State/Location of residency: MN (not Minneapolis metro area )
Type of high school: Public mid sized, Class of 2026
Asian
Cost Constraints / Budget
Not more than 80K a year MAX
Intended Major(s) CS
GPA, Rank, and Test Scores
Unweighted HS GPA: 4.0 / 4.0
Weighted HS GPA: 4.76
Class Rank: #2 / 383
ACT/SAT Scores:
Superscore: 36R 36S 35M 36E
Highest Composite on a single test: 34 I will get this to a 35-36 before applying
HS coursework
English: Eng 1 Honors, Eng 2 Honors, AP Lit (taking)
Math: Algebra 2 Honors, AP Calc Ab (5), AP Calc Bc (taking), Ap Stats (taking)
Science: AP Biology (taking), AP Physics 1 (4 ), AP Physics 2 (taking, will try hard to get a 5), AP Chem (taking), Chemistry H, Biology Honors
History and social studies: AP US History (4)
Language other than English: (including highest level completed) Spanish 1, Spanish 2, AP Spanish Lang (taking, only non mexican guy might be cooked)
Other academic courses: Self studied AP Computer Science A freshman year (5)
Awards
Bit vague to avoid Dox but good chance there are people that will see this and instantly dox me
First place National High School Coding Competition in Atlanta, Georgia - Led Minnesota Team
Google Search Impact Award - 1M Clicks in the past 28 days (does this even count?)
Won Gamejam in a specific category (aka a competiton where people make games)
Advent of Code Competitive Programming ( #2 in my city, global placement top 5 / over 40K participants)
Regional science fair first place in my category
Extracurriculars (Include leadership, summer activities, competitions, volunteering, and work experience)
Game development:
Built multiplayer sword fighting game for a competition and didnt win (honorable mention tho ), made a comeback on gaming websites and reached 50K signups.
Coded an educational geography game; It got 2,000,000 monthly active users and im making like 10k a month off ads on this game rn, used by teachers and schools. Published by big distributors.
Not really game development but I built a series of apps that are AI tools, these got pretty popular with over 10K downloads and a bunch of monthly paying users.
Freelance development:
Worked as a freelance developer building full-stack apps for AI SaaS over 30 clients. Maintained my 5 star rating. Got noticed by the CEO of the platform I was working on and by some big names in Silicon valley. Got on local news for this (not Forbes or anything )
YouTube channel:
Started my YouTube channel in 2018 (wow time ) been consistently posting programming tutorials and tech content enjoyed by a wide variety of people (1.4M views in total)
Research:
Currently intern at lab at Stanford, fully remote. Working on AI/ML stuff. Will probably write a paper but unlikely of publishing it (although the professor said its possible) Will get a good rec from this and spent a lot of time working on this. My work in use by a major healthcare company.
Built a generative AI project for a neurosurgeon at Duke. Got positive review and was presented internally there. Met him through my freelancing so I guess this doesn’t really count as research.
Common stuff ig:
Founder of CS Club
SciOly built electric vehicle robot placed in Regionals
Tennis (hopefully varsity this year?)
Essays/LORs/Other
I generally suck at essay writing but gonna dedicate this summer to filling out my common app and making sure my essays are solid
LORs will be:
Stanford professor from research (10/10 hopefully)
Biology or calc teacher (or both, they like me but the thing is they write a lot of recs so idk how unique it would be)
Just to clarify, is 80K affordable for your family without concerns, or would a lower cost actually be preferable and 80K is the max?
I’m sure you’re aware that the majority of the schools listed are reaches for everyone. Did you want help expanding the target / likely part of your college list, or did you just want opinions on your chances for the schools listed?
Lower would be preferable, but up to this amount is possible (I dont want to immediately exclude schools like UCB, etc)
Expanding would be awesome as well! I’m just beginning to research colleges and right now my only safety is the UMN Twin Cities (which I guess might be considered a target but confident I can get in there)
Does your family qualify for need-based aid? If you’re not sure, ask your parents to run the net price calculator on Princeton’s website. If the NPC is higher than 80k and your family can only afford up to that price point, then the majority of schools on your list will be unaffordable since they cost over $90k/year.
Aside from that, you seem like a strong applicant who’s competitive at all these schools. Just make sure you have a “highly likely” school on your list that you like and is affordable.
I’m actually someone who would’ve got a full ride at Stanford (family making under 150k) a year or two ago. Now our income on paper is a lot higher due to my projects but I think I will still get some merit financial aid.
I believe that UC schools don’t offer any financial aid to OOS applicants correct? Are there any other schools in Cali that have decent financial aid for out of states?
