State/Location of residency: (state is important if you apply to any state universities): Indian
Type of high school (current college for transfers): Private, non feeder
Gender/Race/Ethnicity (optional): Male
Other special factors (first generation to college, legacy, athlete, etc.):
Intended Major(s): Comp sci/bioeng.
GPA, Rank, and Test Scores
Unweighted HS GPA: 80% in 9th, 92% in 10th, 88% in 11th, 95% in 12th (CBSE- Indian board)
Weighted HS GPA (incl. weighting system): N/A
College GPA (for transfers):N/A
Class Rank:N/A
ACT/SAT Scores: 1530 SAT, 800 M, 730 EBRW
Coursework
CBSE
Awards
Award by the Indian Government for the best speaker @ mock parliament
International Hackathon
Competitive coding event
Another Hackathon
Another competitive coding event
Extracurriculars (Include leadership, summer activities, competitions, volunteering, and work experience)
Founder & Club Captain @ School’s tech club
Teacher’s associate (11), Coach (12), Lead-Programmer @ Robotics Lab by Government of India
Band member, Lead Guitarist; Sitarist - I play niche music, western music on an indian classical instrument
Freelance @ freelancing group - 400k+ impacted people with projects
Tesla coil - fun project. huge tesla coil which can play music
Research for fun - AI in chess and game theory
Another Research Project - AI in movie production
Non Profit - Giving access 20K+ underprivileged students in my community
Ethical hacking - found vulnerabilities in a website with millions of users
Open source stuff
Essays/LORs/Other
CS LOR - 9/10
Math LOR - 7/10
LOR from nonprofit - 9/10
Counsellor LOR - 7/10
Essays - 8/10 (Rated by a professional from Columbia)
Cost Constraints / Budget
~60K
Schools (List of colleges by your initial chance estimate; designate if applying ED/EA/RD; if a scholarship is necessary for affordability, indicate that you are aiming for a scholarship and use the scholarship chance to estimate it into the appropriate group below)
Safety (certain admission and affordability)
** ASU
Match
** No such thing as a match for CS indian male aha
Reach
** Purdue
** UIUC
** GA Tech
** Tufts
** UFlorida
** UW MADISON
** UMD
** UMass Amherst
** ALL of ^^ these are EA Applications except tufts - rd or maybe ed2
I don’t know how to evaluate the strength of your academic record (tagging @MYOS1634 for help), but your SAT is strong, ECs are fine and you say your essays are good.
So your list looks good to me and (assuming your academic record is strong) you have a good chance of admission at at least 2-3 of them IMO. Plus, with a $60k budget, most on your list are affordable but make sure you take into account 3-4% annual cost increases plus the cost of trips back home to India.
Tufts is nearly 82k/year. Have you run their net price calculator to see if you qualify for aid?
Need blind does not necessarily mean a school will provide you sufficient financial aid (the latter requires “meet full need” schools). None of the public schools on your list will give you aid, and some won’t offer merit scholarships either since you’re not a U.S. citizen.
I’ll be applying for Financial aid @ tufts, They say they meet 100% demonstrated need for everyone so I think I’ll be able to attend if they give me aid.
But have you run the NPC on their website? It’s not always accurate for international students but it should give you some idea. Remember, your “financial need” is not necessarily what a school thinks your need is. For example, your budget is $60k, but Tufts may decide you can afford $72k and only give you $10k in aid.
Run the NPC, if you haven’t already. I’m also curious why Tufts? They’re a good school, but not necessarily well known for CS.
I had the opportunity to visit a lot of schools this summer- I really liked the vibe @ tufts. That said- I didn’t get to visit any huge state schools, so I don’t really know what they would feel like. The closest thing I visited to a “state school” was UMass Lowell, which was- well, disappointing at best.
That’s good for you. But I’m also curious how that number is so low compared to your actual financial capacity. Did you enter all the required information?
Yeah, I did. I think it’s low because my parents only earn ~80k/yr and that’s on the lower end according to USA? According to purchase power parity conversions, $80K in India gives similar lifestyle to ~340K in USA. So my parents end up saving and are willing to shill out $20k per year directly from their salary. The rest of the money is going to come from savings and maybe liquidation of some assets if it comes to that.
No I havent graduated and yes I agree, my 9th grade scores are pretty bad but almost every cbse student has a pretty huge drop in grades in 11th grade so I think my 11th grades are fine-ish? My 12th grade marks are predicted not actual.
My 9th grade was during the covid year when everything locked down- I don’t know if colleges will care but people in my family had covid and it wasn’t nice.
While not unique to the OP, because a covid year drop in grades is so common my opinion is that Ad Comms will take that into consideration. In other words, it’s not the black mark it would have been with no extenuating circumstances.
Do you guys think it will be a good idea to ED Tufts? They really like their ED applicants, and I would be happy to go there since it would probably be a better price than any other uni + I don’t know if I’ll get butchered in the RD/EA bloodbath, but I’m really unsure and skeptical because it’s not so well ranked for CS and “what if I got into a better cs uni”
It depends on what you’re looking for. Tufts provides a well known name and a small private school environment.
On the other hand, you have several schools on your list that are ranked very significantly higher for CS than Tufts, but are part of large public schools.
If you were accepted into every single school on your list: would you still go to Tufts, or one of the others?
To ED, you need to be sure. If Tufts is your top choice, then apply early decision. If you would like to see where else you can get in or what aid package you receive elsewhere, then apply RD.
