Help me find some likely options?

College Search & Selection
1

<p>I would be very appreciative of anyone who could provide me with some good matches. Also, thank you in advance to anyone who takes the time to read all of this.</p>

<p>=========MY APPLICATION===========</p>

<p>I am a Caucasian male from a fairly affluent family. No help there aside from the benefits I've already reaped.</p>

<p>I am a Junior at a fairly competitive and very rigorous liberal arts school in Portland, OR. I calculated my GPA to be about 3.8, but my school emphasizes the harsh grading in its description on our transcript, and sends a list of the class's grade-distributions rather than a calculated GPA or class rank. I would imagine I'm in the top 10-15% of my roughly 70 person class.</p>

<p>We don't technically have AP courses, but most of my science class and all of my math classes have been designated as accelerated/honors.</p>

<p>My classes as of Senior year will be:
-4 years English
-3 years Spanish (ending on IV)
-3.5 years History
-3.5 years Computer Science (one honors)
-4 years math (all honors/accelerated) - I took a precalculus/trigonometry substitute and was able to get into Calc Junior year. Will end on Calc II.
-4 years science (3 honors/accelerated) - the only class of note is going to be advanced physics Senior year</p>

<p>Testing:
-2140 on the SAT. I hope to improve in October after rigorous Summer preparation, but obviously there is no guarantee.
-790 SAT II Math II
-Will take SAT II chem, but I don't expect to do as well as math
-may also take SAT II lit, but I don't plan on studying, so probably won't do well
-Took Comp Sci and Calc AB AP tests, but I don't have the scores yet. At best I'd say 4 and 5, at worst 3 and 4
-Plan on taking Physics and Calc BC AP's next year</p>

<p>EC's as of Junior year are:
-3 years moderately important member of my schools fairly successful robotics team. We've made it to worlds every year I've been on it so far.
-3 years track team. I mainly Pole-vault and placed 6th in Sophmore year and 5th this year in the Oregon's 3A competition.
-I was a second-degree black-belt in Taekwondo, which I did for maybe eight years. I acquired some teaching experience, but I had to quit to make time for track and robotics.
-I've fulfilled my school's community service requirements, but haven't done anything distinguishing.</p>

<p>And finally, due to my school's emphasis on liberal arts as well as a short summer camp on college-essay-writing I will be attending, I expect my college essays will at very least not be complete crap (don't use the writing in this post as and indicator please ;) ).</p>

<p>===========COLLEGES=============</p>

<p>I have a rough list of options, which follows:
Reach Possibilities:
Stanford
Carnegie Mellon
UC Berkely
Cornell
UPenn</p>

<p>Main Schools:
Harvey Mudd
UMich
UCLA
Rice</p>

<p>Safety Schools:
U of Washington, Seattle
U of Il, Urbana-Champaign
Georgia Tech</p>

<p>I am almost certainly going to major in computer science, although physics and math are also options.</p>

<p>So... firstly, I know that my safety schools are all highly regarded for computer science, but they also have high acceptance rates. Please let me know if you think those rates are deceptive. Of all of the listed schools, the only ones that are set in stone are Stanford (my dream school, plus I have a legacy), Cornell, and possibly UIUC or UW. A majority of these schools were picked out of US news' graduate computer science ranking, because it's pretty damn hard to find rankings for undergraduate computer science school rankings.</p>

<p>I am aware of how difficult many of these schools are to get into, and also of how lacking my application will be compared to many of the people who will be turned down by them. This is why I'm asking for other suggestions. I'm looking for fairly distinguished schools that will look good on my resume, but also one that I have a reasonable chance of getting into.</p>

<p>=============================</p>

<p>Again, a huge thank you to anyone who actually read this all. I would be super grateful to anyone who can suggest a good school for computer science that I would have a reasonable shot at. Equally appreciated would be any comments on my chances of being accepted to, or the merits and disadvantages of any of the listed schools.</p>

2

<p>I definitely don’t think University of Washington is a safety, but I’m sure someone more informed can tell you better.</p>

3

<p>Good stats, but not that great due to the almost PERFECT candidates that you are going against in a couple months.If you can improve you SAT 1 or ACT in the next few months then do it, otherwise just apply and wait for the outcome.</p>

<p>That being said…Unfortunately…NONE of these schools are safeties due to you stats and your intended major. Look at them as all reaches and maybe matches.</p>

<p>On the side not…You said Stanford is a DONE DEAL due to LEGACY? I will caution against this because just few months ago… 2 Stanford legacies with stellar grades and overall application that I know of, were rejected. The school is almost “point on point” with Harvard and Columbia now, when it comes to selectivity … legacy or no legacy…(NOT ENOUGH ROOM FOR ALL THE LEGACIES THAT APPLIED).</p>

