Bay Area / 33 ACT / 4.22 W / Comp Bio & BioE / Full Pay [3.83 unweighted GPA, 4.04 weighted capped GPA for UC]

Chance Me / Match Me
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Demographics

  • US domestic
  • State/Location of residency: CA/ bay area
  • Type of high school (or current college for transfers): very competitive and large
  • Other special factors: N/A

Cost Constraints / Budget
full pay (will not qualify for financial aid), no cost constraints

Intended Major(s): Bioinformatics/ Bioengineering

GPA, Rank, and Test Scores

  • Unweighted HS GPA: 3.83
  • Weighted HS GPA: 4.22
  • Weighted 10-12 A-G GPA: 4.35
  • UC Capped Weighted GPA: ~4.04
  • Class Rank: N/A (School doesn’t rank)
  • ACT/SAT Scores: 33 ACT
  • AP Scores: 4 and 5’s for all exams taken so far

List your HS coursework

(Indicate advanced level, such as AP, IB, AICE, A-level, or college, courses as well as specifics in each subject)

  • 10th Grade: AP World History (A/A), Chemistry Honors (A/A-), Pre-Calc Honors (B/B)

  • 11th Grade: AP Calculus AB (B/B-), AP Chemistry (B/A-), AP Computer Science A (A-/B-), AP English Literature (B+/A-), AP US History (A/A)

  • 12th Grade (Planned Senior Year Schedule): AP Macro/Microeconomics, AP US Government, AP Calculus BC, AP Biology

Extra note: Also did statistics 02 at Berkeley and received an A (not on transcript)

Awards

  • Published Author (Research Paper in Bioinformatics)

  • Congressional Volunteering Award

  • AP Scholar

Extracurriculars
(Include leadership, summer activities, competitions, volunteering, and work experience)

  • App Development: Founder, CEO, and CTO of a mobile application focused on accessibility for neurodivergent individuals (Grades 11, 12).

  • Research: Computational Biology/Bioinformatics independent research project via Polygence (Grades 11, 12).

  • Summer Program: Stanford AIMI (Artificial Intelligence in Medicine Imaging) program (Grade 12).

  • Internships:

    • Software Engineering Intern at an AI startup (Grade 11).

    • Software Engineering Intern at InMobi (Grade 9).

  • Non-Profit/Leadership: Project Lead and Mentor for a local computer science youth mentorship organization (Grades 9-12).

  • Education: Developed and taught an educational curriculum for Computational Biology (Grades 11, 12).

  • Volunteering:

    • Academic Tutor (Math, Science, World Language) (Grades 11, 12).

    • Food Bank Volunteer (Grades 9-12).

    • Virtual assistant volunteer for visually impaired individuals (Grades 11, 12).

    • Local animal shelter volunteer (Grades 11, 12).

Schools
(List of colleges by your initial chance estimate; designate if applying ED/EA/RD; if unsure, leave them unclassified)

If a scholarship is necessary for affordability, indicate that you are aiming for a scholarship and use the scholarship chance to estimate it into the appropriate group below; also, for colleges that admit by major or division, consider that in chance estimate.

  • Assured (100% chance of admission and affordability): UC Merced
  • Extremely Likely: UC Riverside, CSU Long Beach
  • Likely: UC Santa Cruz, SJSU, Penn state, Virginia Tech
  • Toss-up: UC Davis, University of Washington
  • Lower Probability: UC San Diego, UC Irvine, UIUC
  • Low Probability: UC Berkeley, UCLA, USC ( Potential ED), BU (potential ED), Northeastern (Potential ED), Cornell (Potential ED but very high reach), Georgia Tech

Questions for the Forum:

  1. How will admissions look at my dip in math grades (B’s in Pre-Calc Honors and AP Calc AB) considering I got an A in UC Berkeley Statistics and a 5 on the AP Calc AB test, and am tracking into AP Calc BC and AP Bio for senior year?
  2. Between BU, USC, Northeastern, and Cornell, which options make the most tactical sense for a Full Pay applicant utilizing Early Decision (ED)?
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Cornell is a school that doesn’t give as much of an ED bump as it used too, unless you are a hooked/recruited applicant. Unless you love it and it is your absolute first choice, I see that as a waste of ED and highly unlikely.

In generally you should be using ED at the school that is the clear favorite.

I also think you have PSU and VT mis-categorized as you are out of state, especially if you apply bio e.

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Thank you for the feedback! That makes a lot of sense about Cornell’s ED bump. I will also move VT and Penn State to Toss-Up just to be safe for out-of-state bioengineering. Appreciate the insights!

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Congratulations on your achievements.

Northeastern, and it’s not even close IMO. (although we have no USC ED history to go on) Full pays rule in Northeastern ED. Obviously you have to want to attend Northeastern enough to give up your chances at other schools if accepted ED.

The B’s, regardless of subject, will likely be an issue at highly rejective schools. UCB stats is less relevant because that’s not in the calculus area. The 5 on AP Calc AB will be helpful at schools that will look at it.

What foreign language have you taken?

Would you be happy to attend Merced, Riverside, CSULB?

You must apply EA at all the schools that offer it as well.

