The Final ChanceMe - CS at T30s+

[jairtollet]

@DadTwoGirls

“I got accepted… as an English major”

I have no idea how hard it would be to change majors at UIUC. Superb grades freshman year, if you can do it, might or might not help with the switch from English to CS at UIUC.

If you are able to switch from English to CS at UIUC, you pretty much cannot find a stronger university for CS. UIUC is really excellent for CS. As one example, US News recently had it ranked 5th, behind only MIT, Stanford, Carnegie-Mellon, and UC Berkeley, but ahead of Caltech, Harvard, Georgia Tech, UT Austin, Cornell, Princeton, and many, many other excellent universities.

If you get a degree in CS from UIUC, finding a job in either California or Massachusetts or Texas or anywhere else in the US should not be difficult. Employers everywhere in the US will know how good UIUC is for CS.

This is very true. Unfortunately, I’ve been told it’s virtually impossible to switch into CS, especially coming from a non-STEM major. The risk of graduating as an English major is, coming from someone that’s only interested in CS, dangerous enough to rule it out unless I get rejected from literally every school (which is definitely an option considering my list).

@aunt_bea

Agree with @DadTwoGirls, the UC’s, for non residents, will be $65K per year. No financial aid for non-residents. It does not appear you will qualify for other federal aid, so assume $0 to attend.

USC will be about $77K with Room and Board. NMF’s get ½ tuition only, so that’s about $26K per year. Your parents would be on the hook for the rest ($51K per year).

Upward mobility has its price… Luckily, there are other random safeties I’m applying to for merit aid (mostly from the previous thread), so all of these are just the results of me shotgunning in an attempt to avoid going to UIUC/lower school and getting Asian shamed. At this point I don’t expect to get into USC or the UCs, considering my stats. Would you say any of the other schools are realistic, not from a financial standpoint, but from an academic one?