<pre><code> Cal poly might be a safety for you.
</code></pre>

<p>Best of Luck.</p>

4

<p>The problem about UW is you really want the direct admit or there is only roughly a third chance to enter the major. Maybe better for you because there doesn’t seem to be a risk you will get low grades or wash out altogether. UIUC is more difficult to get into CS/Engineering than the college in general I believe but I haven’t looked at the stats if available. I think GT is a bit deceptive as it is self selecting and a lot of kids will have good CS ECs. I think Mudd and Rice might have to be thought of as reaches or ‘low reaches’ maybe.</p>

<p>You should have some good advising at your college, shouldn’t you? And track records available of where students from your school generally get in?</p>

<p>Those tippy top CS grad schools have good undergrad depts yes. But there are really a lot of top CS grad schools and there are a lot more undergrad schools. Some of the good grad schools may not have the best undergrad environment or access to those famous profs. They may have huge intro classes and brutal weeding etc. Other colleges that don’t have stratospheric grad depts may still have very good undergrad depts. </p>

<p>I think you can afford to think about the type of environment you’d like to be in although you can have several, but be aware. Large publics, smaller tech oriented schools (like RPI), mid size privates, small privates. And try to get to know how the department is run and what its philosopy and strengths are. In some, CS is in engineering, some it’s Arts&Sciences, some you have a choice. Which appeals? Some are more theoretical, some more practical, some a blend. Some you will get research experiences easily and others you may have to defer to grad students or the very tippy top students in the school. Find out about these things. And some colleges are in rural areas, some cities, does it matter? There is a kid posting yesterday that he is wanting to transfer out of Cornell because it is too isolated and too Greek for him. He really likes a city but he chose a remote college town. For others it would be ideal.</p>

<p>For instance, I know a bit about Brown, for example, because my daughter went there. It is in a mid sized city, but has a self contained campus and tight knit community of 6,000. CS is a small department with excellent offerings and has several tracks, CS, CS-math, CS-applied math, Computational Bio, CS-Econ. CE is in the engineering dept. Applied math is very strong there. Intro classes are larger, maybe 100 or 200 then it drops off sharply to small classes. All the professors in the highly ranked grad school also teach and research with undergrads-- everyone does both Research opportunities are widely available to undergrads. When they set up the dept, 35 years ago, one of the first CS undergrad depts, they knew Cornell was very theoretical and Carnegie Mellon was very experimental and they decided to blend that as their thing. The school has an open curriculum so you can decide your own general classes and electives and sample departments. You can get a MS in a 5 year program. Try to get to know these kind of things.</p>

<p>Cornell has CS in the 3,000 person engineering school and also in the 4,000 college of arts and sciences where you can take more liberal arts electives. They take the same core though. They say that job offers in the two areas are similar. The college is remote but in a college town. It has a theoretical bent.</p>

<p>Some publics are going to have intro classes of 300 to even 600 and upper division may be smaller but still large. Some privates will have very large intro classes too. Maybe it matter to you, maybe it doesn’t.</p>

<p>Some colleges work on the coop system and you will do internships that will expose you to different companies and prepare you will for jobs and pay you pretty well.</p>

<p>I’m out of steam, but I guess you get the idea haha.</p>

5

<p>Yeah, consider all of those reach/matches. You have a reasonable shot to get into a few between them all, but just as much to get shut out.</p>

<p>Schools more in match/safety range to consider for CS: RPI, WPI, Rose-Hulman, U of Rochester</p>

<p>You didn’t include much about what you want in a school, and your list is all over the place so I couldn’t infer much there. As BrownParent said, you should be thinking about what you want in a school. Once you have a rough picture there, finding safety schools with the profile you want will be much easier, and the reach/match schools you prefer will become clearer as well.</p>

6

<p>UIUC engineering, CS in particular is overflowing. Their apps have doubled since 2010 with the average GPA of engineering applicants being about a 32.3, CS likely being even higher so I don’t know if I would consider it a safety at this point. UW and GTech are also no locks. I agree with Pengs. RPI, Rose-Hulman, and maybe some other big ten schools like Wisconsin and Minnesota might be worthwhile to look at.</p>

7

<p>Firstly, sorry ccco2018, I should have been more clear. When I said “set in stone,” I meant that I was certainly going to apply there, not that I was certainly going to get in. I am under no false impressions about my lackluster chances for getting into Stanford (or any of these schools), but I’m still going to apply there early decision.</p>

<p>Secondly, thank you so much to everyone who responded (especially BrownParent). I will look into finding some more reasonable safety colleges. I’m not sure if it is consequential, but both of my parents went to medical school at UW, so I figure that that won’t hurt my chances there.</p>

<p>Finally, for anyone else who happens upon this thread, I didn’t specify my preferences for the type of college environment earlier because I’m flexible about it. Expenses won’t be a problem, for one. I would prefer a school near a reasonably large city, as well as one that doesn’t have a large set of core requirements, but I’ll factor those in once I’m (hopefully) choosing between schools I’ve been accepted to. Quality of education provided and prestige of name are more important to me for deciding where to apply.</p>

