Chance/Match a Low GPA, high SAT Linguistics major [MA resident]

Chance Me / Match Me
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Demographics

  • Asian female
  • Medium-sized public HS in MA
  • U.S. Permanent Resident

Interested Majors Linguistics, Computer Science, Cognitive Science

Stats
3.6 UW / 4.25 W (by the end of junior year - school doesn’t take senior grades into account, roughly top 30% of class?)

Extenuating circumstances freshman + sophomore year. My counselor is aware and will mention this

1580 SAT (800 RW, 780 M)

Coursework
9th - AP Chinese (5)
10th - AP CS A (4)
11th - AP Lang, APUSH, AP Physics 1, AP French
12th (expected) - AP Lit, AP Calc BC, AP Physics C: E&M, AP Stats, AP Psych

(I have one of the heaviest course loads in my grade.)

Awards
NACLO (North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad) Top 20% x1, Invitational Round Qualifier x1
State Seal of Biliteracy with Distinction in French and Chinese
Research project stipend - 2 anticipated conferences, to be published in the fall
Girls State
A bunch of writing awards I’m planning on grouping together

Extracurriculars
sorry in advance for being vague - it’s very easy to doxx me from these :smiling_face_with_tear:

  • research assistant
  • translator
  • language learning app
  • linguistics nonprofit
  • bunch of school clubs related to language/culture (w/leadership roles)
  • world language tutor
  • bwsi cog*works

(other slightly less relevant things I won’t mention)

Safeties

  • UMass Amherst (acceptance rate is very high for our school, 100% of people with similar stats as me have gotten in)
  • Ohio State University (did a Linguistics summer program there once and loved it!)

Targets

  • Boston University
  • Northeastern
  • UMD
  • UCSC
  • UIUC
  • UMich (more of a reach but the reaches list is getting a bit too long😭)

Reaches

  • UChicago (planning to ED/ED2)
  • Duke
  • Brown (thinking about EDing since I have legacy)
  • Dartmouth
  • Cornell
  • UCLA
  • UC Berkeley

Very Far Reach

  • Stanford

For each of the reach schools I included, I think I have a very genuine reason to want to go there that is not based solely off prestige. I really love UChicago’s quirky intellectual atmosphere, but other schools have stronger CS programs that will be more beneficial to me if I’m trying to go to grad school (which is my plan). Please let me know if you have any suggestions regarding colleges to add to my list or where I should ED, and thank you so much in advance!

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California UC ‘s are test blind so they do consider SAT/ACT scores into your admission or scholarship chances. Are they affordable at $74K/year to attend?

What are your 3 UC GPA’s? GPA Calculator for the University of California – RogerHub

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What is your budget? The UCs can be very expensive for out of state students - are they affordable for your family?

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I’m not sure if I calculated this entirely correctly, but I got: 3.67 UW / 4.33 W / 4.0 Weighted-Capped.

Affordability might be an issue, but if the UCs turn out to be the best option, then it’s not outside the realm of affordability for my family. I’m also planning on working a summer job both this summer and next summer to save up for college.

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It’s not out of the realm of affordability, but it would definitely be quite a bit of financial burden for my family. If the UCs are my best option, my parents and I will work together to pay for tuition, and I’m planning to work every summer I’m able to starting this year.

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UCSC is probably a target school for you but has major issues with housing.

UCLA and UC Berkeley are High Reaches with admitted Unweighted GPA ranges in the 3.9-4.0 range. I would be hesitant to pay full fees to attend any of these school as an OOS student especially with an extremely competitive SAT score which could garner you good merit aid at many schools.

Wishing you the best of luck with your applications.

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UIUC would be a reach for CS. Maybe a target for the other majors.

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Since you’re in MA you may already know this, but if you want to do CS at all you need to apply as a CS major. It is easy to add other majors or minors (eg Linguistics) on to the CS major, or to switch to other non-business majors. It is pretty much impossible to switch in to or add on the CS major, especially if you have a background in CS before college. (The limited spaces for switching into CS are saved for students who discover CS after starting college, the info says.) I have seen a ton of kids this year say they applied for math or linguist business, but they have decided they want to do CS now, but they can’t switch in.

I know you are hoping to get into your other schools, but UMass Amherst is only a safety if you would be willing to attend, and it sounds like you would need to get into the CS major for it to help you meet your goals.

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Thank you so much for the advice! I really appreciate it :slight_smile:

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Thank you so much for explaining this to me in detail! I’m planning on double majoring in Linguistics and CS, which are both majors UMass Amherst is known for, but will definitely apply as a CS major because I know transferring in is very difficult.

Thank you so much for your advice, I really appreciate it!

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What amount would not be a financial burden for your family? Has your family run the Net Price Calculators at the private schools on your list to see whether they would be (more) affordable? For the public schools, you should not expect to receive any financial aid apart from that which is federally available (i.e. a $5500 loan your freshman year and a Pell grant, if you’re eligible). They may, however, have merit aid and that’s definitely something you should shoot for.

How do you think you did on your APs this year? Strong results here can help provide some counterweight to the GPA and class rank. (There is nothing wrong with your GPA and class rank, but most of the schools on your list are extremely competitive.)

