Chance a CS major for top schools with a low math ACT subscore

Chance Me / Match Me
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MOD NOTE: Merged post

Just kidding (kind of). I will certainly apply to my dream schools, I just want to know if you think I have ANY chance at all because i really have no idea!

Demographics

  • State/Location of residency: Wisconsin
  • Type of high school: Competitive public, one of the best schools in Wisconsin, not a feeder school at all though, most students end up at UW Madison/lacrosse/eau claire and few go to top schools
  • Gender/Race/Ethnicity: White female
  • Other special factors: legacy at Notre Dame. Female in CS?? (not a hook but might help idk)

Intended Major(s)
Computer Science!

GPA, Rank, and Test Scores

  • Unweighted HS GPA: 4.08 (school gives 4.33 UW for A+’s)
  • Weighted HS GPA (incl. weighting system): 4.46
  • Class Rank: school doesn’t rank, but i’d estimate top 10%
  • ACT/SAT Scores: 34

Coursework
Freshman year: AP HuG (4), as many honors classes as i could take

Sophomore year: AP Gov (3), AP Psych (5), again all honors when possible

Junior year (this year): AP Comp Sci A (predicted 4), AP CS Principles (predicted 4), AP Calc BC (predicted 4), APUSH and AP Lang (predict 3 for both)

Senior year courseload: AP Physics C, AP Lit, AP French, AP Econ, Calc 3/linear algebra

Awards

*NCWIT women in computing Affiliate Winner
*very small, local engineering competition winner (designed a crosswalk that i felt should be added near our high school) - you’d be surprised how much goes into putting in a crosswalk haha

  • NHS
  • AP Scholar

Extracurriculars
Cross Country (3 yrs)

  • active member

Debate (2 yrs)

  • active member
  • qualified for the State competition in 2020

Best Buddies (2 yrs)

  • active member
  • selected for leadership board, was one of 4 people in the club to help plan and lead meetings

Destination Imagination (8 yrs)

  • Team Co-Captain
  • Qualified for States 3 times
  • Competed at Global Finals twice
  • Created a DI team for students with special needs to compete on

Student-Athlete Leadership Council (2 years)

  • active member
  • led discussions about making good choices for middle schoolers

Part-time job (2 years)

  • helped build the store
  • often put in charge of customer service

Community Service

  • 150+ service hours
  • worked extensively with kids with special needs

Coding

  • extensive knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
  • self taught through codecademy
  • created several personal websites from scratch

Summer Programs

  • Girls Who Code Summer Immersion Camp (2020)
  • Notre Dame Summer Scholars: Computing Track (2021)

Photography

  • self-taught at photography
  • self-taught at photoshop

Essays/LORs/Other
It’s always tough to predict how good these will be, but i’ll try.

Essays: I’m a good writer, although a little lacking in interesting life experiences but I do think I can write a decent, if not mind blowing, essay

LOR 1: hoping to get from my comp sci A teacher. I got an A+ in his class and he wrote my letter of rec for the notre dame summer scholars program that i got into. he likes me a lot and will definitely testify on my abilities in comp sci. so maybe 9/10?

LOR 2: my calc bc teacher, honestly it’s been hard to form deep connections with teachers this year but he likes me pretty well and has seen me grow in math this year, so maybe 6 or 7/10? nothing spectacular most likely

Budget
I think for this post id like to focus more on my chances than on expenses. obviously i know budget is absolutely crucial, but for now I’m more interested in opinions on my chances so just assume i can afford it haha.

SCHOOLS

I have some good safeties and matches, so no worries there, but I want to know if I even have the slightest chance at any of these schools. I know they’re all insane reaches, but is it at least worth an application??

  • Rice
  • Cal Poly SLO (for CS is extremely competitive)
  • Tufts
  • Brown
  • Pomona
  • Barnard
  • Notre Dame

Thank you sooo much for any input! Don’t worry regardless of my chances I will still try my hardest on my app!

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Budget matters because if you cannot afford the college without a merit scholarship, the chances must be based on the merit scholarship, not admission. Admission but too expensive = rejection.

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yeah i’m aware of that, but for the purpose of this post just assume i can afford it without a merit scholarship. very few people get those at these schools anyway

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If you don’t apply to a school, your chance of admission is exactly 0.00.

I suggest that you look at the Common Data Set for each of the schools you are interested in. Section C7 tells you how each school weighs both academic and non-academic admissions factors; Section C9 gives you the SAT and ACT ranges of admitted students; Section C10 tells you how admitted students ranked in their respective high schools; and Section C11 gives you the GPA ranges of admitted students. (NOTE: While all universities and colleges are required to maintain this information, some schools do not have a published common data set.) Reviewing this information can give you some idea of how you might fit in, statistically, in recent admitted classes at the schools you are interested in.

If your statistics put you in the top 25% of accepted students, then you have a better chance than many (I’m not saying that you have no chance if you fall outside that top 25% range, however). CS is going to be very competitive for admission, however, at most good schools to which you apply.

Also, you should sit down on multiple occasions with your high school’s guidance counselor and discuss admissions strategies. Further, if your high school uses Naviance or similar software, look over where you fall on those plots of GPA vs. ACT/SAT compared with those of other students from your school who have applied to the schools you are interested in; and discuss those with your guidance counselor.

You might take a look at Purdue. Here is a link to Purdue’s Data Digest, https://www.purdue.edu/datadigest/. If you go to the links for “Student Enrollment,” “Applications, Admits, and Matriculations,” and “New First-Time Beginner Profiles,” you may find some useful information available.

