Hi College Confidential,
I just finished applying to UT Austin, and I was wondering if you guys could please chance me for the freshman regulars admission to the University of Texas at Austin Computer Science Program for Fall 2018.
Background Information:
- Asian (I’m from Nepal)
- Low socioeconomic level (about $40,000 annually) (I also used a fee-waiver to pay for my UT application fees)
- I live in-state (Texas)
- I’m a United States Citizen
- According to The Washington Post, I go to the 14th most challenging school in the United States as of May 2017 (the school’s name is Uplift North Hills Preparatory)
- The school I attend is small (only 99 students in my grade)
Scores and Courses:
- I sent my 30 on the ACT (35 Math, 33 Reading, 26 Science, 25 Writing)
- My weighted G.P.A. is 4.222 my rank is 14 out of 99 (my school does NOT send rankings to colleges because the school is small and challenging)
- I’m taking IB and AP classes (I am an IB Diploma candidate)
- My transcript states that I “took the hardest classes offered at the school”
AP Classes and Honors I took:
- AP Human Geography (freshman year)
- Honors Biology (freshman year)
- Honors Geometry (freshman year)
- AP World History (sophomore year)
- Honors Spanish 5th year (sophomore year)
- Honors Algebra II (sophomore year)
- Honors Chemistry (sophomore year)
- AP English Language and Composition (sophomore year)
- AP Biology (junior year)
- AP US History (junior year)
- AP US Government and Politics (junior year)
- AP Microeconomics (junior year)
- AP Macroeconomics (junior year)
- Honors Pre-Calculus (junior year)
- AP BC Calculus (senior year)
- AP Computer Science A (my school didn’t offer the course, but I’m taking the exam in May 2018)
IB Classes I took:
- IB English (junior and senior year)
- IB TOK (junior and senior year)
- IB Spanish 6th and 7th year (junior and senior year)
- IB History of the Americas (senior year)
- IB Economics (senior year)
- IB Math (senior year)
Essays and Short Answers:
According to my IB English teacher, my 3 short answers and essay topic A were “excellent and portrayed myself well.”
^ My IB English teacher has taught AP and IB English for over 10+ years.
Recommendation Letters:
- Sent 1 letter from the Director of Programs from my web-development/cyber-security internship
- Sent 1 letter from my Pre-Calculus Honors Teacher from 11th grade
- Sent 1 letter from my College Counselor
Extra Notes:
- I finished my application for admissions on October 5th
- I am sending a Computer Science Honors application by October 15th
High reach.
UT Austin is a reach for any non automatic admit applicant (top 7% rank Texas resident).
CS is additionally selective beyond the school’s baseline selectivity.
Thanks for the info! I’m also interested in hearing multiple perspectives, so bump.
What does your guidance counselor say? Do students with your rank regularly get accepted to UT Austin for CS or engineering or other selective majors? Unless students from your school with similar academic profiles to yours regularly get into CS at UT Austin it’s a high reach for you. Your ACT appears quite low for that major and you’re well outside the top 7%; based on that info I’d call it a high reach even with the small class and high WaPo ranking. CS is difficult to get into even for students who are in the top 7% with higher test scores than yours and similar AP/IB tally. I think the AP arms race is pretty common across Texas, at least at schools that weight AP courses for GPA and class rank determination, so while your courses are impressive they’re not going to stand out among the sea of CS hopefuls who actually are in the auto-admit range.
Best of luck to you in your UT admissions decision. Definitely make sure you have appropriate matches and safeties though.
@traveler98 My counselor told me I was competitive for UT computer science. Based on Naviance, my high school has a 81% acceptance rate to ut Austin from the years 2016,2016, and 2017. The majority of people in the top 25% get into ut Austin and most apply to natural sciences, engineering, or business fields.
Here are the specifics:
29 applied and 24 accepted in 2017.
48 applied and 35 accepted in 2016.
42 applied and 27 accepted in 2015.
Each year has about 100 to 120 students in the class total because we are a small school.
Correction about the acceptance rate percentage above. It’s NOT 81%. It’s 72%.
So do your stats fall into the green dot zone in the Naviance plot?
However, even if they do, you may get into the school but not the CS major.
@ucbalumnus
Yes, my stats do fall in the green zone of the Naviance plot. And I do have a lot of extracurricular activities relating to the CS major, so I was wondering if that would help my CS chances? I even did a cyber security/web-development internship and sent a recommendation letter from the director of programs regarding my leadership/work ethic.
My expanded resume was 7 pages long with multiple leadership activities (like the founder and president of my own mobile app development club or president of software engineering in my robotics team,etc.) and I even my own programmed mobile applications, websites, etc. with GitHub and DevPost links provided to show proof of my work. I also lead many extracirics not related to my major (like hosting and competing in model UN competitions, secretary of my school’s HOSA, etc.) I even founded my own organization and programmed a social-media site with a couple of fellow programmers. The website got thousands of registered members and made $4k+ in revenue.
I did provide a link to my resume on this post, but the moderators of CollegeConfidential removed the link.
It is not obvious how much more selective the CS major is. Your chances may be better if it is well into the green zone, as opposed to near the edge. How extracurriculars, etc. affect your chances may not be obvious.
Eng/CS has a 26% acceptance rate and I think CS is more competitive than Eng. That being said, you have everything they are looking for with the exception of the low total ACT score. You do have the high math score and good technical ECs. Hopefully your essays are well written and stand out. You are definitely a candidate they are going to consider but nobody can give you a guarantee. They reject from CS at least 3 out of every 4 applicants. It sounds like you have done your best, now it is just the hardest part - waiting for an answer. Make sure you apply to other schools - all other public schools would be considered a safety for you.
As a person who works in the tech industry, I can tell you that where you go to school won’t make much of a difference. STEM degrees are fairly standardized and highly employable. In fact a master’s degree at a liberal arts school will trump a UT bachelors any day of the week. I would go where the scholarship money is at. Right now, your stats will earn you a partial scholarship 30 minutes away at Texas State, and that school isn’t cut throat competitive like UT. If you retake your ACTs and score a 32, that award amount doubles. Here’s what I found on txstate.edu:
Award Amount
$16,000 Total award
$4,000 Distributed annually
Eligibility Criteria (must meet all)
Minimum SAT (Evidence-Based Reading and Writing + Math) score of 1270 – 1440 *
OR
Minimum ACT score of 27 – 31
AND
Top 25% of graduating class or IB diploma or AP Capstone Diploma
Renewal Criteria (must meet all)
3.25 Cumulative Texas State GPA
Complete 28 passing Texas State hours/year (fall/spring)
Undergraduate status
*The administration of the redesigned College Board SAT exam began effective March 5, 2016. To learn more about the re-designed SAT and the SAT Score Converter, please visit the CollegeBoard.
Update: I was accepted into Computer science!