Demographics
Asian male, first-generation immigrant
US domestic (US citizen or permanent resident) or international student
US citizen
State/Location of residency: (state is important if you apply to any state universities)
Eastern North Carolina
Type of high school (current college for transfers):
Public high school, ~300 in graduating class
Other special factors (first generation to college, legacy, athlete, etc.):
Varsity tennis, team is undefeated in regular season, not good enough to be recruited Intended Major(s)
Computer science, economics/business administration GPA, Rank, and Test Scores
Unweighted HS GPA: 4.0
Weighted HS GPA (incl. weighting system): 4.634 and rising, 5 for APs, 4.5 for Honors, 4 for standard.
Class Rank: 5/300 (everyone above me took cakewalk classes at the community college though)
ACT/SAT Scores: 36 ACT
Coursework (AP/IB/Dual Enrollment classes, AP/IB scores for high school; also include level of math and foreign language reached and any unusual academic electives; for transfers, describe your college courses and preparation for your intended major(s))
On track to take 17 APs, of the exams I’ve taken, I’ve gotten nine 5s and one 4 (AP CS Principles, forgot to turn in create task). Took Calc BC junior year. Awards
Absolutely none Extracurriculars (Include leadership, summer activities, competitions, volunteering, and work experience)
Started a tech business, looking to generate revenue in 1-2 months
Columnist for local newspaper
Got a CS/medicine research paper accepted at my local university’s symposium
Made ML computer vision system for local FRC team
Mock Trial 10th
Science Olympiad varsity 9th
Math Honor Society Essays/LORs/Other (Optionally, guess how strong these are and include any other relevant information or circumstances.)
I’m an OK writer. Cost Constraints / Budget (High school students: please get a budget from your parents and use the Net Price Calculators on the web sites of colleges of interest.)
Of secondary concern 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)
Here’s my delusional list:
Safety (certain admission and affordability)
East Carolina
NC State
Likely (would be possible, but very unlikely or surprising, for it not to admit or be affordable)
UNC Chapel Hill (EA)
Match
Duke (second choice and a high match, but they take a lot from NC)
Georgia Tech
What does this mean? The UCs will cost you roughly $72,000 per year. You might get a small ($3000 )scholarship but that’s not guaranteed…so is this amount affordable for your family. The UCs don’t give any need based aid to OOS students and precious little competitive merit aid.
Other than that, I think you have a well balanced list assuming these schools are affordable for your family.
You are very fortunate to have some good public universities in NC!
You’re probably right. I’m applying to the UCs as a moonshot though, they take 3% for CS and most are from in-state. Do you think I should even bother?
Can your family afford to pay the $70,000 plus every year for you to attend a UC? Find out. Because an acceptance to an unaffordable school might as well be a rejection.
We quit our job and started a new business. During that time we went from full pay less a small merit grant for our son at Cal Poly, to a zero EFC and Pell eligible. Our son was awarded a Pell, and that’s it.
We squeezed by, but we were in a position to still make up the difference. Most families who are Pell eligible can’t make up that gap.
So, listen to @thumper1. Don’t expect any money from a UC.
From there, it’s important to know that most schools top 5 employers for CS are the same, Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft.
That’s not to say all schools are the same or that all educations are the same. It’s to say that there are a lot of CS grads out there working for cool companies that came from LOTS of schools.
Don’t lose any sleep if you don’t get into some of or any of the highly rejective schools.
Not sure how difficult NCSU engineering-first-year frosh admission is, but be aware that there is competitive secondary admission to specific majors (including CS) based on college grades.
As others have noted, talk to your parents about the price limit, and check net price calculators on the various colleges.
Have you run net price calculators - because Stanford, Princeton, CMU, Harvard, Dartmouth, Penn and the UCs don’t give merit aid - so if you are determined not to have need, Stanford is $87,833 - this year. Princeton is also expensive as will all those others.
So that’s the first thing - affordability.
ECU and NC State are safe and I assume a UNC is likely. You might add a Purdue like school
PS - no school should be on your list if you are not excited to attend. Would you be excited to attend ECU?
We have a weird financial situation. Net price for most T10 schools comes out to anywhere from $5k - $27k depending on how everything shakes out. Whether I get any external scholarships is also a factor. At this point, there’s just too much uncertainty to really consider finances. I just figure that I’ll consider cost based on the packages that I get offered. Is that a bad idea?
You may want to add some public flagships that are CS T20s but have a higher acceptance rate than these schools.
@DadOfJerseyGirl do you have any recommendations? A lot of the ones I looked at (UW Madison, UIUC, Purdue) have just as competitive rates for CS.
Yes, I was going to say UIUC, Purdue and UMD. Agreed they’re all competitive for CS but a lot less so than the reaches on your list.
However, they’ll all be a lot more expensive than the NPCs you posted, so may not be affordable.
Have you looked into Alabama and UofTulsa? I can’t attest to their cs programs but they would be absolutely in budget. The California application is entirely separate from the common app plus will not be affordable. There’s no reason to expect your parents to borrow hundreds of thousands of dollars when you can go nearly free. It’s great you’re in a state with fantastic public schools, I’m sure you’ll have some great options come next spring. If none are affordable would E Carolina be ok? You might want to look at Lehigh, they meet need and aren’t as difficult an admission as your reaches.
As long as you know going in what your EFC is and what the schools’ policies are it shouldn’t be a problem.
For example, if your budget is $40k/year it makes sense to apply to Stanford for example if your EFC is near that or less. It makes no sense to apply if your budget is $40k but your EFC is $90k.
Many schools don’t give merit aid. You need to know what your budget is, your EFC, and know the list of schools that give zero merit aid if your EFC is substantially higher than your budget.
You need to check the policies at each college to determine how they deal with external scholarships. At some colleges, these external scholarships reduce your financial need and therefore your need based aid is reduced. Some colleges do allow stacking of outside scholarships with their awards. This is very college specific so be sure to check.
If you decide to apply to University of Maryland, make sure you apply early action as this college admissions the vast majority of their incoming class in the early round.
I think I’d pick NC State over Delaware, which I think I have a better shot at. It’s pretty far down in the CS and business rankings and is 3x more expensive.
I think you would get decent merit aid at Delaware. I also don’t recommend using rankings as a high metric for choosing a college…especially with computer science.
Rankings is likely largely not relevant - at the NC State level. For certain in engineering.
If you get into and love NC State - great. Don’t forget they have a second campus for STEM. So it’s a bit of a hike or bus ride from main campus.
Don’t knock others - especially that may be cheaper. Hence many go to Alabama, Mississippi State, Arizona and more. In your case Bama would be less.
At Alabama, you’d get 4 years tuition, free housing first year, $1k per year and $2k one time as a Presidential Elite scholar.
NC State is great but I don’t know what cost being secondary means. If NC State is a financial stretch, you have another option and they’ll likely lead to similar outcomes.