<p>I'm having trouble rounding out my college list. If you can, i'd appreciate any help</p>
<p>My stats are : ~4.0 GPA / 33 ACT or 34 superscore/ i'd like to say good essays and recs/ decent ec's that are highly related to CS</p>
<p>My list so far is</p>
<p>Reach:</p>
<p>Brown - obligatory Ivy haha
WashU - Really like the environment from what i've seen
USC - Shifty area, but great school for CS
Berkeley - I'm a CA resident
UCLA - CA Resident</p>
<p>Match:</p>
<p>UCSD
UCD
Cal Poly SLO - good CS</p>
<p>Safety:</p>
<p>SJSU </p>
<p>I have one more private school I can apply to, but I don't know which one. Should it be a reach?match? Please let me know.</p>
<p>Some things I like:
- Serious but not cutthroat/competitive
- Nice area and people
- Good food
- Nice dorms/living areas</p>
<p>Well, that depends on how much your family will pay. If your family will pay all costs, then just choose any other school you like. If you need aid or merit scholarships, then you need to target the right schools.</p>
<p>Would a school like Santa Clara be affordable? I think you’d get a $25k per year merit award.</p>
<p>@mom2collegekids
Thank you! Whoa, I forgot to mention that when I wrote it. I will definitely be aiming for need aid. I’m not sure i’m good enough for merit aid so i’ll be applying to mostly 100% need met schools. My sister got into SCU 2 yrs ago with comparable stats and it came out to around ~15k, which is good, but not amazing. We can get UC’s for cheaper I believe.</p>
<p>@stanatedj
Wow, you think so? Hopefully they accept me, it’s one of my top choices. I hear the area is really nice along with awesome dorms/food. I’d be happy to go there. Their CS program isn’t that high, but I can always major in business or something because I hear it’s quite easy to switch majors over there. Thanks!</p>
<p>As much as I’d like to apply to UCSB, my parents don’t feel like paying for another app is necessary. We’re running on fee waivers mostly, which is why I’m adding another private, to use my last college board waiver. </p>
<p>I think John Hopkins is good, but it seems like a very tough school. I’ll definitely do some more research into it to see if I can get in. It’s definitely a possibility that I’ve looked into. CMU CS is actually one of the best in the nation, up there with MIT/Stanford/Cal, which makes it one of the hardest to get into. :/</p>
<p>Thanks for the suggestions! I don’t think JHU is a low reach, but i’ll definitely consider it.</p>
<p>@Mangiafuoco </p>
<p>Yeah, I know. I didn’t really care about going to good schools until this year and I guess it shows. Yeah weighted GPA is very low, but I’m hoping they’ll see something in my essays or possibly my EC’s and that my ACT could compensate for a small fraction of it. We’ll see though. Are you suggesting i switch some stuff out?</p>
I would strongly, strongly recommend against college choice dictating the direction of your career. “Prestige” does not have much impact on most careers and it doesn’t make sense to base a decision that affects the rest of your life around a 4 year experience.</p>
<p>@bonsly
Your “matches” are two UCs and Cal Poly SLO. These three schools care very little about test scores, so your ACT will not compensate anything. Besides, 33 is not a very high ACT score. I was not accepted by any of these three schools despite having a 2300 SAT score, a 3.66 unweighted, a 4.29 weighted, and a 4.00 capped UC GPA. Your GPA is better than mine, so you may be accepted by these schools.</p>
<p>@mom2collegekids I’m applying to 4! My parents are a bit misinformed and they think ucd is practically safety, which I know is not. They won’t pay for my app fees because they think it’s unnecessary. </p>
<p>I don’t know my EfC but i’m fairy low income.</p>
<p>Are you low enough income to qualify for fee waivers? </p>
<p>do you get free or reduced lunch? If so, I believe that not only do you get fee waivers, but I think 1 waiver can be used for several or all UCs. </p>
<p>Let me know, but I’d be surprised if you don’t get into Wash U - While they are very respected, they are not as difficult to get into as many in the top 20. Great school, great town, great people. Nothing but good to say about them. No, I didn’t attend there…I just live in the St. Louis area. I do work with numerous people who did in fact study Computer Science there and it isn’t actually a bad department at all.</p>
<p>@stanatedj Thanks! I will definitely let you know what’s up. I agree with everything you said because it really does seem like an awesome place to attend. Honestly, I don’t think WUSTL’s department is bad or anything like that, I was just noting the ranking. By the way, if you worked with people from WUSTL CS, does that mean you were a CS major yourself? How interesting!</p>
<p>@stanatedj the caveat with WUSTL is that they much prefer full pay over students who need full assistance. Hope I’m wrong and it’s an option for bonsly. </p>
<p>Yes, I am applying to 4. I’m sorry for the formatting, it might look a bit hard to read.</p>
<p>SoMuch2Learn is right. Unfortunately, WashU is need-aware and will probably prefer a higher income student rather than a low income one. </p>
<p>I don’t know if this is true, but I heard a statistic that there were much less low income students at WashU compared to other schools in the same “range.” I suppose that’s a bit unfortunate on my end, but I’ll likely still apply.</p>
<p>@SoMuch2Learn </p>
<p>I considered applying to HMC, but it seems to be far out of reach especially because I’m practically a <25th percentile applicant (my gpa is 4.0 W with no hooks along with other things) I considered adding Rice, because of the need-blind 100% need met, but Rice is still a very tough school.</p>