University of Michigan and Purdue are good options. I don’t really know how “safe” they are, but with those stats, they seem at least reasonably high odds.
Maybe Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. They give merit aid too.
Is she looking for a large school or a smaller liberal arts type school? My kid had similar stats and wanted CS at a LAC; he’s currently at Swat but his safeties were Hamilton, Vassar, and for a more tech heavy option, RPI. He got into all of them.
My older son’s safety schools were WPI and RPI. Got offered merit aid at both. I think Case Western is about the same level of selectivity. Around here NJIT is also a possibility. Generally speaking the smaller tech colleges are very interested in attracting more women. The best safety is a school you get into early - so you might also look at bigger rolling admissions universities, but check if they limit CS majors.
If she is looking for a techy school, look at WPI and also Champlain College. Both have top-notch CS programs and there is definitely an advantage for the female applicants. My D attends a rigorous prep school and has stats/scores that are a bit lower than your D’s – and she was accepted to both schools for CS, with generous merit awards.
Maybe Stevens Institute in NJ. They have an excellent reputation in the field, and I’m sure she’d get in. I know that U of IL in Champaign-Urbana and U of MD both have superb Comp. Sci. departments. I can’t say that they’d be safeties, but I think her chances would be pretty good at either. I’ve also heard that Syracuse has a strong program. San Jose State, on the West Coast, is a popular safety for Comp. Sci, given its proximity to Silicon Valley.
Since CS is so popular right now, finding a true safety with a good CS program could be difficult. You might want to change your strategy to identifying one or two safeties – like a guaranteed admit to your public university or community college with transfer, and then focus on identifying a larger set of match and low-match schools…several great ones have been mentioned here.
With her stats, she has a good range of match schools available to her, many of which will offer merit.
My niece will be graduating from the University of Minnesota (Twin Cities) this May. She is majoring in computer science and already has a job lined up for after she graduates, making in the low 80s. I think Minnesota might be a safety for your daughter, based on her stats.
@Otterma - Good point. However I am not sure which schools would be match vs reach for her. We are considering following schools: UIUC, GTech, UCBerkeley, UCLA, USC, CMU, Rice, UT Austin
Given we are OOS for public universities and popularity of CS, should we consider all of them “reaches”?
Yes, consider those reaches. A friend of my daughter’s has almost these exact stats- 4.3/34 act, and he’s already been declined for CS by UIUC, Purdue, and UT. Stressful application season.
@sherlock44 We are from OH and have a senior S who applied for CS to many of the mentioned schools. He comes from a high academic private Catholic HS with a 3.9 W GPA, 32 ACT, lots of Honors, some AP, varsity athlete with EC and volunteer. He was admitted directly into the schools assoc w/ CS at Ohio State, Purdue, U of Pitt, Rochester Institute of Tech & Rensselaer. He did receive some type of merit money from three (waiting on two). Check out the male to females ratio for the schools you are looking at. For example, at RIT it is approx 67% male and 33% female. Many schools look for QUALIFIED females looking at an engineering or technology degree to boost their female numbers. Your daughter’s stats are good and it is a good degree to want as a female. Good luck to her!