<p>It's kind of hard to find information on it but I'm looking for a university with good-great computer science program that is a safety or a match. I'm applying to Brown and CMU but I want a school that I could definitely get into or have pretty good chance. Sort of like U of Maryland (but I don't like that school so any other suggestions would be good). Thanks</p>
<p>What are your stats?</p>
<p>I don’t have all but
3.95 GPA (unweighted).
31 ACT
In top 10% of my class.
Taken 7 APs and gotten 4s and 5s on all exams except AP Spanish got a 3. </p>
<p>Cost constraint? Affordability is required for a safety.</p>
<p>Holy Cross-top25 LAC.</p>
<p>Holy Cross offers most CS courses except the introductory ones only once every two years.</p>
<p>Safeties MUCH be affordable. YOU must know for sure that you have all costs covered for a school to be a safety.</p>
<p>How much will your family spend? If you don’t know, ASK. Don’t guess…guesses are often wrong.</p>
<p>Why don’t you like UMaryland? (and if the answer is : all my classmates are going there, that isn’t an answer.) Your answer will help us give better suggestions.</p>
<p><<<
Okay I have 4 reaches, 2 matches and 1 safety. Is this bad?</p>
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<p>I don’t think that is a good idea…especially since we don’t know if your family can pay all the costs of your safety. </p>
<p>Unless your family is very affluent and money is no object, then I think each kid needs 2-3 safeties that he LIKES and has ALL costs covered (thru ASSURED merit, ASSURED grants, and/or family funds, and maybe a small fed student loan). The reason is this…if you get rejected from all your other schools (or they aren’t affordable), then having only one safety means that you will have no choice. You may feel railroaded into that school. That isn’t good for morale. We like choice. </p>
<p>Yes I’d like the school to have good scholarships or good FA (or both). mom2collegekids I don’t like UMaryland because it’s too close to home and I would probably commute but I want real college experience. Regarding my old post, that’s no longer the case. At the moment I have 3 reaches, 3 matches and 2 safeties. </p>
<p>Do you know if you qualify for good FA? Have you run a Net Price Calculator on a school web site? What is your EFC? I ask these questions because your income may be too high to qualify for FA in which case you need to concentrate on merit aid.</p>
<p>You have one of the best compsci schools in your backyard and it’s affordable and you don’t want to go there because it’s in your backyard?! What’s wrong with this picture?</p>
<p>When you go to college, you will not be spending any time at home if you’re like my children, no matter how close you are to home. You will not see much of your high school friends and classmates who are at UMD because they will have their own new friends and dormitory mates. If you see each other it will be across campus or on the sidewalk long enough to say yo. They probably will not be in your classes, well, maybe one one time.</p>
<p>What you cannot imagine now as a h.s. senior is that your world is about to expand at the speed of light when you go to college. That small parochial world you lived in in Montgomery or Prince Georges Counties’ high schools is going to warp into a solar system the dimensions of which you cannot imagine. My son has none of his high school friends left. Okay, one he didn’t go to h.s. with. All his friends come from his dorm his first two years, mostly his first, and the friends those kids introduced him to. You needn’t worry about provincialism if you live on campus at UMD, I assure you. It is not 13th grade.</p>
<p>If it’s your parents you fear, make a written contract with them that they will not come to visit you uninvited. They will not whine that you don’t want to do this or that with the family. They will pretend that you’re in the Australian outback and look forward to talking to you if you get cell reception. If it’s yourself you fear, UMD is a lot cheaper solution than moving to the pacific northwest. The money you save can be spent on counseling. </p>
<p>I understand wanting to get away, but as others have asked, what cost constraints do you have?</p>
<p>Also, a 31 ACT isn’t even all that high for a good CS program, so I’m not sure that UM-CP is a sure safety for you (you can’t rely on overall acceptance rates, BTW; for instance, UIUC’s overall acceptance rate is around 60%, but their acceptance rate in to the CS program in Engineering is now in the single digits). Granted, state schools do seem to care about GPA more.</p>
<p>Does your PSAT score qualify you for National Merit?</p>
<p>what math classes have you completed? what are you taking this year? do you have any SATIIs in math? how does your ACT break down?</p>
<p>What about Drexel, Pitt, and Temple? Virginia Tech? Stevens Institute?</p>
<p>Pitt and Temple would be OOS publics and quite expensive without merit aid.</p>
<p>Might as well throw RPI, WPI, and NYU-Poly in that mix as well.</p>
<p>There is UMass-Amherst. Like UMD, not as strong but good CS, college town and all. Check costs. I do know OOS kids getting some money from them. </p>
<p>How about U of Rochester or SUNY Stony Brook? UMass is a good suggestion also but I don’t know that it would be that much better than UMD and would be more expensive.</p>
<p>Temple has some pretty generous scholarships available for out-of-state students. I think that Pitt does, also, but I’m not certain.</p>
<p>Wisconsin. Illinois, UMinn. </p>