Indian Male with awkward GPA and SAT applying to CS schools (CMU, MIT, UIUC, Stanford, Harvard)

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

Schools:

Reach: Stanford (RD), MIT (EA), Harvard (RD), Carnegie Mellon (ED, also my dream school),

Match: UIUC (In-State, EA, dream school for when CMU rejects me), Purdue (Rolling)

Safety: University of Illinois at Chicago (In-State, Rolling), Iowa State (our school has like a 90% acceptance rate there lmao)

Demographics: Male, Indian, Illinois, decent and well-off public school (top 25 US News for the state)

Intended major: Computer Science (rip in affirmative action)

Academics:

SAT: 1540/1600 - 790 Math, 750 Reading

SAT II: Math Level 2: 800, Physics: 730

Class rank: School does not give exact ranks, but I am definitely in top 5%

GPA: 3.88/4.0 (UW), 4.61 (W, all honors and APs are +1),

Coursework: Mostly A’s (B in semester 1 English 9 Honors, semester 2 Pre-Calculus Honors, AP Physics 1 both semesters, and semester 1 Calculus BC). Nearly all Honors and APs (exceptions are choir, one elective freshman year and freshman/sophomore French). Here are all the AP exams I’ve taken (all 4s and 5s):

Freshman Year: AP Human Geography, AP Psychology (self study), AP Environmental Science (self study)

Sophomore: Comparative Gov (self study), Microeconomics (self study), European History, Computer Science A, Macroeconomics (self study)

Junior: English Language, US History, Calculus BC, Statistics, Physics 1, Physics C: Mechanics (Self-Study)

Senior: US Gov, Calculus III (through UIUC), World History, Art History

Awards: National AP Scholar, school award for making a positive impact in the school body (nominated by pre-calculus teacher, award is by nomination only)

Extracurriculars:

Prestigious biology summer research program at UChicago (application only, Junior Year)

Work as a CS Intern at a $500k+ national non-profit academic organization (3 years)

Developed and published two Android apps (one game and one database), the game with ~2,000 downloads and the database with ~1,000 (2 years)

Work in IT at a local law firm (3 years)

Mock Trial (4 Years)

  • Placed Top 5 twice at prestigious international tournament * Consistently placed high in state competitions (Basically one of the two best teams in the state) * Secretary 1 Year, Captain 2 Years

Computer Science Club (3 Years)

  • Helped develop and design apps for the school district and promote CS contests and activities in order to boost enrollment into CS classes and promote STEM to the school

Model United Nations (3 Years)

  • Basically a blow-off club, although we go to one of the largest MUN conferences every year. Received outstanding delegate award for solo performance at said conference

Winter Madrigals/Spring Musical (2 Years) - Served as principal role in one year of the musical, and served as Prince of the madrigal during the other year

Math National Honors Society (2 Years)

Social Studies National Honors Society (2 Years)

Yu-Gi-Oh (3 Years, should I even write this??)

  • Have placed in the top spots of several regional qualifiers for the national tournament, and have made YouTube videos for the game for a while with a total channel view count of ~25k

~30 hours volunteering at a Hindu church

Essays and Letters of Rec: Essays are a solid 8/10, Counselor Rec is 6/10, Rec #1 (AP Physics 1 teacher) is 9/10, Rec #2 (APUSH teacher) is 8/10, Rec #3 (Founder of the non-profit I intern at) is 9/10

My Concerns/Thoughts: I’m mainly worried that my UW GPA and my SATs will stop me from even having a chance of making my reaches or UIUC. Am I that screwed?

2

Have you talked to your parents about what they will contribute to pay for your college, and have you run the net price calculators on all of the colleges?

Stanford, MIT, Harvard, CMU SCS, UIUC CS should generally be considered reaches for everyone other than perhaps relatives of huge donors and the like.

3

@ucbalumnus as part of my parent’s legal separation, they’re required to pay the entirety of my tuition and college fees 50-50, regardless of school. We’re well off enough to afford it

4

Good luck with calculus 3! Heard is hard

5

Your stats, even for an Indian, are solid for those schools. Your issue (outside of being an Asian applying or CS) is that your ECs show stem and non-stem which could raise concern with adcoms as to who you are and how you’ll contribute to the school. If you can bring out the CS stuff more, that would help. You should get into UIUC, does you high school have Naviance to show how students did with your gpa/sats? Good luck!

6

Lol what? Your SAT and GPA are definitely not the problem here :wink:

7

You have solid academics and extracurriculars. The only red flag I could possibly see is that you have clubs like yuh GI oh and the musical which don’t seem to fit with your whole cs and political science vibe. One question I have is how you got an internship as a cs intern.

8

@theloniusmonk - for some reason, our school has Naviance but doesn’t give us access, lmao. Since Common App only allows for 10 ECs, I was thinking of cutting Social Studies National Honor Society and the Musical from my list of ECs. Would that make the application stronger in your opinion?

