Need help with two questions

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of California - Berkeley
1

Hello,
My Daughter is interested in Computer Science major and business minor. She is interested in Stanford, Georgia Tech, UT Austin (Touring), UCal, CMU. We are from Texas.

Here metrics are:

SAT 1580/1600 (780M, 800CR); Her writing is low 15/24 (pretty low); this is the reason she is thinking of writing SAT again; but again she is not one who enjoys writing and wants to do CS doesn’t see the need/value of writing excellence.

SAT Math II: 800 (Math)

PSAT: 1500/1520

AP Courses: By the time she finishes senior year, 15 courses.(including AP CompSi(5))

Some leadership positions in her school clubs. Other than online CS courses, not much CS related ECs (like coding competitions) as her school doesn’t have CS related interest. She is not interested in coding competitions as she is interested in data sciences and AI.

Ethnicity: Asian - Indian - Female

We are not qualified for financial aid.

Please help us with two questions:

  1. Doe she need to SAT again to improve on Writing section? It all depends on if these Universities need writing or not. It looks like Stanford needs it, does UCal need it too?

  2. How these universities map to CS major and Business minor for her scores.

Thank you very much for your help

2

Since you don’t qualify for any state funding, for the UC’s, there is no financial aid for non-residents.

You will be paying full fees of $60K per year; will that be an issue?

These schools are very competitive; does she have any other ECs to help her stand out?

3

Wrong!

As immigrants to the US, we see the value of writing excellence, actually, of communicating excellence in general. We pushed our D very hard (most kids don’t like writing) since she was in kindergarten. She enjoyed math and science so there was no need to push there. She later admitted that we had done the right thing.

Back to the OP’s questions…

  1. She doesn't need "CS related ECs."
  2. She definitely needs to improve SAT writing score.
  3. I don't know about other schools, but do know a bit about UCB and Stanford. These two schools are excellent for CS & Business combo. UCB has the new "M.E.T." but from what I know, admissions are extremely competitive.

CS admissions, in particular to top schools as the ones in your list, are competitive and difficult to predict. You should prepare some “safety” schools.

4

In my opinion, UT-Austin would be the best school. That’s because it’s a nationally recognized CS program, first of all. Second, Texas has more tech jobs than almost every other state in the U.S. combined. Austin is one of the country’s best tech hubs, which means plentiful internships. There’s a lot of jobs in Austin, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio.

5

For Cal, there is no Business minor - she could dual major in CS (in College of L&S - I thinking College of Engineering would be brutal) and Business IF she applied and got into Haas as she was finishing up her sophomore year. Haas is extremely competitive to get into. As for MET, they only accept about 50 students per year, so also very competitive. I agree with @Pentaprism - communication skills, including writing, are very important, especially if you are going to take business classes. That low writing score will probably be a red flag for admissions officers, so she should definitely do some extra work and retake it.

6

Thank you all for sharing your time and thoughts. This week we visited GaTech, Cal and Stanford. Will be at UT Austin at the end of the month. She liked GaTech as the information session we attended was from CS department specifically and was very informative.

My suggestion to her is NO on SAT retake, UT Touring program is my preference, but will get behind her decision.

She would be eligible for automatic admission into UT Austin as she is in top 3 students out of 200 in her class, with a 4.0 GPA

UH and UTD are her true safeties.