<p>Hey guys. I'm a US Citizen, living in India.</p>
<p>My academics are alright. I did score a 93% in my 10th grade board exams (pretty big here in India), but I didn't score well at all in 11th. 12th grade is still going on, so I can't say much other than it isn't going well.</p>
<p>SAT- 1970. ACT- 29. I'm taking Math and Physics subject tests this week, but I'm not feeling too confident about em. </p>
<p>I've played on my school basketball team since the 7th grade, and I play the piano and guitar (not at the same time, obviously) with a band at many school concerts, not to mention the ones outside. I have a design blog, too. </p>
<p>I basically want to know, is it even WORTH it to apply to Stanford, Columbia, etc? How about UCs? Or should I stick to Safeties? I definitely need lots of financial aid, as my dad is earning in rupees and not dollars.</p>
<p>im in a pretty similar situation with almost the same sat score. Stanford and columbia are going to be huge reaches but u can still apply if you want to. for the UC’s, you probably have a chance at ucsd but berkeley and la are reaches. what are your 11th grade marks and your intended major?? that would help to chance you better</p>
<p>Well, I’m not sure if telling my eleventh marks would matter, because the Indian system is slightly (edit: VERY) different. But, I was pretty much just passing all around, except for Computer Science.</p>
<p>And yeah, I want to major in Computer Science. But I’m not your everyday comp-science-engineering-guy. I’d love to learn about new, practical things in terms of social interaction and marketing, etc. I’m obsessed with Design, too. Basically I want to design through code.</p>
<p>If you have a lot of Cs, I would say that Stanford, Columbia and most of the good UCs for CS (UCB, UCLA, UCSD) are out of reach. You can still try your luck, but don’t get your hopes too high.</p>
<p>I am also a US citizen studying in India (IB diploma though) and applying as a CS major this year, and whatever the curriculum that you follow is (ICSE, CBSE etc), it won’t hurt you. However, your scores definitely will.</p>
<p>I suggest looking at schools like:
Purdue
UMass Amherst
U of Maryland
GTech (reach)
UMich (big reach though)</p>
<p>Those are just a few that are still very good at CS and are much less difficult to get into, even as an OOS applicant.</p>
<p>Thank you so much! That really helped.
Yeah, it’s better to be realistic, rather than raising your hopes too high. I’ll probably apply to Stanford and UC just for kicks, but you are right. I’ll focus more on something like SUNY or CUNY.</p>
Well, around C’s for everything. Except Computer Science. And 12th isn’t going so well.