@kames02 - The internship is at an academic sport organization that our team has competed under. I met the founder and eventually applied as an intern. They have very few part-time staff so they kinda needed someone, and the founder was impressed by my work ethic and the fact that I was their only applicant under 18. Does the whole Yu-Gi-Oh and musical thing make my application that confusing? One of the apps I developed was for another card game (Dragon Ball Super), so I felt it made sense to at least put that on there. I can understand the concern for the musical, but my thoughts were that with a school like CMU that has such a strong music program that throwing in my musical works would help. Since Common App only allows for 10 ECs, I was thinking of cutting Social Studies National Honor Society and the Musical from my list of ECs. Would that make the application stronger in your opinion?

9

So mock trial and MUN are typical of social science and humanities majors which will have colleges wondering if you’re really passionate about CS or just applying for your parents. I would not list the Yi Gi Oh awards, if the you-tube shows something other than playing the game like development, initiative, mention it. Music is very good, it’s totally fine to have a non-academic club like music or a sport. You don’t want colleges think you’ll be going from dorm to class and back to dorm to play video games.

10

@theloniusmonk Your explanation really got me thinking there! I’ll be honest, I kinda forgot to consider the impression that I’m giving off to colleges. Mock Trial at least shows my leadership ability and since our program is one of the world’s highest ranked (e.g. some members have been directly scouted by UIUC, Harvard, Miami University in Ohio, etc), I thought it would still contribute to the application. As for MUN, I didn’t really do much there besides win the 1st place outstanding delegate award at the competition, but I’m not really sure what I could put onto the application besides that (unless I were to split the app development ECs into the ones that were published through a company and ones that I self published). So am I better off cutting Yu-Gi-Oh and SSNHS then?

11

I disagree with the notion that you should cut your Musical/YGO extracurricular, as you already have 5-6 STEM focused activities. I’m sure it wouldn’t hurt to exhibit other extracurriculars that you are passionate about. From my perspective, your role in the musical for 2 years and your ability to top in regional qualifiers for YGO show that.

12

i say ur chances are around 30%

13

Stats look good. So do scores. I would keep in the Yu-Gi-oh. Would make for an interesting essay. As long as you frame it in the right context, I can see the Yu-Gi-Oh helping. Good luck.

14

@BurntKnight Is that just in general o for a specific school?

@jeg707 I think I’ll definitely keep the Musical extracurricular. This is my fault, but I should’ve clarified that the research program at UChicago was joint CS/Biology (basically involved improving medical imaging technology), so it is still directly tied to my major of choice. I think I’ll keep in Yu-Gi-Oh if there is a prompt that I can use it as a topic (likely with the idea that there’s a much larger world out there than the environment of your typical upper middle class school, and that people come from all sorts of backgrounds but can still be great human beings). Thank you for the help!

@sgopal2 Are they really okay? Ik that a 1540 and a 3.88 isn’t actually bad, but what concerns me is how that could be considered bad for an Indian male applying for CS (hence the “awkward” part of my thread title). I think I’ll keep in Yu-Gi-Oh if there is a prompt that I can use it as a topic (likely with the idea that there’s a much larger world out there than the environment of your typical upper middle class school, and that people come from all sorts of backgrounds but can still be great human beings). Thank you for the help!

15

@ImAwfulWithNames No problem! That’ll for sure be an interesting essay topic. As a former player myself, I don’t think most members of this forum realize that it’s a game that actually requires strategy and analytical thinking :-?
Best of luck to you!

16

Most adcoms won’t understand what this even is, they’ll probably google it which they won’t like because they didn’t have to do it for other applicants. So you have to explain it, and say why this is important. Music is totally different, adcoms understand it, appreciate it and know how it can contribute to the campus. Unless the college has a yu-gi-oh or pokemon club, it will not add value. You’re applying for CS, don’t give the impression that you’re a typical geek with no social skills.

17

Oh, please, I’m a non-geek mom and I know what yu-gi-oh is. OP, be who you are and let your application reflect that. As a CS applicant, any non-STEM thing you do will add value.

18

Yu-gi-oh is perceived as a game played by boys in middle school who end up majoring in STEM. If you want spend time on your application fighting that perception, go ahead. You don’t want to be known as the yu-gi-oh guy, you want to be known as the passionate CS guy that also loves music.

19

Well, writing about Papa John’s pizza got someone into Yale last year and the wonders of Costco supposedly got somebody accepted to Stanford 2 years ago. Unless you are a really talented writer and can pull it off, I wouldn’t write about something that off-topic, not even for a school like UChicago.

An adcom might wrongly think you’re one of those geeks with no life who lives in parent’s basement. You seem to have enough achievements to stand on your own so write about those instead of Yu-Gi-Oh.

20

After mulling it over, I don’t think I’ll be able to effectively “fight the stigma” about YGO without just coming off as some sort of nerd. I think it’d be better to write about something like the musical, especially with CMU’s emphasis on the fine arts.