Chance an average comp sci kid at her dream schools :)

Once again, I see comments from people with seemingly no connection to Dartmouth commenting on our CS program. This is almost certainly based on rankings which primarily take into account amount of research and graduate programs. For the record, for undergrad, Dartmouth has an excellent CS program. This is the place where BASIC was created, and where the field of AI really began (at the famous Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence).

More recently, the college spent 200 million dollars on constructing a center of engineering and computer science which will open this fall, and have been pumping money into the department to raise our offerings. With the close personal attention, generally small classes, and all classes being taught by professors that define the Dartmouth academic experience (unusual for a research university), Dartmouth is a great place to do a CS undergraduate degree. It is in fact one of our more popular majors.

The only reason our program isn’t ranked super highly in the “big” ranking systems is because the whole college and that department in particular are focused on undergrad teaching rather than research. This does not mean high level research does not regularly come out from the college, but the amount released is comparatively less. And the research positions here are primarily open to undergrads, even over graduate students, also unusual for a research university.

Now as to your chances. You have a strong CS/engineering spike which all your schools will appreciate, as well as some accomplishments and demonstrated interest in other fields — which, combined with your spike, makes you competitive with the schools with lib arts curricula on your list as well, like Dartmouth.

Your academics are also in line with what these schools expect, though I should mention that half of the applicants or more at these reach schools are academically qualified to get in. You’ll probably want to try and avoid any more 3s on the APs though.

Thye most important thing to keep in mind when applying to all of these reach schools is that you have to have reasons for wanting these schools that go beyond their prestige or the fact that they have strong CS programs. In each of your individual supplement essays and applications you are going to want to demonstrate why each of these schools’ specific attributes attract you, attributes that no other school has. You need to take a hard look at especially the lotteries on your list and see if each school has specific attributes that attract you, otherwise remove them and replace them with schools that do. This is what these colleges look for. They have tens of thousands of applicants who are highly accomplished, so they can afford to look for those which they feel really want their school in particular.