Chance a Sophomore for Ivies (and other elite schools) [MA resident, Ranked 2nd in class, 4.0 UW, 4.5 W, lower income; political science and/or computer science]

First of all it sounds like you are doing very well.

What is your budget for university? All of the various Universities of California, including UCLA and UC Berkeley, have almost no financial aid at all for out of state students. Unless you can afford to be full pay, even if you get in they will be unaffordable.

The Ivy League schools are not particularly known for computer science. Some are decent for CS, and several are very good for political science. However, do not apply to a school just because it is in the Ivy League. Instead, take a close look at its programs, and think about what schools will be best for you.

MIT and Stanford are of course very good for computer science. They are also a reach for even the strongest students. When the time comes you might want to run the NPCs for both (and for any Ivy League schools that you end up considering) and if your stats and activities are still excellent, and if the NPCs show them as likely to be affordable, and if you still want to attend them, then they would be worth an application. At this point you do look like a very competitive applicant. However, they would be reaches.

One comment above suggests that you could combine Political Science and CS with a Data Science major. Data Science also includes quite a bit of math. MIT, Stanford, Harvard, and Princeton are all excellent for math. MIT has a major 18C “mathematics with computer science” that combines CS and math. This is pretty much what I did, except that the major did not exist when I was there (my degree just says “mathematics”).

Yes, I think that you do have a chance. But these are all reaches.

This is very good. Probably the most important thing for you to do is to make sure that you have at least one and preferably two solid safeties that you apply to. To be a safety you need to have a very, very good chance for admissions, and also a very, very good chance that you can afford to attend. For someone from Massachusetts considering CS as a major, you have one big advantage: Specifically the University of Massachusetts, Amherst is very good for CS.

One thing that you should do is to think quite carefully about what sort of university would be the best fit for you. You will want to visit a few schools. Knowing what schools are a good fit for you, and why, and being able to explain why a school is a good fit for you, will both improve your admissions chances and make it more likely that you will end up at a school that is a good fit.

I think that you should read the “applying sideways” blog on the MIT admissions web site (a quick Google search will find it). As I understand it, it recommends that you do what is right for you, and do it very well. This is what my family has done, and it has worked for us. However, what each of us did was very different, and between the four of us it has led us to eight different universities (one each for our bachelor’s, and a different one each for graduate programs).

And I think that at this point you are doing very well.

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