<p>For all of you savvy parents who have opinions, what are some good safeties for my S, who very definitely plans to major in computer science (and to pursue artificial intelligence research in graduate school)? He's finishing 11th grade now with the following:</p>
<p>Old SAT is 800V/770M and SAT IIs are 800 (IIC), 800 (Physics), 760 (writing)
New SAT in June.</p>
<p>3.9 UW and 4.6 W (this means two B+ grades in hs, the rest A's)</p>
<p>109 AMC 12 and 4 AIME this year</p>
<p>9 APs at the end of 10th grade, three more this year, four 5's and five 4's so far. Hoping for three 5's this year and straight A's.</p>
<p>Advanced math online from EPGY, and comm. college classes. Alas, these provided his two B+ grades.</p>
<p>Very good academic E/C stuff. Some community/leadership stuff, but nothing nationally noticeable.</p>
<p>Here's the unusual part: we homeschool.</p>
<p>The "obvious suspects" like Stanford, Cal Tech, CMU, and MIT are great if he gets in. But what we are trying to think about is the "love your safety" idea. What's a safety for a homeschooler with high scores, that has a great CS program?</p>
<p>Kids we know who applied to the schools you mentioned also applied to the following:
Rochester, Case, U. Maryland, BU, RPI, U. Michigan, Rutgers, Rice, Georgia Tech. Don't know how many of these kids had specific interest in AI research so you'll have to check but these should get you started. If you're concerned with the money, a few of these should be pretty generous to a kid like your son....</p>
<p>I'm sure originaloog will recommend RPI which also has good merit scholarships. Evil Robot is happily doing CS at Vandy which offered him more generous aid than Yale, his long time first choice. UIUC is also very good in CS. I know an MIT grad who's gone to UIUC for grad school. UMich, which has rolling admissions, has a great Honors program.</p>
<p>I second UIUC choice. And it is a rolling admissions school, so you can have an acceptance in hand in early December. Their honors program is small and very selective.</p>
<p>Me three on UIUC -- it's the first thing I thought of when I read your post. I don't know whether you can consider it a true safety as an out-of-stater, but the CS is terrific, the price is good, and they won't care about EC's the way Stanford and MIT will.</p>
<p>UIUC is an excellent idea, particularly since you will know early. A super safe, and off-beat choice would be the University of Alabama in Huntsville, depending on his interests he could be a star, and get involved in research - check it out. Oldman might have some insight into this school, as well.</p>
<p>There are many state schools with good programs-- UIUC (have to love my alma mater), the universities of Texas (Austin), Wisconsin, Maryland, Michigan, Washington, and, of course PSU.</p>
<p>I see you are from PA. As said above, Penn State Honors is a good choice if he is sure about CS. Also, I know that the Engineering School gives out merit scholarships to very highly qualified students, even though they don't publicize them the way the School of Science does. My son's classmate (1600 SAT, about 3rd or 4th in the class) got a full merit ride to Penn State for Computer Engineering.</p>
<p>Wow, that was fast! Thank you all for these great suggestions. I have been wondering where the line is between match and safety. I was thinking of UIUC as more of a match...but then my uncertainty is why I was posting this question in the first place.</p>
<p>Penn State Honors impressed us a lot when we visited recently. However, they only admit about one out of six or seven applicants (avg SAT of 1426), so we began to wonder if that wasn't a match as well.</p>
<p>There were some heartrending stories recently of kids who did not apply to any true safeties, just to lots of reach and match schools. I would like to advise my S to avoid this problem. We went through his "top ten" list and discovered that he would have a statistical 8% chance of ten rejections, and that assumes there is no penalty in the odds for being a homeschooler with a parent-derived transcript and GPA.</p>
<p>You can always count on PSU without the honors college as a true safety (and w/ rolling admissions). There is an option to apply to the honors collegge as a junior.</p>
<p>I think he will get into Penn State honors, based on my observations in my son's and daughter's graduating class. But, can I ask a question? How does he have grades and a gpa if you homeschool? I am not sure how that works with homeschooling.
And, as said above, he will DEFINITELY get into Penn State regular (and it is rolling admissions) and they have a good CS department, so that would be a good safetly.</p>
<p>MotherOfTwo ~ S has grades because we give him a very science and math intensive curriculum, with a lot of internet courses, EPGY, AP courses, and community college courses. Consequently he gets third party grades; they are just from about five sources per year and we (as the homeschooling parents) only "teach" an occassional subject ourselves, which we also grade. This is why he has so many AP scores (he's one of the top five in the country in terms of AP scores last year...National AP Scholar after 10th grade). We use the AP tests to "validate" that he has mastered the material on his transcript, especially the stuff we taught him ourselves.</p>
<p>Does anyone know how PSU decides on admission? Is it a formula of some kind, or are they reading an application like Stanford is? I agree that PSU without the Honors college is a real safety, based on SAT scores.</p>
<p>The Schreyer Honors College has a separate application with several essays which are very different from the essays required by any other college. They consider essays, ECs, and recs, like any other selective college. It is definitely not a formula, but, I repeat, based on what you have said about your child, I almost sure he would get in. The admissions there, from what I know, is not as random and unpredictable as Ivy or other high ranked private schools.
Here is the link to the application for this year - they change the essay questions every year, but they are in a similar vein.
<a href="http://www.scholars.psu.edu/prospectivestudents/application/index.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.scholars.psu.edu/prospectivestudents/application/index.html</a></p>
<p>The best part, RDad, about Penn State or UIUC as a safety is that if he gets apps going ASAP this summer, he will know well before Christmas (maybe not about Scheyers, I don't know when it would let you know, but I would recommend applying to both Ill and Penn).
Mini and Tokenadult are the HS experts, but I would think that by now both these schools have enough experience with homeschooling to be able to tell you if any specific additional documents or tests are required, or if it would be to his benefit to start early - he will have great choices, good luck next year.</p>
<p>The SHC application deadline is in November and the school sends out acceptances in the spring (March?). It is possible to get the regular PSU app in early, then submit the Schreyer separately. (It was really nice to have that one acceptance in hand early.)</p>
<p>Your son sounds amazing in the academic department!! Wow, a very high achiever and brilliant kid. You already got great advice from everyone else. I agree on Penn State. But as another "type" of college that your son could rely on getting in....I would have concurred on RPI and RIT. Best of luck....I agree that statistically he should get into at least one of his other schools but I think you are very very wise to have one school a step down from the others and then one more that is two steps down. What is important is that he likes the safety and it is not just a school "tacked on". I have seen some kids have all these top tier schools and then tack on some safety they have no interest in that is very easy to get into. I think for top students, like your son, the safety school is "relative" and need not be an easy school but simply easier to get into in terms of odds for HIM. So, for instance, Lehigh might be a good safety for your son but would not be for every kid. </p>
<p>Thanks all! These are very helpful comments, as I learned on CC that we need to find 1-2 safeties that S would love to attend if the other schools don't come through. He will definitely aaply to PSU (and Schreyers) in August to get the ball rolling. He really liked the school, one of only two big schools that he did like, in fact.</p>
<p>Susan ~ funny that you should suggest Lehigh. He just asked me what I knew about it yesterday.</p>