<p>Carnegie Mellon's SCS is my dream school, but I don't think I have the stats to make it. I really brought my rank up since freshman year, but it's still not where I want it to be. Someone have any suggestions?</p>
<p>Planned Major: Computer Science
GPA: 3.6 (UW)
Rank: Top 15%
Classes that I took last year (They don't let sophomores take AP's)- Honors English, Honors Chemistry, Honors Algebra 2 and Trig, Honors Spanish 3, Computer Science, Honors World Civ 2
-Taking Next Year: AP Computer Science A, AP Economics, AP American History, Honors Calc A and basically all the other classes above in Honors
PSAT: I scored a 195 last year, but hopefully that will come up.
SAT I: I've taken a dozen tests and they all seem to float in the 1950s range. I don't know what to do here.
I should get good recs.
EC's (I need a few here too): JV Volleyball, Key Club, Photography Club, Boy Scouts Star Scout, and I did 50 hours of service last year
Thanks for looking at this in advance</p>
<p>My son taught himself Linux, did some of MIT’s open course ware, did computing tournaments, worked freelance for a company that does websites, did some volunteer programming for medical researchers (something for sequencing proteins, and something for modeling flow out of a pipette). He only had 2 schoolbased ECs however - Academic Team and Science Olympiad. You look more well-rounded, which is also fine, but those are some things you might think about.</p>
<p>Sounds like the kind of stuff I did, LoL ^_^.</p>
<p>Kevin, there’s no way for me to know what were the factors that tipped the scale for my S. Our guess 1) ACT score - 35 versus SAT of 2050 or so because he was much stronger in math/sci than in English. If you meet this profile, consider the ACT. At the very least do a practice ACT and see if the equivalent SAT score is higher.
2) AP courses - when we visited, the admissions director indicated they preferred to see kids taking the most difficult offerings; my S had taken AP calc AB, phy C, and Java in his soph year in HS and made a point of mentioning that he took these APs despite being advised not to do so (and getting his counselor to override some school requirements).
3) Extensive math and computer ECs - competitions and fairs. eg. AMC, ARML for math, Top coder, USACO, Blackhawk for programming, and projects at science fairs for comp sci. </p>
<p>While I have no accurate way to tell you what will get you the most bang, I would say 1) study for higher scores and 2) get involved in some computer project from which you can learn computer science (in addition to just programming) and if you liked the experience, articulate this in your essay.</p>
<p>Thanks everyone for the suggestions! Dad<em>of</em>3 I am looking into the ACT and will take a few practice tests before school starts, but mathmom, how do I work freelance for a company? Is there a site that has a repository of them? Thank you again for the help, really appreciate it.
(I’m currently a beta-tester for a team of coders that flashes ROMs for a certain phone. Is that something I can put on my college essay?)</p>
<p>Well it’s all about contacts. My son was lucky to have an uncle in the field, but he wouldn’t have gotten the job if he hadn’t proved capable. I asked my brother if he could spend a week just going to work with him to get an idea of what a company was like the summer after freshman year. He impressed everyone so much they gave him some small things to work on and ended up paying him with a gift certificate because he actually turned out to be useful. Then sometime in the fall my son was bored with school and asked my uncle if he could do something one weekend when we were up there. Pretty soon he was working pretty regularly for them. My brother’s company uses a lot of freelancers as their workload fluctuates a fair amount. </p>
<p>Absolutely put that you are a beta-tester. My son also wrote about writing the code for a popular mod for Civ 4. I don’t think any of it hurt.</p>
<p>Thanks for the answer, but I guess that’s not going to help me since I don’t have any connections like that, but thanks!</p>