I’m a high school senior and I’m going to A&M for CE (CS track) this fall. It wasn’t my first choice, but due to my SATs and ECs (I assume), I had no chance getting into my preferred schools.
SAT: 1650 (M:640 R:510)
ECs: None freshman-junior year due to having to take care of younger siblings. CS club senior year
Volunteer: None
GPA: 3.65 (my school has a weird weighed point system so I’m not going to post it)
Rank: 35/756 (top 5%)
Dream/Reach schools: Berkeley, Carnegie, Stanford
Also, my family makes >$20k a year, so paying for these schools would be a very big issue.
Should I do some volunteer work over the summer? If I do good my freshman year and sophomore year (get a 3.5ish GPA) and get good recommendations, should I try and transfer? Are there scholarships for transfers? Do the schools give good financial aid packages for transfers? Should I retake the SAT or take the ACT (never taken it; heard it’s easier)?
I presume that you can afford A&M with the package they have given you. They have a fine CS department (the inventor of C++ is a distinguished faculty member there!) and you will have lots of opportunities for internships and good jobs when you graduate. You need to concentrate on being an outstanding student at A&M and perhaps you will have a good chance to get into one of the schools you mention for a graduate degree. At this point, your stats are not really very competitive for the schools you list and transferring in such a hot field now is even harder than admission as a Freshman. Don’t be fooled into thinking that departmental rankings have a lot to do with undergraduate education, they are more about graduate programs and seriously flawed also.
^as above.
Also, getting scholarships as a transfer is much, much harder than for a first year.
Also also, Berkeley won’t give you any break / scholarship- it’s a state university and you are out of state.
Berkeley’s CS will be impossible to transfer into from an OOS university. If you went to a CC in CA, then transferring into CS would be possible - but going to A&M, doing well, and hoping to get into one of the schools you mentioned for graduate school (if you decide to go to grad school) seems like the best option.