SAT: 1420 (Math 740, R/W 680) (I am not retaking, I just can’t do it lol)
Chemistry Subject Test: 800
Math 2 Subject Test: 790
GPA UW: 3.91
Male, 17, Connecticut resident
Today has been a really sad day; any dream of going to MIT flew out of the window with my SAT score and I am just POed because of my garbage reading ability. After seeing my score report all of my math mistakes were misreadings and I could have gotten a perfect score if I could just read. I am mildly dyslexic and when I am provided with huge walls of text I tend to blur information together. I am just quite angry because I don’t think it is a fair assessment of those basic mathematical concepts. TL;DR I am salty.
Anyway with that SAT score I need to rethink my college application process and reassess my circumstances. I want to go to a school with a good/great computer science department (or computer engineering) and one my scores fit in. So obviously don’t mention Carnegie Mellon, MIT, Berkeley, and Stanford because I do not have the marks and I just don’t feel like retaking that god aweful test.
I am still applying to Cornell, UT Austin, Rice (free), UCONN (safety, I do not want to go), and Georgia Tech though I am not sure if I should add more or if I stand a chance in the admission to those colleges’ CS programs. I am at my wits end and I just want to get accepted to some relatively decent program.
I heard Purdue is pretty good and pretty easy to get into but I would like the expertise of the college confidential forum members that I read all too often :). Anyway what are some good computer science colleges or engineering schools that are industry respected but aren’t quite hard to get into.
Yup, I am your standard definition of middle class and my parents won’t be able to help me much so I am going to rely on federal student loans and if I absolutely need to I will have to do private (with a cosign from my sister who has credit).
Self-description of “middle class” can cover a huge range of financial situations…
Run the net price calculator on each college’s web site to see what financial aid and net price may look like. If they are all too expensive, you need to have a merit-scholarship-seeking application list.
Cosigned loans are usually a bad idea for both you and the cosigner.
I agree with @ucbalumnus that you should try to minimize debt. If you are not getting much help from parents then you probably should either stay with your in-state public schools, or find somewhere where you can get a lot of merit based aid. Fortunately computer science is an area where there are jobs and “prestige” really doesn’t matter, so that you in-state flagship should be fine in terms of getting you where you want to go in life.
First, don’t lose hope. You still have time to retake the SAT. My son was in similar situation before. In his first ACT test, he got 25 in reading. He booked the next ACT test, and got a 33 on reading. I asked him what changed? He said, “nothing, this time the passages just seemed so easy to understand.” So give it a try again. You may be positively surprised.
Second, since you are in the New England area, why not look into RPI, WPI, and Stevens? These are good schools for computer science/engineering, and they give merit and need-based aid.
Rice will be free for you? If it was me, I would choose Rice for free over any other school where I had to pay full tuition, including MIT, Stanford, etc.
There are hundreds of perfectly good CS programs out there. You don’t have to go to an elite school to go places in the CS world. Purdue is fine. UConn is fine. Just about any state flagship looks good on a resume. Take a look at Marist. Its CS program gets a lot of support from IBM. Union in Schenectady also has a great reputation for CS.
UConn isn’t your safety if you don’t want to go there. But UT, GA Tech, and Purdue are all out of state schools for you, and you won’t get good aid. You personally can only borrow $5,500 freshman year. I’d drop them from your list.
Other schools to consider: Ohio State (gives some merit to OOS students, but check for application deadlines to be eligible), Case Western.
Use the online net price calculators to determine your Estimated Family Contribution at a few schools that interest you. Then discuss the results with your parents to determine the gap between a likely EFC and the amount your parents are able and willing to cover. You may need a total award big enough to cover all of the determined need, plus the gap, because merit awards usually don’t “stack” on top of need-based.
From the Kiplinger’s online “best value” lists, try to identify schools where average merit awards are large enough to cover your total need (including any part of the Estimated Family Contribution your parents cannot cover), and where your stats are within the upper N% (where N% is the number of students who get merit money, as shown on the Kiplinger lists).
Many of the listed schools have decent CS programs. Cost seems to be the biggest issue for you, so you need to be realistic and not focus on prestigious schools where adequate merit money is unlikely. You’ll need a safety where the net cost is sure to be affordable, which may mean a public school within commuting distance or else a less-selective college with enough automatic merit aid for your stats (http://automaticfulltuition.yolasite.com/).
University of Toledo, apply for a financial safety, their ABET CSE and mandatory paid co-op gives students access to great employment prospects and a way to pay for college.
Hi, I’m a current Marist College student. We have a CS major with either Software Development or a Game Design Track. The program nets you automatic minors in IT and IS, and some relating minors you could take are Cyber Security, Data Science or Math. As someone mentioned, we have a close connection with IBM which betters your chances of getting an internship with them. Marist also has a joint-study program with them, essentially a CO-OP, if wanted to work during the school on some their experimental projects involving cloud computing or cybersecurity.
You have rice and Ut Austin - may want to consider SMU in Dallas. They have a number of clubs in the computer programming and good scholarships available.
