My son graduated on time from UC Berkeley with a double major math/CS, and only took 14-16 credits a semester. He started in multivariable calculus, so skipped a year of college calculus. He could have graduated after 3 years if he didn’t add CS as a second major in his senior year. We are both confused why some can’t graduate from a public U in 4 years, especially with one major. Did he just get lucky getting into classes? Or organize his schedule well? Maybe if he completely changed majors he couldn’t have done it, but very curious.
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One son went to a large Cal State and another to a UC. Neither had any issues in graduating in 4 years. Both had AP credit coming in and both did take 1-2 summer courses to lighten the load since they both were doing internships during the school year. As long as a student is not too picky on class times/professors and are diligent in knowing if certain classes are offered only at specific times of the year, the student should be fine.
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Not if he’s looking to go to Cornell. I would recommend visiting (revisiting?) in the winter.
Maybe Lehigh? Not sure on the CS but they have a very good Engineering program so I would thing CS is good too.
I believe Boston University is boosting their CS program (new building, new majors, etc).
Tufts? Not a match but maybe an easier reach.
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This is the first I’ve heard anyone say this. I know plenty of kids who went to state schools (both elite publics as well as a tier or two below). Many different majors, all graduated in 4 years and some a semester early.
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Most state schools are not that selective, so it is not surprising that many students can only handle lighter course loads. In addition, many have less wealthy students, so they may have to reduce course loads to have time to work to pay for school.
But a strong student who can easily afford the college is much more likely to graduate on time (or early).
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This is a big over generalization. The only students my D knows that aren’t graduating in 8 semesters are those that had a late change of major. (Big state school).
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This is what came to my mind too - from what I have seen state schools are more likely to accept AP credit.
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Many of the state universities have 5 year graduation rates in majors within the engineering colleges because of the 5 year co-op programs (work 3 semesters).
Purdue is not a match for CS - oos cs acceptance rate is sub 10%.
I went to one of the state schools on this thread and graduated in 3 years, with only 1 incoming AP credit. The availability of summer classes was outstanding, which is how I was able to do it. Most students (including me) were not wealthy and had jobs. That’s why they take lighter loads, as noted upthread.
I agree with the Utah suggestion. It’s quite sunny and really can’t be beat for outdoors stuff.
ETA: meant to reply to another poster, not primarily ucbalum.
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For smaller and a notch or two below Rice, Duke etc consider Colorado school of Mines. Lots of som !!
Hello, as a fellow Junior with very similar stats, I would say the best resources for finding match schools are naviance and your councilors. I think this is especially important for public schools but applies to private schools too. In my experience, your councilor and naviance can generally tell you much more about your shot at a school than just an acceptance rate. For example, UNC, UT austin, UVA, and Purdue are considered reaches for CS oos normally, but after looking at naviance and talking to my counselor, I found out that UVA and purdue accept basically everyone from my range whereas UNC actually rejects more students than johns hopkins (I mention these schools because dozens of students from our school apply every year sp there is a decently sized database).
As for actual recommendations, I recommend looking at honors programs at schools like arizona and alabama, honors classes tend to have less people (albeit you will probably take very large courses as well), and cost less. These two schools are also very sunny.
I might recommend liberal arts colleges too, but these have very different environments compared to research universities. I’ve heard that people like the weather at U Richmond
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