perfect for me as I get to apply computer science to another “category.” As far as I known, other top CS programs (other than UIUC) don’t offer these programs.
I genuinely don’t know how compelling Dartmouth is in consideration of a CS career. Maybe it is and I just don’t know? It’s a very fine school, obviously.
Have you looked at Northeastern’s CS+X programs? You’d get a solid merit award there for NMF (has been 30K/year in the recent past) and it’s an excellent place to blend a strong CS program with great co-op opportunities with other interests like journalism or poli sci or whatever other X’s you’ve been thinking about. It tends toward the “reach-for-everybody” category too but I’d at least call it a low reach for you. In a head-to-head between Northeastern and NYU, which I think are similar in terms of overall reputation, your interests are some of Northeastern’s biggest strengths, whereas NYU’s greatest strengths lie elsewhere. Also, in the super-selective Boston schools, I would have thought Tufts before BC for your interests - have you considered both and liked BC better?
Scripps would be a low-match for you, and it would allow you to major in CS at Mudd with more flexibility than the Mudd students get. The Mudd core is very lab-science heavy, which is fine if that’s what you like… but if you’d rather be mixing your CS with more of a non-STEM concentration, you might find the right balance, plus merit aid potential, at Scripps.
Some of this depends on finances though - if you’re eligible for significant need-based aid then merit may not be a big draw. Knowing your $ situation would probably help to trim or at least rebalance your list.
If certain that Computer Science is your first choice major , then you need to ADD the other UW (University of Washington–Seattle) to your list. Georgia Tech is another CS program to consider. University of Illinois, Carnegie Mellon University, & UCal-Berkeley.
P.S. Northwestern University (Evanston/Chicago) has a great CS & X program that you should consider if you want small classes.
If UW-M is your safety, the list to build should be easy. it’s one of the top schools in the nation for CS, so I would immediately eliminate those way down. So my list might look like this now:
Stanford
MIT
Caltech
Harvard
Columbia
Cornell
Princeton
Harvey Mudd
UW-Madison
@RomonaPhan1102: You need to be aware of which universities offer a direct admit to their CS major. I believe that the University of Washington in Seattle & Univ. of Illinois UC do.
Then you should apply to CMU, MIT, Stanford, UCal-Berkeley, Illinois, Michigan, Cornell, Georgia Tech, University of Washington (feeds into Microsoft & other major employers) and your safety Wisconsin-Madison.
If you want small classes & flexibility of adding a second major, then Northwestern should be among your top choices.
