Suggestions for friend looking at comp sci

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

<p>My friend isn't sure what schools he should look at. He wants a good mix of reaches, matches and safeties. Any suggestions?</p>

<p>WGPA: 4.30/5.4 (Vals usually get 4.9 in my school)
Rank: 25/400
Gender: Male
Ethnicity: Asian</p>

<p>SAT I: 1800 (W 570, M 650, CR 580)
SAT II: Math II 680, Math I 680, Physics 650</p>

<p>APs: APUSH (3), AP English (4), AP Comp Sci A (5)
Taking upcoming year: AP Eng, AP Gov't</p>

<p>ECs:</p>

<p>FRC Team Robotics (9-11) - 400 hours in 3 years or so. Usually places in top 3 teams every year. Co-Head programmer of the team for this year and next. This year, our team got the Coopertition Award, Honorable Mention for Safety, 1st seeded team, and top 4 teams overall in Boston Regional.</p>

<p>Science Olympiad (11) - Vice President and starter for the team. As a first year team, we got 21/40.</p>

<p>Academic Decathlon (10,11) - B alternate and will be a main starter this year. Our team has placed 6th at both the regional and state level.</p>

<p>MOON (10,11) - Math team. Highest in division for GBML competition (Greater Boston area). 3rd tier for the Mandelbrot Competition.</p>

<p>Also, in his free time, he take games and he looks at the base code of them, and then he builds off of their code to experiment and see how the games work and how he can change them and their properties. I suppose you could call it hacking, but he does it just for the learning of it, not making money or anything. He's learned C++, Java, C #, and C, and currently learning javascript.</p>

<p>About 100 volunteering hours in general.</p>

<p>Hooks: First generation college student</p>

<p>Awards:</p>

<p>Honorable Mention School Science Fair/Regional Science Fair Qualifier</p>

<p>Recs: He'll have recs from his physics teacher who he's had for two years who is also his academic decathlon advisor, his english teacher who he's talked to quite a bit this year who really likes him, and our programming mentor from robotics (who is an engineer at Gilette) who we've spent at least 200-300 hours with, as well as traveled on trips with him</p>

2

<p>This friend of yours sounds like a cool guy. You’re a good friend to be looking out for him. Sorry that I don’t know **** about comp sci schools. Test scores are a bit low, he should try and bump those up but the extracurriculars definitely highlight his passion for all things academic. I wish him the best of luck</p>

3

<p>Do whatever it takes to raise those SAT scores. The cost of sending them in as-is is far higher than the cost of sacrificing time to study for the SAT. If he needs a prep class, then so be it. No matter how much people will say to diminish the importance of the SAT, it is still one of the only uniform methods of testing to compare a kid from rural regions of Kansas to a kid from a big city like Boston. </p>

<p>Depending on the competitive nature of your school, the rank is ehh right now without putting it into context. Also, he should try to expand on his ECs and earn any possible recognition/awards.</p>

<p>Has he looked into schools like Georgia Tech? Go online and make use of the search function. “Best schools for computer science,” then cross ref some schools with the stats on CollegeBoard to gauge his competence at those schools. He could also try Waterloo for compsci/engineering and other Canadian schools. From first-hand observation, it seems like Waterloo EE grads generally place extremely well in the job front, specially in the Sillicon Valley.</p>

4

<p>I have the perfect college for this individual. UMASS AMHERST!! It has one of the strongest and most reputable computer science department for a college that has a high percentage of acceptance. The computer science department is comparable to some of the top private colleges like Tufts and Cornell. Plus, your friend would be saving lots of money from college tuition since he is an in-state student. In my honest opinion, I think he already has the stats necessary to get into UMass Amherst. He should just increase his SAT score so he could look into higher tier schools if he’s interested in it or enter the honors program for UMass Amherst.</p>

5

<p>Bump !</p>

6

<p>Bump! Please, only a few more would be really helpful. I’ve only got GTech and UMass Amherst for him.</p>

7

<p>UMD College Park- It might be a little bit of a reach, but it’s hard to tell with the GPA system the school has.
UMBC- would be more of a low match/safety. They have a pretty good program. It’s not top 20 like UMD though.
UT-Austin- Match. Their CS program is in the top 20
UI-Urbana Champaign- Match. Top 20
UW-Madison- Match. Top 20
UMich- Reach. Top 20</p>