8

<p>If you can afford the out-of-state tuitions at the UCs, then why not add UC Santa Cruz as a safety? You should have no problem getting in with your stats, and they have very strong STEM programs. They even have a satellite campus in Silicon Valley. San Jose State might also work as a safety. I say that because the Computer Science programs at Berkeley and UCLA are especially selective.</p>

9

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</p>

<p>What does this mean? Does it mean your parents can and will pay the price for any college on your list? Just want to be sure…</p>

<p>Also, Harvey Mudd is not a match for anybody… it is going to be on your reach list.</p>

10

<p>Intparent, yeah, pretty much. It just means that I won’t stand out during admissions in terms of race or gender, but I figured it would be distasteful not to acknowledge the advantages I’ve had as well. And yes, price won’t be a factor, at least during the application process. I put Harvey Mudd into the less selective group just because of the 20% admission rate. All of the schools on my list are difficult to get into, which is why I’m here.</p>

<p>And woogz, thanks, I’ll look into those two.</p>

<p>Another question, more along the lines of “rate my chances.” Would it be foolish to end up with a list along the lines of the one I provided. The advantage as I see it is that I would be happy at any of them, so I would only need to get into one. Worst-case, I figure I could get into UW without direct admission to the computer science department, which would still be preferable to most schools that I might include as safeties. Thoughts anyone?</p>

11

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</p>

<p>Mudd accepted 13% this year. And a smaller percentage of male applicants. Assume it is a match at your own risk.</p>

12

<p>I’d put Mudd as a reach and GA Tech as a low reach/match (not a safety). </p>

13

<p>You “safeties” probably are not, given that admission to the CS major is likely much more selective than the school overall (see a previous poster’s note about the CS major at Washington).</p>

<p>Yes, take a look at UCSC and SJSU if you want a less selective school near Silicon Valley and its numerous computer companies, and you can afford them at out-of-state prices.</p>

<p>There are other schools that are reasonably respectable for CS but not as difficult to get admitted to, like Stony Brook, UMass - Amherst, Virginia Tech, North Carolina State, Arizona State, Iowa State (look up the Regents’ Admission Index to see if you are an auto-admit), UC Riverside (see if you can sign up for the admission guarantee in June/July if your UC-weighted GPA is high enough), Oregon, and Oregon State.</p>

14

<p>I would say none of those schools are safeties. You don’t seem to have many ECs-particularly not really passionate ones. Were there any leadership positions in there? I would say your ‘reach’ list are high reaches (include Mudd in that group) and your matches are reaches, with the safeties matches. I’d add 2 safety schools and cull the amount of super selective schools</p>

15

<p>I agree that Harvey Mudd is not a “match”. Neither is Rice.
A 20% admit rate, with 75th percentile M+CR scores above 1500, makes a school a reach for anyone.
Single digit admission rates, with 75th percentile M+CR scores above 1500, makes a school a total crap shoot for anyone.</p>

<p>For CS, UCLA and Michigan may be reaches, too.
Probably none of those schools are safeties for an OOS CS major.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>I agree. Many other colleges have perfectly good undergraduate CS departments.
Universities that should fall in the OP’s “match” zone include:
Brandeis, Tulane, Wake Forest, Case Western, URochester
(in addition to many state universities such as Virginia Tech)</p>

16

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</p>

<p>I would not call Tulane’s CS department “perfectly good” unless the student was interested in the subareas of theory, artificial intelligence, or computational biology (without having any other core topics available like operating systems, databases, networks, compilers, etc.), as upper division course offerings appear to be limited to those areas, and each course is only offered once every two years: <a href=“http://tulane.edu/sse/cs/academics/undergraduate/junior-level.cfm”>http://tulane.edu/sse/cs/academics/undergraduate/junior-level.cfm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>The other schools listed above appear to have more complete offerings in their catalogs, but the student may want to check frequency of offering each course in the schedules.</p>

17

<p>Thanks for all of the suggestions. I understand that the categories I originally listed are probably mostly inaccurate, that’s fine, I understand that Harvey Mudd is a very difficult school to get into.</p>

<p>I should probably also note two things, firstly, I have been very dedicated to the extra-curriculars I listed. I’ve put in hundreds of hours to both Taekwondo and robotics. Secondly, I bombed the SAT writing section. My scores were 790 crit reading, 720 math, and 630 writing, so my combined math/crit reading was slightly over 1500. That’s also why I’m hoping to significantly improve my superscore the second time I take it.</p>

<p>Also, to repeat a part of my earlier question, is it really unreasonable to consider UW a safety school? I get that direct admission is difficult to get, but the university overall has a higher than 50% acceptance rate, and my scores are better than their mid-range of applicants. Since you don’t apply to a specific college for the first year, wouldn’t it be easy to get into?</p>

18

<p>UWA is a safety for you but for admission to major, it’s so selective you can’t really think of it as a safety (for major only).
You’re indeed a great candidate for HarveyMudd BTW.</p>

19

<p>Thank you very much MYOS, that’s what I was trying to confirm. It’s also reassuring to here some positive predictions once in a while. :wink: </p>

20

<p>Do something with your coding/Programming to increase your odds. :)</p>