Demographics
- US citizen
- State/Location of residency: NY
- Type of high school (current college for transfers): Public, not magnet
- Gender/Race/Ethnicity (optional): Asian male
- Other special factors (first generation to college, legacy, athlete, etc.): None
Intended Major(s)
CS + Econ
GPA, Rank, and Test Scores
- Unweighted HS GPA: 98 (school doesn’t do 4.0 scale
- Weighted HS GPA (incl. weighting system): doesn’t weight
- Class Rank: no rank
- ACT/SAT Scores: 1540 SAT (3rd attempt)
Coursework
Sophomore year: AP BC Calc, AP CSA, AP World
Junior year: AP Physics C, Multivariable Calculus, APUSH, AP Lang, AP Chemistry
Senior year (planned): AP Bio, AP French, AP Lit, AP Econ, AP Gov, AP Stats, Discrete Math (enrolling at community college), Linear Algebra (enrolling at community college)
Awards
Modeling Honorable Mention (top 6%)
Top 20% Breakthrough Junior Challenge
Achievement Award from American Chemical Society
Regional Winner in Entrepreneur
The Medal
Extracurriculars
- CS Research: AR research for DARPA, not published
- Summer Research Program: Designing and implementing neural network, will be published on Uni website
- App Development: 20k+ sessions, 9+ countries, ~600 downloads
- NPO: web developer for journal with 100k+ in scholarships for high schoolers
- AI4ALL: selective summer AI program
- Robotics: programming lead, over 100k lines of code written
- Swim team: sectional winner regularly
- Computer Club: officer, ASCL Finals, highest score from school
- Math Club: officer, help organize meets for competitions, top team at school
- Peer tutoring: tutor core subjects and coding for elementary and middle school students, volunteer work
Essays/LORs/Other
Physics: Should be pretty good, had teacher for two years and was pretty close
English: Should be pretty good, made a website that helped teacher grade
Math: Had teacher for two years, I suspect this one will be mid
Cost Constraints / Budget
Whatever
Schools
Reach:
Stanford
MIT
UCLA
UCB
CalTech
CMU
Columbia
Cornell
Dartmouth
Duke
Brown
Harvard
Northwestern
Princeton
Rice
UChicago
UIUC
UMich
UPenn
Vandy
Yale
Basic plan is
REA Princeton
EA UIUC
EA UMich
Then hopefully use them as safeties 
If get in none (which is what will prolly happen) I’ll add some state schools then
Just FYI that there is no EA for the UCs.
Yea, I just mean EA as the UC application date is just early in general.
But that doesn’t mean you get a decision earlier, as far as I know (your statement “then hopefully use them as safeties” implies that you would get an early decision which would allow you to reassess strategy in time to add additional applications and I don’t believe that’s the case).
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Yep, I was confused on UC deadlines I updated the post.
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Of course, the better idea, in my opinion, is to use an actual safety (or two) as your safety. Really, you don’t want to be scrambling to find something at the 11th hour (especially with the course load that you have planned: it seems like a lot to me - can you handle it given that you will also be working on college applications - and many supplemental essays - at the same time? Please do think about this.)
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I already have a safety or two planned out, I just don’t want to have to apply to them. I’m writing essays over the summer so hopefully the fall should be just reviewing them.
Am I reading correctly that you think UIUC and UMich are safeties? 
You can’t add state schools later - all the good ones fill up in EA.
Several of the top CS schools are public flagships and might be matches for you. You should look into those.
Also, I am hoping you will narrow down your list of reach schools. It’ll be very hard to write compelling essays for all of these.
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No my plan was to hopefully get in somewhere early and then I can use it as a safety then. If not I’ll add some real safeties.
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Ok, so - identifying a true safety that you’ll be happy to attend if all else fails, should be the first step in building a college list. Not an afterthought (else you’ll regret it).
You also need to find target schools.
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You will have to complete a crazy number of supplements and interviews with this list - 20+ reaches that accept less than 10% of the applicants is a lot. Prioritize them now and start your research/tours so you can make a compelling case of why you and [name of school] are a great fit and you’ll be ready to go if you are deferred or rejected from Princeton.
You absolutely need a few safety schools - schools that auto admit by GPA and standardized tests or that have an 90%+ acceptance rate. UMich and UIUC CS or Econ are not safeties - I know a lot of broken hearted Bay Area ‘sweats’ who were extremely disappointed by the UMich and UIUC decisions. You have a great GPA, strong test scores and good EC’s, but the odds are much lower for CS applicants plus the applicant pool is really strong for highly rejective schools.
For the schools that have holistic admissions for safeties - work to identify and show them love NOW (not at the end of December).
For the auto-admit schools, apply early because they do fill up. For example, the ASU application opens July 1 - you could have a decision back well before the start of school.
There are also some good rolling admission options like Pitt to keep as an option.
Good luck.
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On another note, I am literally from the Bay Area and have never heard the term Bay Area sweat 
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My kids have used the term sweaty to describe some of their classmates, but I don’t think it’s in reference to their academics. 
Are you interested in swimming in college? If your times are within range, you should reach out to the coaches at any school that you are applying to: https://www.ncsasports.org/mens-swimming
Lmao, no I suck. I’m on varsity and decent, but not even close to fast enough. Also don’t want to continue.
I would suggest you add several UC’s when applying like UC Santa Cruz, UC Riverside etc and maybe a San Jose St and Santa Clara if you would be happy with those as safer options.
You’ll probably get into at least one of these. Actually, your profile looks pretty similar to mine (some of your ECs are eerily similar lol) and I was eventually accepted to a few solid CS programs (University of Washington, UC San Diego, UCLA) and waitlisted by several more (CMU, Berkeley, some other ones I don’t remember anymore). If you truly have no cost constraints, please pay somebody to help you perfect your essays. I’m pretty sure my essays were my biggest weakness, and I pretty much soloed them all.
Unless you have killer essays (which you totally can), you’ll do best at schools that value grades, courses, and objective extracurriculars very highly. From your list, I know the UCs are like that. Not sure about the others.
Do you want to go into Quant or SWE post-grad? If you want to go into Quant, you’ll want to go to a “feeder” school. I’m at UCLA right now, and while it’s a good school with a good reputation, it has terrible Quant and business placement overall. On the flip side, we’re a total Google feeder and also looked upon favorably from other FAAMG firms for SWE. Geography helps for this – if you want Quant, stay East of the Rockies; if you want SWE come to the West (or probably stay in NY – I know many going to NY this summer for FAAMG internships).
Finally, make sure you vibe with the colleges on your list. I totally get where you’re coming from (prestige hunting), but honestly I wish I would’ve paid more attention to college vibes and fit. I wouldn’t have even bothered applying most places on the East, and could have focused harder on my apps to schools I could have been a good fit for. After going to a “play hard, work hard(ish)” school, it’s difficult for me to see myself in a more grind-focused place like MIT.
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Does this mean your parents can and will spend $80,000 a year on your college education? Or are you counting on getting need based or merit aid…or what?
Your list seems very top heavy to me…except for UIUC.
You have NO sure things for admission on this list.
You also need to keep in mind that some EA decisions won’t be coming out until after the RD applications deadline has passed. Most are being released at the end of January.
I would strongly suggest you find a rolling admission school that opens applications early…and apply as soon as the application opens. I would suggest University of Pittsburgh. You will have a decision very quickly…and that might give you a sense of where your applications are going.
In addition, I would cull that long list of reach schools.
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Princeton and Michigan are NOT safety schools. They just aren’t. UIUC is a target for you.
I’m trying to say that I can use these schools as “safeties” If I get accepted.