Help with finding Safety Schools

College Search & Selection
1

Hey guys! I’m a senior and I’ve started my college applications. However, I realized that my “safety” schools may not be true safety schools, and I want to make sure that I’m applying to a good list of safe schools.

SAT: 1550+, and 8/6/8 essay
Subject SAT: 800 on Math 2, 790 on Chemistry
UW GPA: all A’s so I believe it’s a 4.0, but my school has a strange system for UW GPA

AP Classes:
9th Grade: World History (3)
10th Grade: Microeconomics (5), Calc AB (5), Bio (4)
11th Grade: Physics 1 (4), Calc BC (5), Psych (5), Chem (5)
12th Grade: Comp Sci, Lit, Stats, Macroeconomics, Physics 2

State: somewhere in New England, not Massachusetts though (Also, I visited and didn’t like my in-state school)

I don’t want to list my extracurriculars, but I’m pretty involved (I have 3 leadership roles) and they’re mostly STEM-related, which is the field I want to go into. I don’t have any research or science fair stuff, but I’ve done some non-competitive summer programs (that I really enjoyed!) related to math and computer science. I think my intended major might be Electrical Engineering or Computer Science, but I want to keep my options open so good engineering/STEM programs are important to me.

I talked to my parents, and money isn’t a concern. Also, location doesn’t matter to me.

These are schools that I’m currently considering (I realize they’re not safeties but that’s why I need your help! I don’t mean to be rude or egotistical in any way!):
-RPI
-WPI
-Northeastern (a lot of kids from my school get in [around 8 this year!] and my stats are above their stats)
-UIUC

If you have any suggestions for safety schools to look into, I would really appreciate your help! Thank you in advance!

2

Your parents would be fine with 50k a year? You prefer privates? You’ll likely have to include publics for safeties. CS is an impacted major.

But WPI is probably a safety.

3

Thank you @gearmom! I don’t necessarily prefer privates, but I need help finding public schools that would be safeties for me. I do have UVA and Georgia Tech on my list, but they’re not safeties at all.

4

UMass Amherst or UConn would likely be safeties but you don’t like them. They’re ranked around #25 for Computer Science. University of Arizona would be a safety. They are ranked a little lower than UMass. Rutgers might be more if a match than a safety and you may not like it but they are a top school. In that same category of match/safety Purdue perhaps. University of Alabama would be a safety. They are good for engineering probably crosses over to CS. @mom2collegekids

UIUC might be your biggest reach but they might like that you are from NE. Would you consider Canadian universities? @MYOS1634 Some good schools there.

You’ll get into one of the PIs IMO. Apply early.

FYI http://www.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/computer-science-degrees-best-roi/

5

Maryland, NC State, Pitt, Penn State, Florida are good choices for a CS and could be a safeish.

Oklahoma, Colorado, Arizona, UCF, Virginia Tech and Alabama are safe.

6

@gearmom Thank you so much, I truly appreciate it!! I will definitely be adding some of those colleges to my list! And that link is helpful as well, thank you for that!

7

UIUC CS is very competitive and you are likely to pay $50k+ per year. You may want to add Purdue to the list. It would be a low match to near safety.

8

@Greymeer Thank you so much! I really appreciate the help!

9

Rutgers?
PSU?
Alabama?
idk

10

@billcsho Thank you so much for your help! I will definitely look into Purdue!

11

If you are interested in PSU, you could apply to the honors college, Schreyer: https://www.shc.psu.edu/admissions/apply/firstyear.cfm

12

@SREE33 Thank you for the suggestions, will look into those schools for sure!

13

@bodangles Thank you so much!

14

@dancinginastorm Though it’s a local favorite, I’m not sure I’d choose WPI over Purdue for CS. Really think about your offers when they come in.

15

@gearmom Will do! And if you don’t mind me asking, why do you say Purdue over WPI? I just want to hear your perspective on their differences, since I don’t know too much about Purdue

16

RIT would be a great option to look at. Co-op program, easier to get into than WPI, good in tech (obviously as a tech school).