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Also, only you can decide if you can emotionally handle getting into a school but having to say no because you can’t afford it. Sometimes the not knowing if you would have been accepted is easier to move on from that knowing you got it but money held you back.

As someone else said, I would look at the common data sets and maybe pick the 2 dream/high reaches that come closest to your stats.

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@dolewhip1 Add UW Madison to the list if I were you. They’re constantly in the running for top CS schools in the country.

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The University of Wisconsin is excellent for computer science. It is probably better known for computer science than at least 4 or 5 of the 7 schools that you named, and very close to the others. I have worked with people from there and been very impressed.

Something like 30 years ago I was at U.Wisconsin for a meeting related to a software project, and one of my colleagues wanted to get a soda from their soda machine. He could not figure out where to put in his money. The response was “it’s on the network”. Even back then the CS department had managed to take a normal routine soda machine and put it on the CS department’s network so that you paid by some form of university credit over the network. At the time this was quite amusing.

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yeah i’m aware that madison is very good, it’s on my list as well, i guess i was looking more for input on my chances at the schools i listed but thank u for the advice!

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Re Cal Poly
CP-SLO is a California public university and is obliged to accept California residents first. It is an impacted campus, so that means, too many students requesting popular majors with few seats.

Your chances are based on specific courses and GPA from grades 9-11.
You need to recalculate your UW GPA. Since you are a non-resident, they won’t accept your individual school’s extra weighting of +/- scores. Recalculate at https://mca.netlify.app

Also, the visual and performing arts requirement trips up a LOT of non-residents for California UC’s and CSU’s. You must have a yearlong course in an area of fine arts: [quote]One year is required and two years are recommended. Courses can be chosen from one of the following categories: dance, music, theater, interdisciplinary arts, or visual arts (e.g., painting, web/graphic design, film/video, inter/multimedia arts). Two one-semester courses from the same discipline is also acceptable.[/quote]

Assume $42K in non-resident tuition and fees. The State of California does not fund non-residents, so there are no scholarships to cover non-resident costs.

Apply, but this is a very competitive major at an impacted campus. Girls in CS are becoming very common, so it may not be an advantage.

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CDS gives a false sense for CS at nearly all schools.

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Cal Poly does indeed give OOS scholarships. My son got one. They’re very small though, no more than $2k in nearly all cases.

Gender will not be considered at CP as part of the admissions algorithm.

Since it’s an algorithm though, you have a shot IF your mat and english sections arre high. That’s all they use from the ACT (see my post in the CP forum on understanding the MCA, but know it may have changed and the concordance tables are now different).

If you are set on CP I think you have a shot at CS, but you have a better shot at SE. Most CS majors do SE anyway. It is one of the few majors though where it’s fairly straight forward to switch to CS. It’s a little less competitive than CS.

Good luck and feel free to PM me with any CP questions.

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Yes, I agree: the CDS is a composite of all entering freshmen, so it is a crude measuring device for CS applicants who will likely have higher GPAs and test scores than your average entering freshman; but I don’t know how to quantify that differential, or how to pull such information out of the CDS.

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Or if not higher GPAs and test scores, then at least they will be facing increased competition for slots in a CS program. So, yes, it’s an imperfect tool; you have to be aware of its limitations.

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If you are looking to be a CS major, there is no reason for you to look at Notre Dame, Brown, or Tufts, when you have UW Madison as your in-state option. Also, why Pomona and not Harvey Mudd?

If you are looking for smaller colleges for CS, Carleton is better for CS than Pomona, as is Swarthmore.

Overall, you are a competitive applicant, but, as you likely know, the majority of the competitive applicants to any college are rejected.

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The $2k scholarships will not cover the non-resident fees of close to $20K.

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It may be a fit issue. HMC is not for everyone.

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They can be applied to other fees though, so the net effect is the same. :+1:

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Definitely apply to Rice. Being from Wisconsin might give you a geographic edge as many of the applicants are from Texas or the South. Rice is very generous with financial aid. Look up the Rice Investment and run the net price calculator to get a good idea of the aid you might get. Rice does not admit by major. You can major in anything you want (with the exception of architecture and music which require admission by portfolio/audition) including CS and do not have to declare a major until the end of sophomore year. That being said, CS is one of the most popular majors, and Rice has many female CS majors. Slightly more males than females apply to Rice, but Rice tries to keep the numbers fairly even. Rice is increasing the size of the undergraduate population over the next few years so more students will be admitted for the upcoming classes. It’s a good time to apply, and your stats seem to be in the competitive range for Rice. Rice gives AP credit for 5s and 4s so it is worth the effort to study for the tests and try to score in that range.

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Cal Poly SLO is test blind for the 2022 admission cycle so your GPA, EC hours and HS course rigor will be the most important components of your application. No essays and No LOR’s. No where to showcase your specific EC’s so more stat’s based than other schools. Yes there are a few scholarships for OOS applicants but not something to count on.

For 2021, SLO was predicting 5838 applicants for 205 spots in CS.

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According to your other thread, paying the full cost of attendance at Rice would be a stretch for your family, and you aren’t sure if the culture at ND will work for you. Actually on that thread, it sounds like ND is on the list because you are a legacy and grew up with that school in the background.

Computer science is a very challenging major, but you can’t get in if you don’t apply. But if you don’t qualify for need based aid, and your family would be stretched paying the full cost of attendance at these “dream schools”, it’s my opinion you should consider the finances with your family.

What are the similarities between this list? From my back seat, they are very different college experiences, and I’m having trouble figuring out how ALL of them can fulfill the same person’s dreams.

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