The title says it all. I have the academic record of an Ivy League student and the extracurriculars of a community college student. Academically, I get high 90’s in all of my classes, and many of them are AP/dual enrollment. My SAT is a 2200, my ACT is a 32, I’ve taken SAT subject tests in chem, physics, US history, Math II, and Spanish with high 700s/800s on them.
As for extracurriculars, it’s not as good. I have Spanish National Honor Society but it’s not something I’m really involved in or have leadership in, I’m basically just “in” it. I’ve worked every summer since the summer after 8th grade, but I don’t have a job during school. No other clubs, no sports, no band, no interesting hobbies worth mentioning, nothing. It’s mostly just laziness on my part.
There is no solid advice for someone in my predicament, so I’m figuring that these two aspects of the app will balance each other out, making me an “average” applicant. Of course I’ll apply to reaches and safeties, but my target is public schools that admit 40-60% of students. Here is my list in approximate order of selectivity:
-MIT
-Cornell
-UC Berkeley
-Georgia Tech
-Cal Poly SLO
-SUNY Stony Brook (in state)
-UT Austin
-UC Irvine
-UIUC
-UW Madison
-Purdue
-Texas A&M
-Virginia Tech
I know this is a lot, so the big ones I’m looking at are UT Austin, Purdue, Stony Brook, Cal Poly, TAMU, and VA Tech. Another thing is that the acceptance rate is throwing me off since from what I hear, the acceptance rate is only that high if you’re doing a non-STEM major there since there are so many more STEM applicants at these schools. So like VA Tech has a 70% admit rate, but it’s really like 20% if you’re a CS major. Or how Purdue has a 50% admit rate, but it’s really 5% since it’s so well-known for CS. Is there any truth to this?
You need some safeties from your state.
Without significant scores/stats and yes, EC’s, you are over-reaching with those schools.
All of the state schools will be expensive. Take all of the California schools out of the picture. Your stats don’t seem to be within reach of most of those schools.
I think you have a good shot at Cal Poly SLO and UCI
Cal Poly SLO’s admit rate for CS is around 10% comparable to many top UC’s such as UCB. If the California schools are affordable, meaning your parents are willing to pay full fees, then you do have a decent chance at UCI. SLO and UCB will be tough.
but the thing you have working for you is SLO, literally does not consider EC’s AT ALL. They ask you have you participated in ANY EC activities in high school and that is all, but yeah Berkeley seems like a heavy reach
I know that I basically have 0 chance at Berkeley, but that’s why I’m considering it a reach. As for SLO, I’m looking at it so much because of what you said: they seem to be the school that looks at EC’s the least. Even so, I also know that CS is probably EXTREMELY competitive there and probably even more so for an OOS student like me.
Tips. Please apply as an undecided major and then transfer into CS.
For Cal Poly SLO, you cannot apply as Undecided and for many other schools switching into CS later if you do not get a direct admit can be problematic. There is a thread posted by @ucbalumunus that details which schools have supplemental criteria needed to switch later into a CS major. I would check the thread before proceeding with Undecided.
The problem with this plan is that for your top schools, your gpa and test scores are already “average”. You will be competing against people who have the same or better stats plus significant ECs.
Can you afford the full OOS tuition for UC Irvine? It’s a reach but they do like OOS applicants.
take only your Math plus CR score for your SAT, and their average engineering GPA is 4.13 look at their sight for how to calculate GPA, but im guessing unweighted it comes out to about a 3.85 to 3.9, so calculate that and your math plus Cr only score for the SAT