As far as Purdue CS goes, Purdue is a really great school for engineering, and is relatively strong in CS too, but it doesn’t have nearly the same pull it does in engineering by reputation. Curriculum wise it’s pretty standard, and it will do just as good a job of getting you into top companies as the other schools on your list will. A big negative for me is how unnecessarily tough it is, particularly for CS. WPI is a great teaching program with an undergraduate focus, smaller class sizes, and approachable undergraduate professors. When I was looking at schools (and had a similar list to this thread), WPI made the list - Purdue did not.

WPI also runs a similar curriculum discussed here if you look in the acknowledgments at the bottom.

http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/Thoughts/Growing_a_Programmer.html

As far as Engineering goes, Purdue does have a good advantage there, but for other general STEM subjects, WPI will compare just fine. They are very different environments as schools, so I wouldn’t focus on their ranks too much when generally comparing.

17

@PengsPhils Thank you so much!

18

@dancinginastorm

Just talking about CS and not engineering which is a different animal. It depends on your goals and interests. If you want to work in the Boston Tech Corridor, no problem with WPI. But you should be aware that WPI is a regionally known school. Purdue is a nationally and globally respected school. So if you would like the opportunity to work on the west coast, Purdue could give you more mileage.

WPI is not a research university like Purdue (thus the regional reputation IMO), so it may not have the big thinkers in areas that you are interested. Say for example that you are interested in big data, the top professors for that are likely at places like the University of Washington and Purdue. As an undergraduate, this could affect your education in two ways. You could get to access some of those topics and professors during your upper level courses and your lower level courses could have a big data flavor. So for example, at UMass some lower level courses have an information retrieval focus most likely because they want to feed their renowned UMass IR grad school and that is the topic that professors are passionate about.

Certainly, you could choose WPI for fit. Students do make fit choices. But you should be aware of reputation footprints and look at course curriculum to see which universities are centers of excellence for which topics (cyber security, forensics, artificial intelligence, information retrieval, big data…)

19

@gearmom Ohhh, I see. Thank you so much! I’ll definitely keep that in mind! And I really appreciate all your help! :slight_smile:

20

@gearmom

While WPI is a bit more known regionally, you will have no trouble getting jobs on the west coast from there. In CS, reputation of school really doesn’t matter that much unless it’s one of the big CS names, and Purdue does not have the name in CS as much as it has in engineering, where it is one of the top schools without question. I don’t think there’s much of a mileage difference between the two at all. The only difference I would note is that Purdue will get more on campus recruiting simply due to its size.

That is my whole point. The CS industry will not care about Purdue’s reputation and see it as something inherently better than WPI, even in California.

Your post implies that more upper division electives will be available at Purdue, but the course catalog looks pretty similar to me*:

https://www.cs.purdue.edu/academic-programs/courses/
https://web.wpi.edu/academics/catalogs/ugrad/cscourses.html

All the subjects you mentioned can be found at WPI (except for forensics, which is not typically viewed as an area of CS but rather an application of CS. I can’t find it in the Purdue catalog either, for reference.):
2 security courses
2 AI courses
2 data mining courses
2 database systems courses

The two catalogs are very comparable.

Point is, from a pure CS standpoint, unless you’re planning to get heavily involved in research, I think WPI actually offers the better CS program. Purdue should absolutely be on the list for general STEM and Engineering, and given that CS is merely one option in this case, still could be the better option between them. But from a pure CS standpoint, Purdue is not a tier above WPI when you look closely at what a CS major at each will get out of the schools.

WPI may have more strength regionally than nationally, but in CS, again, it really does not matter where your degree is from in most cases. If two students with the same resumes apply to a company in California except for different schools, the company may not even notice.

*I haven’t checked the frequency of offerings, which should be checked.

Source: CS Major, worked in a research lab with Ph.D.'s for a big tech company in California that worked with AI, ML, Data Mining, Computer Vision/Graphics, Natural Language Processing, etc.