Calling @gumbymom for CA school categorization.

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I took 3 years of Spanish! Yes, I would be glad to attend them! CSULB and UC Riverside have great environments, and UC Merced has excellent growing research opportunities for bioengineering. They are all solid options for me. Thank you so much for your help!

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I am not convinced that you should apply ED at all. To me ED only makes sense if you have a clear number 1 top choice, and it sounds like you don’t.

I do not understand why you would give up any chance to get admitted to UC Berkeley or UCLA in-state, or even to find out whether you could get into either, to attend Northeastern. This is a long way to go to attend an excellent university, when you could attend an excellent university closer to home for way less money with way less time in airports and on airplanes.

Regarding your major and impact on your budget, it would not shock me if at some point some form of graduate school were possible. Make sure that this (eg, possibly an unfunded master’s degree) would still fit the budget even if you were to first pay something close to $400,000 for a bachelor’s degree.

I would put in a very, very strong effort in calculus BC, and seriously consider getting a tutor. This is more because calculus is so important in so many areas rather than to help with university admissions. Calculus is something that is worth taking the time and putting in the effort to learn very well.

Yes, this is very true and it is very important to have solid very good safeties. You are very likely to have other choices also, but solid safeties is the place to start when making a list of schools to apply to.

I think that you have a good list and are doing very well.

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PSU and VT seem like outliers. Why those two schools? They’re both off the beaten path. Travel wouldn’t be easy. Would you pick those two over your safeties and targets? If not, take them off the list.

Maybe substitute Pitt for PSU. The medical facilities around Pitt are extensive. Much easier commute.

Surprised some more of the WUE schools aren’t on your list. Good luck.

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Here is some 2025 Freshman admit data for Bioengineering along with admitted GPA ranges as reference. Your school categorizations are reasonable. UCI and UCD would be in a similar category so I would put them as toss-up.

Best of luck and admit rates/GPA are only part of the admission process so make sure you spend time on the detailing your EC’s and the PIQ’s.

Campus Bioengineering
UC Berkeley 9% / UC Capped weighted 4.20-4.30 Weighed Uncapped 4.31-4.65 Unweighted 3.89-4.00
UC Davis 39% / UC Capped weighted 4.09-4.29 Unweighted 3.80-4.00
UC Irvine 39%/ UC Capped weighted 4.11-4.29 Unweighed 3.83-4.00
UCLA 8.1%/ UC Capped weighted 4.25-4.32 Weighted Uncapped 4.60-4.90 Unweighted 3.95-4.00
UC Merced 91% / UC Capped weighted 3.59-4.15
UC Riverside 87%/ UC Capped weighted 3.95-4.24
UC San Diego 18%/ UC Capped weighted 4.15-4.30 Unweighted 3.84-4.00
UC Santa Barbara Major not available
UC Santa Cruz 68%/ UC Capped weighted 3.87-4.22
Cal Poly SLO 15%/ SLO GPA 4.14-4.25
Cal State Long Beach 67%/ Average CSU GPA: 4.08
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I agree that with the fantastic options you might have in California, applying ED “tactically” seems like a mistake to me. Of course if there is a private university with ED you would love and would definitely choose over all your other options no matter where you were admitted, then great. If you are admitted ED you can then be done and enjoy senior year. But if you would actually prefer some other colleges if admitted, or at least want to think further about it, I would not ED.

I also agree about maybe switching to Pitt instead of Penn State. It is actually one of the top research universities in the world for BioE . . .

. . . and also very highly-regarded for Comp Bio, where they have a relationship with CMU. That’s formally at the PhD level, but Pitt undergrad students in fact can take some courses at CMU as suits their interests:

A final point about Pitt is they have rolling admissions, so you can apply early and hopefully get an offer as early as Octoberish. This then can help you WAAAAY narrow down your list, assuming you are in fact suitably high on it as an opportunity given your interests.

And, in fact, that may help you avoid feeling pressure to applying binding somewhere that is not actually your favorite.

Like, BU, USC, and Northeastern would be very good for your interests, but I don’t think actually better than Pitt, more the opposite if anything, and they would cost you more too. I’m not sure why you would want to apply binding to those tactically if Pitt already gave you an offer.

Cornell, though, I would understand, that is a pretty special school for people with your sorts of interests. Or not, like some people have zero interest in four years in Upstate New York. But I could least understand why you would have that as your absolute favorite.

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I would consider applying to Stanford University EA. You have some strong points on the profile under awards, co-curriculars, extracurriculars, internships, & leadership. You’ve earned “B” grades thus far in precalculus & calc AB so you are more likely to earn a “B” in calc BC than an “A” or a “C”. Does the same instructor teach both AB and BC? Is it common at your high school for students with AP mathematics scores of “5” to earn “B” and even “C” grades? This is more common at selective private schools. Did you score a “5” in AP Computer Science A? You need to also take physics, even if just honors for engineering. But don’t replace AP Biology, given that your intended major involves biology.

The statistics grade from Berkeley needs to be reported to all colleges. I assume that this is not a dual enrollment since the grade doesn’t appear on your high school transcript. Then, you’ll need to also submit a transcript from Berkeley to all the schools you apply to. If you can fit a second Berkeley class into your schedule, I would take it and earn another “A”.

