Update Chance Me! (Ivies and other great schools)

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

Hey everyone! It’s my senior year and pretty much everything about my app is finished and final so I figured I would make a final post to see how I might do with decisions. Thanks for the responses in advance!

Background:
State: MA
Race: White
Income: 60-70k
School: Urban public, nothing special
Intended major: Computer Science

Stats:
(Note: My school’s GPA scale goes by numbers rather than letter grades and unweighted goes to a 4.3 instead of a 4.0 but I converted it to a normal 4.0 scale with grades up to an A since A+'s don’t matter)
GPA: 3.97 UW, 4.77 W
Rank: Top 1%
SAT: 1530, 800 M 730 EBRW
ACT: 35C, 35E 32M 35R 36S, 9 on essay
Subject Tests: 800 Math 2, 770 Chem
AP Exams: 5 CSA, 5 Stats, 4 Lang, 4 Chem, 4 APUSH

Courses+Grades:
(Honors unless otherwise specified)
Freshman Year:
Algebra 1 - A (taken in middle school)
Spanish 1 - A (taken in middle school)
Geometry - A
Spanish 2 - A
Comp Sci 1 - A
English 1 - A
Biology - A
World History - A

Sophomore Year:
AP Stats - A
Algebra 2 - A
English 2 - A-
Comp Sci 2 - A
US History 1 - A
Spanish 3 - A
Chemistry - A

Junior Year
AP Comp Sci A - A
AP Chemistry - A
AP English Lang - A-
AP US History - A
Pre-Calculus - A
Spanish 4 - A
CSCI E-50 - A- (at Harvard Extension School)

Senior Year (all As on interim report)
AP Comp Sci Principles
AP Physics 1
AP Physics 2
AP English Lit
AP Calculus BC
Art Foundations

(Side note: self studying AP Physics C: Mechanics + E&M but don’t know if that’s something to include on the common app/where I would put something like that)

Extracurriculars:
-Chess Club (9-12)
-Tutoring(9-12, 1-2 hours per week)
-Math Team(9-10, 12, Captain)
-Programming Team(10-12, Captain)
-Programming Club(11-12, teaching C++ to club members and organizing projects)
-Varsity Tennis (11-12)
-6 weeks (10 hours per week) of paid work in the summer before senior year working on artificial intelligence for a small business

Awards (def the strongest area of my application lol):
-Dartmouth Book Award
-AP Scholar with Distinction

Essays and recs:
-Wrote my common app essay on my passion for programming and technology, it’s not particularly special or unique but it speaks to me and is well written so I’ll give it a 9/10
-Guidance Rec: She’s new (didn’t have her until last year) but she’s competent and she’s gotten to know me and I’m her highest ranked student in the class so she likes me and whatnot, I’ll say an 8/10
-Comp Sci Teacher Rec: Had the same teacher for all 4 years, he loves me and knows me well and it would surprise me if it was anything less than a 10/10 (not that I can read it lol).
-APUSH Teacher Rec: For whatever reason this guy liked me a lot and appreciates my ambition and academic drive so I decided to ask him for a rec, I think it’ll be a 9/10

Schools:
-Harvard REA (first choice)
-The other 7 ivies
-MIT
-CMU
-Northeastern
-BU
-Tufts
-WPI
-UMass Amherst

So that’s essentially what my application portfolio looks like. I can’t really improve anymore, so this is where I stand. Let me know how you think I am as an applicant and where I’ll probably/might/won’t get in.

2

The Ivies and MIT are long shots for anyone. CMU is also a long shot for any CS applicant. ALL of the remaining universities offer outstanding programs in CS. Any of these universities would be excellent fit for you IF YOU FIT and if you are motivated to be there.

Aside from reputation, what are you looking for when you arrive on campus? What do you want to do outside of the classroom? If you lost interest in CS or you saw a related application of interest (e.g., robotics or big data), what would you study? Can you move easily around majors and departments? Do you like working in teams or working alone? Do you want to apply your language skills?

If it fits, UMASS is an excellent backup. Don’t apply to a program where you really do not want to be as it may not work out for you. Motivation counts.

3

@retiredfarmer I would consider myself a social person especially when learning and working on things im interested in, such as programming or math/science, so when i go to a campus im basically looking for other people like me that are interested in the stuff I’m into that might want to work together in a club or on a team or just on side projects in general. Outside of the classroom I would probably want to spend time in group environments with people like whether it’s to benefit the community of the school or advance our own interests. I don’t think I could move majors or departments easily; I couldn’t see myself doing anything other than CS.

4

UMass Amherst is very good for computer science. Given that you are in-state with excellent stats, it looks like a very solid safety. I think that you have a very good chance at WPI, Northeastern and BU. Whether they will be affordable I have no idea. My guess is that you will probably get in somewhere else also.

I think that you will do well wherever you end up. Pay attention to affordability when deciding where to go. Good luck with this.

5

Lots of good here and from your thorough post and nice reply, you seem on the ball.
Other than chess team and sports, is there anything else where you’re involved with others who may have different interests or directions? It doesn’t need to be in the hs. You’re fitting a rather stem-y profile and it’ll help to show you can get involved outside your own specific interests, try new things, and stretch in that way. If you are a social person, find a way to show that.

