What are my chances and how can I improve them?

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

Demographics:
Indian Male, Texas, Upper Midlle-Class, Competitive High School

Academics:

  • GPA: 3.75 unweighted, 4.14 weighted (+1 for honors and AP), not the most rigorous humanities classes
  • Class Rank: N/A
  • ACT: 33 (34 E, 35 M, 32 R, 32 S)
  • SAT 2: Math II (790), Chem (770)
  • Freshman Classes (not allowed to take weighted classes): Advanced English, Advanced World History, Advanced Geometry, PE/Health, Advanced Physics, Spanish I
    Honors AP Human Geo, AP World History, Chem, AP Comp Sci A, AP Calc BC, AP Physics 1, AP Bio
  • Sophomore Classes: Advanced English, AP World History, AP Chem, AP Comp Sci A, Advanced Algebra II/Trig, Spanish II
  • Junior Classes: Honors English, Honors American History, AP Calc BC, AP Physics 1, AP Bio, AP Stats
  • Senior Year Classes: Honors English Lit, AP Gov/Econ, Linear Algebra + Multivariable Calc, AP Physics 2, AP Psych, Advanced Research

Awards (a ton of random stuff, but nothing major; though I’m applying for a few big things this fall):

  • National Merit Commended
  • 5 FBLA awards (two are national level, but not very remarkable ones)
  • 3 UIL awards
  • Presidential Service Award Bronze (like 110 volunteer hours)
  • AP Scholar with Distinction
    National Honors Society
  • MUNUC honorable mention (lol it was in 9th grade), a few more very insignificant MUN things
  • 3 regional FTC awards
    won two hackathons (one 1st place one special award) and plan to attend a few Morenstein this fall
  • USACO Gold Competitor (trying to reach Platinum this upcoming season)
  • Conrad Spirit of Innovation semifinalist (trying again this year)
  • Good Chance of Regeneron STS Scholar
  • Will try to become an ISEF finalist in March

Extracurriculars:

  • Generic Volunteering (9-present)
  • MUN Member (9–10)
  • FBLA Member (9-present, secretary this year)
  • UIL Participant (9-present)
  • FTC Member (9-present, VP of programming 11-prestent)
  • Intern at a Biotech Company (summer before 11th) - work here is confidential but I will be acknowledged in a publication (not a coauthor tho)
  • Cofounder and President of CS Club (11-present) - I personally lecture on machine learning and competitive programming algorithms, we’re going to organize a Code Day at our school in January
  • Created a School Clubs Website and Currently Manage it (11-present)
  • Cofounder of Nonprofit to Teach Coding to Underpriviledged Kids (spring of 11-present) - so far we’ve organized 2 workshops at the library and we’re currently reaching out to companies for sponsorship; lol really haven’t done anything much with this though
  • Released 2 Apps on the Play store in early June and have over 6,500 downloads (won’t go into specifics here) - I’ve been contacting some people to try to get some press for this
  • 4 Week ML Internship at Startup (summer before 12th)
  • Intern at UT Lab (summer before 12th) - created a novel multiparameter method method to diagnosis early-stage breast cancer that outperformed the state of the art method; will submit to Regeneron and have a good chance at making semifinalist; submitted to an Elsevier journal in early August and we just made the requested revisions, should get a pretty decent letter of rec out of this
  • Education Lead of LaunchX Club (12-present)
  • Attended PennApps and won a special award (12)
  • Developing a diagnosis app for an organization in India (12)
  • Researching Natural Language Processing for Health Record Retrieval at UT Lab (Oct of 12th grade-present as part of my advanced research class); hopefully we can get a publication out of this

Letters of Rec:

  • AP Physics 1 & 2 Teacher (8/10)
  • AP Language Teacher (9/10)
  • Guidance Counselor Rec (5/10) - expecting a generic one
  • UT Mentor Rec (9/10)

Essays:
I’m currently writing them. They’re not completely set in stone and I still have a long way to come, but I think they’re pretty good so far. My English teacher is helping me and she used to work in the admissions office at an Ivy League. Still, I’m a bit unsure about the topic and I’m writing a bit broadly right now. Anyone have any suggestions? Should I take a risk and do something really creative?
Intended Major: CS

Schools:

  • UT (not an auto-admit since my school is so competitive, but I would be very surprised if I got rejected)
  • Rice
  • GATech
  • Umich
  • UIUC
  • Cornell (father and grandfather both went there, so maybe I get a legacy boost)
  • CMU
  • UWashington (don’t know much about it, but a friend said that they have a really good CS program)
  • UPenn M&T Program
  • UC Berkeley
  • UCLA
  • UCSD
  • USC
  • Columbia
  • Duke
  • UChicago
  • MIT (hey, you have to try)
  • Stanford (same as above)
  • Harvard (Parents want me to apply here. They said they’ll be happy with whatever happens, but I don’t really believe them.)
  • Princeton (parents also want me to apply here)
  • Yale (same as above)

So there you have it, my mediocre self. Does anyone think I have a chance of getting into prestigous schools. And what can I do to increase my chances? There’s still a few months left and I’m aware that you can send in updates even after submitting your application (up until like mid-March, so I definitely have a long time here). I have some ideas for what I’m going to do, but I haven’t completely settled yet. Here are my ideas: make a few more apps and get more downloads, try really hard to get multiple research publications and maybe enter the Google Science Fair (deadline is December 9), host a really big CS event at my school and get news coverage, study up for math competitions (like HMMT) and hope for a miracle, try to become a competitive programming god, attend more hackathons and win some prizes. Does anyone have any more suggestions for what I could do? Thanks!

2

UT-Austin is still a tough school to get into, especially with CS. Texas A&M is also a top CS school, and arguably better than University of Washington. I would definitely add them to the list. The list is very reach-heavy with very low acceptance rates. If all else fails, you’ll want to put down one good safety school like University of Houston or Texas Tech.

3

Take UCs off your list unless you’re willing to pay 65,000 with little to no financial aid. Cal and UCLA CS (assuming the Engineering version) is highly competitive for admissions and your GPA/test scores are low for them.

UCs do not grant the GPA boost for Honors classes if you’re OOS.

UIUC and Georgia Tech are extremely competitive for CS as well and look to be reaches. Consider Purdue.

UDub has a highly rated CS program and better than TAMU (UW #5 and TAMU #43 per US News) Amazon and Microsoft being in the Seattle area has its advantages.

4

I would take another ACT to get it above 34 and preferably 35. 33 is probably at the 25% of accepted students for your schools.

5

@Hamurtle

I’ll probably be applying for CS in the college of letters and sciences at the UC’s, not the engineering variant. I think L&S should be a sure thing since they admit 15,000 per year and my resume puts me well above top 15,000 high school students in the USA. Plus I believe that the crippling debt is worth it to get a good education.

My dream schools are MIT and Stanford and I want to know how I can improve my chances. Or is it impossible? Please be brutal here and if I have no chance, just let me know.

Oh, and I’ve taken the ACT three times already and received the exact same subscores every time. How much will taking it again help me?

6

Stanford and MIT want high standardized test scores and a 33 isn’t going to cut it.

Perhaps try an SAT to see if you can score north of 1500.

7

@Hamurtle Oh, my bad, I did take the SAT and scored 1510 (710 English, 800 Math). Forgot to mention that.

8

UCLA’s CS program is only offered in the College of Engineering. UCSD only offers CS in their Engineering college. UCB is the only UC that offers CS in both the College of Engineering and L&S, but in L&S you have to meet the pre-req course requirements along with GPA requirement to declare the major.

As stated in the post #2, you will be full pay at the UC’s. You are a competitive applicant and you will many choices come Spring so I would go for the school that offers you the best education and an affordable price.

UCLA admit rate for CS for the fall of 2018 is 8.2%. The average CS act score is a 35 and the SAT is a 1550 average.

9

But how can I strengthen my resume? I feel like it’s too weak right now.

10

Anyone here have some advice on how I can improve? What things on my list should I do?

Also, I’m still having trouble coming up with exact essay topics. Everything I can think of is just too generic and uninspiring. How do I do this?

11

Admission departments are the only place where it’s their job to make up excuses. You have no control over the decision, or the criteria on how they make decisions. Every school has vastly different criteria. Are you going to worry about all of them? You’ll drive yourself crazy. Just do the best you can and let whatever happens happen.

Also, prestige makes no difference with computers. Entry level jobs are entry level jobs and employers never pay more than market rate salary for those jobs, no matter what school you go to. Otherwise they could attract an experienced professional. A $100,000 starting salary out of MIT sounds nice, but you’re in the east coast. Adjust that to Texas cost of living and you have around $50,000. Relax, and don’t stress.

12

Okay, but I’m really serious about getting into one prestigious school. Is it possible? Is there any way to objectively increase my chances? How can I make my essays really amazing?

13

If you are a senior, you need to buckle down and get your essays done. Talk to your english teacher. That should be your priority now.