Which college in CA would be a good fit for me?

State Forums
1

I’m a junior (Asian girl) and starting to look at colleges. I live in California and would like to stay in California for college, and major in computer science. There are so many great STEM colleges in CA, and while I’ve been looking into some of them, I’m still unsure on which colleges I should be reaching/focusing. I am extremely interested in computer science, and I’m pretty good at it. My computer teacher who I have had for 2 years now (will be 3 after senior year) considers me one of her brightest students. Here’s some stuff about me:

Unweighted GPA: 3.97 (the only B I’ve ever gotten was a semester of AP Lang)
Weighted GPA: 4.31 (excluding freshman year, 4.58)
Honors classes: Honors Chemistry, Honors Spanish, Honors Precalc
AP classes: AP Euro, AP Computer Science Principles, AP Bio, AP Lang & Comp, APUSH, AP Computer Science A (I got a 3 on Euro and 5 on CSP, the rest of the APs I am currently taking)
SAT: I got 1390 (and 7/6/7 on the essay) without studying at all, I’m going to take it again after studying so that will hopefully raise my score a lot
Clubs: Red Cross, Women in STEM, Nation Spanish Honors Society, Science Alliance, a different charity club, a couple social clubs
ECs: 4 years cross-country by end of senior year (got Coach’s Award freshman year), 2 years track, I work at a pizza restaurant, not sure if this counts but I self-published a book in 5th grade and 8th grade, and hope to finish another one in the next year

I plan to take these classes next year:
Game Design and web development
AP Statistics
AP Calc AB
AP macro/AP micro
Honors Anatomy or AP Environmental Science (undecided)
AP Lit
AP gov (unsure what I’m going to do the other semester)

2

A lot depends on you SAT score. Also your financial situation. Harvey Mudd comes to mind.

3

Look at the UC’s
Top Cal States like Cal Poly SLO, Pomona, Long Beach and San diego state
Santa Clara and USC.

CS is very competitive even with top grades and high test scores so identify a few safety schools first then continue to formulate your list. Your local Cal state or UC Riverside/Merced would be a good safeties based on current stats.

Best of luck

4

If you keep up the great work in your junior year and raise your SAT score higher, I think you have a high chance of being admitted by at least the mid-tier UC’s. Like implied above, CS is an impacted major and it is very competitive to get into CS in the top tier UC’s (UCB, UCLA, UCSD). USC has a good CS program and also competitive to get into.

5

Harvey Mudd is a top school that has a higher acceptance rate for women AFAIK for majors like computer science.