Make sure your answer to any Why U question isn’t generic (“You’re a top college”) or too career oriented.

I do think you can include the self study. (If needed, a line in Addl Info.) And I believe you’ll get far in the reviews, including H. Just know that, in the end, there’ll be many institutional factors that affect decisions. Best to you.

6

@zbrown01

" I would consider myself a social person especially when learning and working on things im interested in, such as programming or math/science, so when i go to a campus im basically looking for other people like me that are interested in the stuff I’m into that might want to work together…"

The entire WPI educational program is all about teamwork and interaction regarding project solutions to real problems. Shared undergraduate research by students (usually teams of three or four) are the brick and mortar of the entire program. Shared interests are what fires these projects and enthusiasm is amplified by the need for real world solutions which often help people at you project site. The MQP is the project in your major, Interdisciplinary thinking is encouraged through the IQP. The average, UNWEIGHTED secondary school GPA of the freshman teammates this year has risen to 3.89, not as high as yours, but not too shabby.

For program overview see https://www.wpi.edu/project-based-learning/wpi-plan

For CS faculty research activity see https://www.wpi.edu/academics/departments/computer-science/sigbits As you read through “Sigbits” you will see the wide range of computer science activities including AI.

As you consider MIT, check out the Office of Experimental learning @ http://oel.mit.edu/ WPI is not alone in understanding the personal growth and development inherent in this educational approach. Tufts University has a good introduction to fields involving the broad interaction of CS and also encourages interdisciplinary thinking, see https://engineering.tufts.edu/departments/computer-science.

Wish I was your age again! Enjoy the hunt!

WPI '67

7

definitely great shot at all of these. btw, did you go to Harvard summer school this past summer?? so did I lmao

8

@lookingforward Thanks for the reply! Unfortunately I don’t have activities like you describe other than chess and tennis. Do you think that might be a major issue with my admissions profile?

9

@retiredfarmer Thanks for all the WPI info! I definitely do like the program they offer and conveniently enough they’re only a mile and half away from my house, so I’ll look into them a bit more. My biggest concern is if I’ll be able to afford it, ideally they would offer me a ton of need based and merit aid but I’m not sure how much I would get compared to umass or the other private schools on my list.

10

@sanjanagupta1 I did not go to Harvard Summer School, I really wanted to though!

11

@zbrown01 If you go to a Worcester Public school and you are Pell Grant eligible (might mean less than $50,000 income), here is some good news @ https://www.wpi.edu/news/worcester-polytechnic-institute-launches-great-minds-scholars-program. This new scholarship was established in recognition of all the successful graduates from Worcester who went through WPI on scholarships. It is based on the concept of “payback” by those graduates. This program showed up a few months after a graduate left $13,000,000 anonymously. If it is who I think it is (a guess) he was local.

Good luck!

12

@retiredfarmer I don’t think I qualify for that unfortunately, but thanks for the info anyway!

13

Hey, I figured since all the decisions came out and people like to see how stats and stuff correlate to acceptances, I’m gonna put my “record” here.

Rejected:
Yale - I mean, it’s Yale so I wasn’t really expecting much. Supplements - 7/10
Brown - I thought I had a chance, but again it’s an ivy. Supplements - 8/10
Dartmouth - I would’ve been bummed about this if it weren’t for the decision I opened before it. Supplements - 8/10

Waitlisted:
Cornell - My supplement was hot rushed garbage so this sorta surprised me. Supplements - 5/10
CMU - I wrote really good supplements but it’s a hard school and I wasn’t too upset. Supplements - 9/10

Accepted:
UMass Amherst (EA) - I mean it was a safety. Money was kinda lacking though.
WPI - Also a safety, but I got the Great Minds + Presidential scholarships and it was my 2nd most affordable school.
Northeastern - I felt like I had a good chance and it appears I did. $20,000 merit, never finished the FA application lol
Harvard (REA → RD) - Poured my heart and soul into the application, got interviewed personally by my AO after being deferred and it went even better than my original interview, I certainly wasn’t expecting the outcome but I pushed for it and I was super stoked. Supplements - 10/10

Overall record: 4 - 3 - 2

Hopefully this portfolio of me and the respective amount of effort I put into my applications correlated with my decisions will help someone out.

14

Also I didn’t end up applying to a lot of the schools in the original post, the schools I talked about in the previous post are all the ones I applied to.

15

@zbrown01

" I don’t think I could move majors or departments easily; I couldn’t see myself doing anything other than CS."

CS has evolved into a wide range of applications across a universe of disciplines. When one speaks of a “wide range of applications,” it does not necessarily mean a wholesale change of majors. Within the CS field you will find a garden of different applications and each of those applications is exploding.

To illustrate this point, look at the range of research applications on this website and this is only the CS department!: https://www.wpi.edu/academics/departments/computer-science/research. Poke around this faculty listing to see the very wide range of research going on. At a highly developed STEM University the interfaces are everywhere because of their range of majors.

Sometimes the smaller university is larger!

Congratulations! You have real choices.