Public schools (with only a couple of notable exceptions - and none in CA as far as I know), reserve their financial aid for residents of their state, which makes sense because they are tax-payer funded institutions.
Have your parents check the NPC, and figure out what their true budget limit is. There’s no point applying to schools that cost more than what your parents are willing or able to pay.
Very impressive! I would just say to work on that essay and really try to bring out your passion for all of those things you’re doing, but do it in a manner that brings to life who you are…don’t just tell them. Because if you get to a 35/36 with all of those EC’s, I could see you getting into any of those. Good luck.
Not all your schools are warm - at least in Winter.
Since you don’t seem to care about the weather - I’d remove some and add some lesser but still strong schools:
UCSD - if you can afford the UCs
Hometown UMN is strong
NC State
Va Tech
ASU
UF
W&M for smaller
UTD
UMD (a bit of a reach)
You gave all reaches - so I’m saying - too many - what are the safe or likely and budget achieving. And better weather.
You want warm - and by the way, those income tables are not absolute - they look at assets too. For example, my kid got into a school where on average, I’d have gotten $38K. In fact, 88% of kids got money but we didn’t. Why? Above average assets. At the same time, a higher income but little assets may be ok.
UCs do not offer financial aid to non-California residents, except for rare merit scholarships. For larger merit in California, you would need to look at private schools. Remember that merit scholarships are mostly used to attract admits at the top of the college’s admission class, so bigger merit scholarships are more likely to be gotten at schools that would be considered low match or safety for admission only (and which offer bigger merit scholarships, of course).
Actually I think that your profile is similar to the large majority of students who attend Stanford. Unfortunately, your profile is also similar to the large majority of students who apply to Stanford and are rejected.
Years ago in the Stanford alumni magazine there was an article about admissions. They estimated that 80% of applicants are fully qualified to attend. In my opinion you are clearly in that 80%. The problem that you will have is that they accept something like 4% of applicants, and that 4% includes legacy students and recruited athletes.
You need to do two things. One is to just be the best version of you that you can be. Participate in the ECs that make sense for you. Treat people well (or at least fairly). Whatever you do, do it well. Keep up your excellent results academically. The other thing that you need to do is to make sure that you apply to at least one and preferably two safeties. A third thing that you really should do is to look for schools that are a good fit for you.
Looking at your profile, I do think that you should apply to Stanford. Just be aware that it is a reach for pretty much everyone. Amongst your other reaches my main reaction is that there are a lot of them, and you might want to think about which ones would be the best fit for you and cut the rest from the list.
Given how long your list is, I would be inclined to first get your applications into at least two safeties and perhaps the two or three reaches that are the best fit for you, then send in other applications again to whatever schools are left that you think are the best fit. That way if you get tired or behind part way through you will have your applications into the schools that are most important (with two solid safeties probably topping the list of “most important”).
And be aware that there are hundreds of colleges and universities in the US where you can get an excellent education.
Add two top flight UMD, Va Tech, UF types you know you’ll get into and then shoot your shots. ASU is underrated too.
Why be cold when you clearly don’t want to be ?
My nephew is at a FAANG. U of A Poli Sci. Took a bunch of cs tests to get the job which is common. Someone the other day noted their U of N Georgia - a directional is at google. I know a UT Chatt at Oracle.
Your list is awesome but more important - you are a stud. That doesn’t change if you’re at Florida instead of Ga Tech.
You’ve received some great advice already. Not only are you not “mid”, but you are on the verge of appearing “too good to be true”. If I were you, I would focus less on quantitative embellishment of your (already great) EC’s, and more on defining your narrative as a candidate. Who are you? Why are you doing all this? Why do you want to go to Stanford? Your essays and LOR’s may play an important role in defining that for the reviewers.
I think that you are well positioned for OOS admission to Georgia Tech: if you look as Section C7 of the Georgia Tech Common Data Set, it states that rigor of your high school record and academic GPA are “very important” academic criteria for admission. Also, most of the kids I know who have gotten into Georgia Tech in the past few years as OOS applicants have been either valedictorian or salutatorian of their respective high school classes.
I am not stating that you are a lock for admission at Georgia Tech; but I think that you are in a better position than many OOS applicants there. You might also look at some of the posts of the Georgia Tech Admissions blog by Rick Clark, here: Rick Clark – Georgia Tech Admission Blog; there might be some useful information to be gleaned from this site.
(not Minneapolis metro area )
), made a comeback on gaming websites and reached 50K signups.
) been consistently posting programming tutorials and tech content enjoyed by a wide variety of people (1.4M views in total)