International Male Student Applying for CS+Math

Chance Me / Match Me!
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Demographics: Male, Turkish, Istanbul, Very Competitive National High School(Top 1% of a National Exam can attend my HS), and Not First Gen, No Legacy, Not Athlete

I’m not applying for any financial aid for any school.

Intended Major(s): Computer Science, Applied Math, Data Science

ACT/SAT/SAT II:

SAT: 1520(720 R&W, 800 M)

UW/W GPA and Rank:

94/100 UW, N/A W GPA

No Rank

Coursework: AP/IB/Dual Enrollment classes, AP/IB scores, etc

11th Grade: AP Calc BC(5), AP Physics C Mech(5), AP Chem(5), AP Stats(4)

12th Grade: AP CS A, AP MacroEcon, AP ElectroMagnetism, AP Stats(Retake)

Awards:

  1. 3 International Math Olympiad Medals (Not IMO btw but international)
  2. U21 National Contract Bridge (card game not the building) Competition 1st Place in B final 6th Place in A final.
  3. Teknofest National Project Competition in AI Category Top 8 Finalist out of 102 projects (DrugNet)
  4. Istanbul National Informatics Olympiad 16th Place out of 300+ contestants
  5. High Honors for all 4 years of HS

Extracurriculars: Include leadership & summer activities

  1. Bridge Club
  2. Position: School Club President, Team Captain, Competitor
  3. Played Bridge for 6 years. Competed in local, regional, and national tournaments. Coached and Taught Bridge to 15+ members of the club.
  4. Independent Research Project, Project Developer, Leader
  5. I led a research project that utilized deep learning and a population search algorithm to discover drug-like molecules to inhibit a protein. (Project Comp. Award came with this)
  6. AI Club Project Developer, President
  7. I lead my AI club to create projects for real-world problems. Two projects were finalists in the national Teknofest Project Competition. 20+ members
  8. School Maths Olympiad Team, Competitor
  9. Competed in regional, national and international Maths olympiads. Qualified for my school’s olympiad team every year since 2019.
  10. School Informatics Olympiad Team, Team Co-Captain
  11. Competed in national and regional competitions. Attended weekly lectures and led Q&A sessions. Placed 16th in National Istanbul Informatics Olympiad.
  12. School Science Olympiad Team
  13. Position: Competitor
  14. Qualified for the school’s 3-person science olympiad team out of 320 contestants. Placed 2nd in Istanbul Science Pentathlon (50+ contestants)
  15. Peer Tutor
  16. Tutored 3 low-income students in mathematics and physics. Prepared them for National High School Entrance Exams.
  17. Turkish Uni Summer Program(Equivalent to semi-competitive summer programs in the US)
  18. A semester’s worth of courses in quantum mechanics and computer eng. covered in 2 weeks. Awarded “Outstanding Success” in both classes.
  19. School Choir, Member
  20. Attended weekly rehearsals. Performed in the Kadiköy Orthodox Church in front of 50 people.
  21. Club Kickboxing Team, Licensed Athlete
    Attended weekly sparring and training sessions. Competed in club tournaments.

Essays/LORs/Other:

Common App Essay: Strong 9-9.5/10

Supplementals Overall: Strong 8-9/10

LORs:

  1. Math Teacher 8.5-9.5/10
  2. English Teacher 7.5-8.5/10
  3. CS Teacher: 8-8.5/10
  4. MIT Physics Professor from the Summer Program: 7/10

Schools: List of colleges, ED/EA/RD, etc

ED Carnegie Mellon SCS
EA Georgia Tech
EA UIUC Math+CS
EA UMaryland College Park
RD UT Austin Turing Scholars
RD UMichigan College of Letters and Sciences
RD Cornell College of Engineering
RD Stanford
RD Olin College of Engineering
RD UC Berkeley EECS or LS CS (I’m not sure yet
RD UCLA Mathematics with Computation
RD UC San Diego Math+CS
RD UC Davis
RD UC Irvine

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Are you not applying for aid because you can demonstrate you have $250,000 or more at the ready for college here?

Or are you not applying for aid because you think it will increase your chances of admission?

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I think you have a decent shot at CMU given your stats and profile + the fact you ED’d.
You will likely get accepted at UIUC and UMD as well.
Cornell and Stanford are going to be tough, I think.

The 4 year cost is closer to $320,000 at many of the schools on your list, not counting the cost of international travel (which has gone up significantly in the past few years).

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Congratulations on your achievements. I can’t chance you, but you are a strong candidate.

I agree CMU ED might work out. Maryland too. Which of your 3 stated majors did you apply to at UIUC?

Did you miss the Michigan EA deadline?

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Also, calculate your UC GPAs here, and let us know what they are:

https://rogerhub.com/gpa-calculator-uc/

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What are the majors you are applying to UC Davis and Irvine?

You are an accomplished and competitive applicant but UCLA and UCB will be Reach schools. All the UC’s are test blind so your excellent SAT score will not be considered for admission purposes. Being full pay will not be an advantage for the UC’s since they are need blind and offer little to no financial aid (need or merit) to International applicants. As long as $67K+/year is affordable, definitely apply to these schools.

Below are the overall International applicant admit rates for 2022.

International:
UCB: 5.5%
UCLA: 5.8%
UCI: 21%
UCSB: 19.7%
UCSD: 15.5%
UCD: 43%
UCSC: 55.4%
UCM: 68.3%
UCR: 81.7%

For UCB, If applying for EECS, the admit rate was 4.5% . CS in the College of Letters and Sciences was 2.9% for 2022.

UCI’s 2021 admit rate for CS was 7.1%. For 2022, it was 5.8%. For other majors, you can look up that information on the link.

https://datahub.oapir.uci.edu/Data-Hub/Undergraduate-Admissions-Dashboard.php

I have no major specific admit rate data for UC San Diego or Davis.

I would say depending upon which major you have selected to apply to UC Davis, that UCD would be a good Target school. UCI and UCSD could be anywhere from a High Match to a Reach.

Best of luck.

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Honestly, I think you will get into several of the colleges on your list that by and large do not practice holistic admission.
For those that do, I cannot say that you have high chance. Here is the reason – while you have spent a lot of time building yourself up, you have done very little aside from a bit of peer tutoring to make a difference to your community and the world.

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I’m not applying for both reasons actually. I can afford 80k a year. Also, I believe internationals don’t generally get aid and I’ve seen them rejected from everywhere due to them just asking for aid.

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yes, I missed it, unfortunately. I applied for Math and Cs joint major in UIUC. Thank you so much for your comment.

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I will try to close my weakness in that aspect. Thank you for pointing that out.

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I will apply to the CS+Eng major at UCI because it is much easier I believe.

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for UC Davis I will probably just select the normal cs for the first major and select the scientific computing-related major for the alternate major.

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Btw what do you think about Olin? It was a very interesting school for me so I wanted to apply.

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Btw all essay ratings are based on my peers.

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For 2022 admit rate for UCI Computer Science and Engineering was 7.5% while Computer Engineering was 21.7%.

UCD occasionally admits into the alternate major so it is possible that they may not consider your alternate major listed.

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great choice! Look at Cooper Union too.

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Ok thank you for your comment

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