<p>I'm planning to major in CS, and, until recently, planned to choose safeties like UIUC, UW(CSE), and UMich. However, my recent college visits have told me that I'm not going to be happy at a giant, public institution. So, can you suggest any good safeties?</p>
<p>Here are some of my basic stats:</p>
<p>Grade: Junior.
ACT: 34 Composite. E/M/R/S: 35/36/31/35. Haven't taken writing yet. Retaking w/ writing in April.
Other testing: PSAT 223 (definitely qualifying for NMF). Taking 8 APs in May, and 3 SAT IIs (math 2, bio, lit) at some point. Should be 4-5/700-800 on almost everything.
School: Homeschooled.
Schedule: Extremely rigorous. 10 courses/semester, including MVC/linear algebra, computational neuroscience, and bioinformatics.
ECs: Lots of Latin awards, AIME qualifier, Project Euler, Various chess awards (e.g. state champion), Chess teaching (at public schools), Chess volunteering (at local camps and rescue mission, 500+ hours), USABO (pending, probably semifinalist), PROMYS (10th grade), SuMAC (11th grade, if accepted), started educational website/blog, other insignificant stuff.</p>
<p>Safeties are schools you have visited and want to attend; schools where your scores are well into the upper 25th percentile; schools where your family can afford. </p>
<p>So have you visited any other kinds of campuses where you felt you could be happy?</p>
<p>Have you had The Talk with your parents about what they are willing to contribute to your education each year? have you run the net price calculators at the above schools and shown the results to your parents? what did they say?</p>
<p>In order to advise you we need to know what the family can afford; a hard number of what they’re willing to put out would help. And we need to know what kinds of schools will make you happy. And it would be helpful to know if you have any volunteer or leadership opps.</p>
<p>They said “Yikes,” but they’ll pay for the best school to which I am accepted.</p>
<p>My favourite campus so far has probably been Pomona. I really love the LAC consortiums, so I’m looking at Harvey Mudd and Olin, but they’re hardly safeties.</p>
<p>but will they pay the same amount for matches and safeties? that’s way too squirrelly a response, OP. Too much uncertainty in it. Have The Talk.</p>
<p>Case Western Reserve should admit you with merit as will Colorado School of Mines (smaller public school). Georgia Tech is a much smaller school than most publics (although at 14,000 UGs, still quite large) and will admit you although I’m not sure about merit aid. </p>
<p>@jkeil: Yes, they will pay. However, they won’t pay for a safety if I get accepted into a match as well. We’ve looked at the calculators.</p>
<p>@whenhen: Thanks! I’m not very fond of Georgia Tech (size/location) or Colorado School of Mines (too specialized/bad fit), but I’ll look into Case Western Reserve.</p>
<p>There are other National Merit Finalist automatic scholarship schools listed in a thread somewhere in the National Merit scholarship forum section.</p>
<p>However, most of the more obvious safeties are giant public schools; smaller private schools are often more holistic, or use “level of applicant’s interest” to reject “safety” applicants.</p>
<p>I just went through a search for schools for CS with my son.</p>
<p>Your qualifications put you in range for the top schools, but those are reaches for most everyone. I’d certainly consider a good selection of those (I assume you already have an idea which ones are good for CS). As for safeties, many of those are large, public schools, so if you eliminate that category, there aren’t many left. The ones that come to mind are Case Western (already mentioned) and University of Rochester. Maybe Tufts as well.</p>
<p>There are some LACs that might qualify as well, although most of them tend not to have as deep CS offerings.</p>
<p>Knowing a little more about you (where you’re from, what kind of schools you like) might help us be able to name some additional candidates.</p>
<p>Both CWRU and Rochester consider “level of applicant’s interest”, so be careful about using them as “safeties” (at the very least, play the “interest” game with them – have a visit recorded, ask questions of admissions, check the admissions portal frequently, pay attention to the order of schools you list on the FAFSA, etc.).</p>
<p>Mudd might be just the place that would be interested in a state chess champion. Might be a good fit for the homeschooled over-achiever. WashU has been having some trouble in its CS program. If you consider it, make sure you satisfy yourself that those days are behind WashU. What about Rensselaer Poly, USouthronCali, Rice, or UCSD for a match? RIT or BU for consideration as a safety?</p>
<p>Rice is definitely under consideration, even though I’m not very keen on living in TX for four years. I’ve seen Mudd’s campus, and I’m going to go tour it in a few weeks, along with CalTech.</p>
<p>So far, CWRU seems to be my best safety. I’m still going to consider UW(CSE), though, until I visit it.</p>
<p>I always say this, but have you thought about Rose-Hulman? That’s about as different from a large, public university as you can get, and their CS programs are highly respected and have a good track record. You’d likely get in with good merit money, and they’re homeschooler friendly. </p>
<p>I see that you mentioned Olin. It’s worth noting that Olin does not have a CS major, only CE. Regarding Case Western, I’d like to second the point made by ucbalumnus. Case Western takes demonstrated interest into consideration, so be careful about that. If you take a look at the Case Western EA Decisions thread, you’ll see several people with high stats similar to yours that were deferred. For matches/safeties, have you looked into RPI or WPI? You’d likely be able to get merit scholarships at both of those schools.</p>
<p>Your wrote “favourite”…are you an int’l? If so, then the NPCs may not work well for you. Your parents need to be prepared to pay full freight, not what a NPC would say that a domestic student would pay.</p>
<p>If you’re not an int’l, then what is your resident state?</p>
<p>Would Tennessee Tech (10,000 students) or Tennessee State (7,000 students) be suitable safeties? They appear to have good selections of CS courses in their catalogs.</p>
<p>I’ve got a scholarship to the first, but I really don’t care for either one. The location alone is enough to drive me away, not to mention the other stuff (e.g. both seemed unacademic).</p>
<p>I second Rose Hulman, also perhaps South Dakota SMTech? But those are tech schools, not LACs, very far from HarveyMudd in atmosphere.
If you like LACs, check out the national LACs ranked 40 to 65, roughly, for CS offerings; see if they’re near another college/university where you may be able to take other classes if the offerings don’t seem deep enough.
St Olaf (in MN) would be a LAC that is safety-level for you, has a good CS program and is well-known for its math program, good research opportunities, although since you’re quite advanced you’d probably need to look into taking classes elsewhere along the way (cross registration, domestic off campus study,study abroad?..) - not sure how it’d work but they share the town with Carleton (Carleton is on trimesters so it may not work out well for cross registration but it’s still worth checking out. And asking questions will work in your favor for the “interest” category.)</p>
<p>albclemom: OP has asked for safety schools, and Amherst can’t be considered a safety school even for a student as strong as OP. (For elite-level students, a safety would be a college that admits at least 30 if not 40% of its applicants.)</p>