I’m an Asian Male senior at a competitive California high school looking to major in Electrical/Computer/Software Engineering. My grades are terrible but everything else is pretty decent.
GPA UW: 3.3
GPA W: 3.7
SAT: 1500 (770/730)/1540 (770/770) super
SAT Subject: Bio M - 800, Math 2 - 720
Junior APs: CS (5), Calc AB (4), USH (5), Bio (5)
Senior APs: Lang, Gov/Econ, Spanish, Calc BC (apparently taking BC anyway helps for engineering idk), Physics C
ECs: paid software job, 2 tech startups, 2 hackathon wins, Science Olympiad President, middle school SciOly coach, Quiz Bowl national finalist, tech mentoring volunteer, and a bunch of small STEM projects.
UC Capped weighted and Fully weighted GPA? https://rogerhub.com/gpa-calculator-uc/
Compelling reason for lower grades?
Good EC’s but they will not overcome a lower academic performance in your classes.
Target UC’s: Santa Cruz, Riverside and Merced.
Target CSU’s: San Diego State (CS/CPE/EE), San Jose State (CPE/SE), CSULB (CS/CPE/EE) and Cal Poly Pomona (CPE/EE/CS).
UC’s tend to be very GPA focused so your GPA will impact your chances at all of these competitive majors. CSU’S are more forgiving since they use CSU/UC capped weighted GPA and test scores in their admissions decision so a high SAT can make up for a lower GPA.
Thanks! And yeah UCSC actually seems like a pretty great option for CS. What do you think in terms of out of state colleges? Would Drexel, Rutgers, and similar be target as well? And do I have any chances at UIUC or Purdue?
Hi @Saidash
Overall, your SAT is fine. However, your GPA and SAT Subject scores are going to hurt your chances. Most engineering/cs students have near perfect Math II grades since computer science requires a strong mathematical foundation. Given that you have a 720 on Math II, and a 4 on Calc AB, computer science is going to be very hard for you to get in. Your ECs are fairly average, although your Quiz Bowl award will more than likely catch the eye of AOs. If I were you, I would try to improve the SAT Math II score and possibly apply to another major such as statistics where you could still implement computer science. Based on your profile, it is clear that you are skilled at coding, so just find a major that incorporate cs.
Possible Matches: Purdue (low reach), Rutgers, UCD, UCI, UCSC, UCR, UCM, San Jose State, San Diego State, Drexel, RPI, RIT
Best of luck!
Thanks! I am signed up to retake Math 2 in December, so would those change significantly if I scored in the 760-800 range?
SJSU not a Match for CS but for SE. For 2018 Freshman, an EI of 4725 was need to be accepted and your EI is 4460.
The Math II score really only comes into play as a tiebreaker in case you are on the borderline of getting in. Though it probably behooves you to try and get as close to a 800 as possible. What will hold you back at all the 1st and 2nd tier UCs will be your GPA. It’s doubtful for UIUC or Purdue for similar reasons. I think your matches will be UCSC and SDSU and schools in those ranges.