I would drop Cornell Engineering, which is much harder to get into than many people realize. You probably have about the same chance or even a slightly better shot (a long shot) at Stanford through EA. If no interest in spending the next 4 years at NN, aka “Nerd Nation”, then do not apply. I would avoid applying ED to any school in your case.

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College courses taken while in high school need to be included in applications.

Statistics 2 is an introductory non calculus statistics course of the kind that AP statistics tries to approximate the content of.

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Thank you for your help! I’m honestly not completely sure about my choice to ED either. I just thought it would help give me an admissions advantage but I definitely see your point about UCLA and UC Berkeley in state.

Also thank you for the advice regarding calculus, I will make sure to put strong effort into BC.

As for the budget, I do most likely want to pursue a master’s degree. However, my family income is around 500k+ and I’m not sure if I would apply for any financial aid. Do any of the private schools in my list offer merit scholarships to help offset the costs or is it best to maximize my chances with full pay?

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That’s a really good point about Penn State and Virginia Tech being logistically tough, so I’ll probably take them off if I wouldn’t actually choose them over my CA options. I really like the idea of Pitt instead because of the medical facilities, so I’m definitely going to look into that switch.

I haven’t looked into WUE schools too much yet, are there any specific ones you think have good bioengineering or bioinformatics programs?

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Thank you for the data! I’ll definitely make sure to spend a lot of time perfecting my PIQ’s and EC’s.

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Thank you so much for this! The info on Pitt is amazing, I had no idea their Bioengineering program was so strong. I will strongly consider applying early like you suggested. As for the ED issue, honestly, Cornell and USC are the only two on my list that I could actually see myself committing to with no regrets so I’ll have to think about whether I want to try for one of those or skip ED.

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Thank you for help! I didn’t think trying Stanford REA was realistic for me but I might try if its worth a shot.

As for the math grades, I had the same teacher so far for precalculus and calc AB and she has quite harsh grading. Since she doesn’t teach BC, I’m hoping I might have a chance at improving. As for the AP test, I think everyone in my class scored a 4 or above while their grades varied quite a lot. So it is quite common to have a B and a 5. As for AP CS A, unfortunately, I did get a 4 on the test. I’ll make sure to fit in some sort of physics, maybe through dual enrollment.

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Financial aid, merit or otherwise, is unusual for a master’s degree. Most of the people I know who have gotten a master’s degree were full pay (this includes me, but that was a long time ago).

Some master’s degrees are one year, some are two years. This may depend quite a bit on the major. I also know one person who got two closely related master’s degrees in 1 1/2 years, but I think that this included the summer and took four semesters.

PhD’s are usually fully funded, but these can be very competitive for admissions, and take many years. I have heard of a few cases where a student applied for a (funded) PhD program, but was accepted to a (unfunded) master’s degree program instead.

Also, it is relatively common for students to change universities between where they get their bachelor’s degree and where they get a graduate degree, whether master’s or anything else. I know a few cases where students stayed at the same university, but changing schools is probably more common. It is not unusual at all to move to a higher ranked school for a graduate degree, or to move to a school that has a very good specialized program. Also, rankings for very specific graduate programs can vary enormously from the overall university rankings. For example not only may the best universities for biology be different from the best for engineering or history, but the best schools for desert biology will vary from the best schools for estuary biology or marine biology, and computational biology is likely to be somewhere different again. Undergraduate education tends to be relatively broad if a bit specialized, whereas graduate education will be much more specialized.

Looking for the best graduate program for you is something that can be postponed for multiple years at this point. However, making sure that you will still have college funds available when the time comes might or might not impact the choice of school for a bachelor’s degree.

With a family income of about $500,000, need based aid of course will not happen. I do not see any point in applying for need based aid. However, there can still be significant differences in the costs of various universities, with in-state public schools likely to be lower cost that most. You do have stats that could bring in merit aid at some schools, but probably not at the very highest ranked schools (some of which do not have merit based financial aid). There are some schools on your list, such as Penn State and Virginia Tech, that do offer some limited merit based financial aid for out of state students. I think that BU and NEU also have some merit based aid, but this is limited and someone I know with stats similar to yours got into both with no merit aid (and went elsewhere, and did well).

I wondered about Stanford also. You ACT is probably a bit low for Stanford, but there might be a chance.

Have you taken a physics class and a chemistry class at some point in high school? You should. This does not need to be AP or DE.

You have a lot of very good in-state public schools on your list. I do expect you to get multiple very good acceptances from this list.

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That suggests not applying ED anywhere except possibly one of those two schools.

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Thank you for the information on graduate school and PhD programs! As for the ACT I am retaking it twice more to try to push my score up to 34+ and so far I’m tracking mostly 34 and 35 on practice tests. I took AP Chem this year and I haven’t taken physics yet but I was considering enrolling in a community college class during the fall.

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Yes, looking at it again Cornell or USC would probably be my top choices if I went the ED route. What do you think my chances look like for ED at either one? Considering I’m applying to the computational biology major through CALS (college of arts and sciences) rather than the engineering college?