<p>Once again, take a look at the school’s common data set, section C7, and see if “level of interest” is considered as a factor in admission.</p>
<p>I’d be very surprised if the School of Comp Sci at Carnegie Mellon cares at all about visits. My impression (son just graduated) is that they care a lot about accomplishments and aptitude. They always accept some kids who haven’t been exposed programming, but they accept a lot more who are really accomplished.</p>
<p>Not on my son’s list of schools, but I am procrastinating so just checked Carnegie Mellon’s common data set – both level of interest and interview are identified as “important” factors in admissions decision, along with essays, recs etc.</p>
<p>Where do you find a schools common data set?</p>
<p>You can find most schools’ info on the school web site by searching for Common Data in the website search function, that should pull up the annual form for the past 10 years or so. </p>
<p>All kinds of useful stuff – average GPAs of admits, range of GPAs and testing etc, as well as the factors considered in admission. Many schools list rigor, rank, gpa and testing as “very important” factors in admission, and then often have ECs, essays, recs, interviews etc as “important.” But there are variations – for instance, Michigan only lists “rigor” as “very important,” and then interest as well as gpa etc as “important.” </p>
<p>Some schools do not publish their Common data set, I seem to remember being frustrated that I could not find Tulane and maybe Bard. Here on CC, may be either College Search or College Admissions board, there is also a sticky-noted thread compiling the Common Data set links for literally hundreds of schools, though some of those links may be outdated. </p>
<p>Good luck.</p>
<p>mathmom - how accomplished do you have to be for CMU? He’s attended computer camp in the summers and taught himself some sort of 3D program I think, but he hasn’t done much more than that. He’s also scored very high on his SAT I and II’s in math and science and received two 5’s in AP Calc and Chem. </p>
<p>You’re making me very nervous! LOL!</p>
<p>^I’m curious too. My son is applying SCS too. I read some student posts and it seems like to me tat CMU does accept students without any computer language experiences.</p>
<p>CMU’s common data set indicates that level of applicant’s interest as “important”.
<a href=“http://www.cmu.edu/ira/CDS/pdf/cds_2010_11/c_firstyear_admission.pdf[/url]”>http://www.cmu.edu/ira/CDS/pdf/cds_2010_11/c_firstyear_admission.pdf</a></p>
<p>You have to realize that admissions at CMU are done by the separate schools - some of the schools may well care about interviews but I don’t think SCS does. It also depends on how you define interest - of course SCS wants students who are very interested in being computer scientists! Level of experience varies a lot, they always accept some students who have really very little exposure. I think that my son had more than average, but he still started in the middle level of the possible intro courses. He’d worked freelance of an online publishing company for two summers (he worked on something for the OED and something for Sky and Telescope). He worked on a game mod that got top rating one year at Gamer’s Mag. He took AP Comp Sci AB as a high school freshman. And he had taught himself a bunch of stuff mostly about the Linux kernel. He took a graphics class one summer at Columbia. I think he’d also done some stuff with MIT’s opencourseware. He spent hours every day messing around on computers. As I said, I really think he had more average.</p>
<p>When DS did this 10 years ago, we were not going to send him and he wasn’t going to spend the time. Really now is the classroom any different from the next classroom. Is the dorms any different, are the student’s any different? At this level -IMO, no.</p>
<p>DS was interested in the peer schools of CMU. He’d be pleased to get into anyone of them. That’s 10 schools he applied. Seven schools east of Chicago, and three schools in California. Not going to happen from the PNW. </p>
<p>He applied to CMU’s SCS, CIT, MSC. Got into CIT and MSC. Got a BS MechE. and went to a grad school where he got a MS-CS where he did some i/o work. You know what, he works with computers as an app designer, i/o, and previously robotics; And he has never taken a CS class other than application classes-which was intended path. He picked up 6-8 programming languages by the Help Button and the Dummy books. I don’t know if his work is fancy or not, but he’s getting paid rather well. </p>
<p>You can get to where you want to go, via the scenic road.</p>
<p>Tell’em that you really like to visit, but money and time are issues. Tell each school that. Maybe you can get one of the schools to pay for the visit. :p</p>