I would not advise switching a school’s category just because its appropriate category is too long. I would, however, recommend reflecting about what you are like and how you react to situations. We have often seen or heard of students who had very reach-heavy lists who then got into 1 school (their safety) and then get waitlists/denials for the rest.

For some people, all of their denials add fuel to their internal fire to be so amazing at their safety to prove all the naysayers wrong. A reach-heavy list is great for this type of person.

For others, however, getting rejection after rejection is extremely demoralizing and they end up thinking there’s something wrong with them (and with the school that admitted them, even if they were originally happy to have it on their list), and they’re not excited about going off to college. A reach-heavy list is not great for this type of person, particularly since most highly rejective schools are the last to respond, so a student can finish the college application season with a long run of rejections.

I find that most people tend to feel better if they have more acceptances than rejections.

I have no idea what kind of person you are, but I’d give some serious thought to how you think you would react in such a situation and then balance your college list accordingly.

Since there’s no universal definition for what a safety, match, and reach are, I use this system below to reflect my guesses as to what your chances might be at these schools.

Extremely Likely (80-99+%)

  • U. Mass (generally…unknown about CS)

Likely (60-79%)

  • Ohio State (generally…unknown about CS)

  • U. of Maryland…if you apply early action

Toss-Up (40-59%)

Lower Probability (20-39%)

  • Boston U. (on the lower end…it has a 14% acceptance rate, but a relatively small percentage who submit tests)

  • U. Chicago (if ED)

  • UMich (again, on the lower end here, but most are submitting tests)

Low Probability

  • Brown (ED or not…but don’t ED just because you’re a legacy. ED to your favorite school if you’re going to ED.)

  • Cornell

  • Dartmouth

  • Duke

  • Northeastern (if you want to start in the fall at the Boston campus…if you’re open to starting elsewhere, then this probably moves up at least 2 categories)

  • Stanford

  • UCLA

  • UC - Berkeley

  • UIUC for computer science, but if you apply for CS + Linguistics, then I’d probably move this up 1 category

Some other schools that are not as reachy that you might want to consider include Stony Brook, Rutgers, Binghamton, and U. of Pittsburgh.

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I think UMD will be a high target for direct CS admission, OOS. I believe they’re also one of the top schools for linguistics, so that combination makes it a harder admit.

Tagging @dfbdfb, our in-house linguistics expert for his input.

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I’ve been trying to convince my parents to run the Net Price Calculators, but for whatever reason they don’t want to disclose our income to me until it’s absolutely necessary… I’ll definitely make sure to emphasize its importance to them, though. Thank you so much for this information!

As for my APs this year, I am almost certainly going to end with As in all of them (unless something disastrous happens in the next few weeks). I think I certainly got 5s on Lang and APUSH, and French and Physics are going to be 4s at worst. I do think I still have a shot to get a 5 on both of them - especially French.

I hadn’t really thought about how personality could factor into making a college list before, so that was really interesting! I think a reach-heavy list would work for me because I’m generally a fairly optimistic person who also tends to be very competitive. Barring extenuating circumstances, competition really tends to bring out the best in me, and some of my major accomplishments to date are things I was only able to achieve because my friends were also going for them. I also know getting rejected in my case will likely be due to my lackluster GPA, so in that sense I think it’ll shield me from some of those negative feelings? But I’ll definitely make sure to keep these concerns in mind!

Thank you so much for your detailed feedback and analysis. I think I’m most likely going to end up EDing to UChicago all things considered, but I do really love Brown and I think their supplementals will really allow me to shine. Brown from my experience seems to really value community service and interdisciplinary study, which are both things I think my application naturally lends itself to. But obviously I have quite a low chance at getting in, and I think UChicago is generally a better fit for my personality (not to mention they have the oldest Linguistics program in the country). I know what the rational decision is, but I’m still a bit torn…

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Speaking just about linguistics here, I’d like to say that the places you list as safeties (leaving aside the issues with admission to comp sci, as mentioned by others) are among the strongest for linguistics in the country—though UMass is very oriented toward theoretical linguistics and psycholinguistics, and Ohio State covers the entire range of the field.

So it’s worth asking at this point: What sort of linguistics are you interested in/what interests you about linguistics? That may help trim your list down aside from the whole “Can I get in?” side of things.

(And also what interests you in comp sci, though honestly pretty much any university as comprehensive as the ones you list will cover a pretty wide range in that subject.)

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They don’t need to disclose their income to you. All they need to do is run the NPCs and give you a budget to work with.

For example: no more than $40k per year all-in. Or $60k/90k. Etc.

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A 3.6 isn’t low - and while it’s nice to go to the most known names, if you’re interested in linguistics, UMASS might be the best name.

#6 in the globe - ahead of Stanford and every school on your list - not too shabby.

It’s also strong (and you’d not be a lock) for CS.

Sometimes you need to look deeper and having a favorite because of prestige, while it’s your right, seems a silly way to pick the place that you’re going to spend the next four years, day after day after day. And you want prestige - take some classes at Amherst college.

Good luck.

QS World University Rankings for Linguistics 2024 | Top Universities

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Hello! Thank you so much for the much-needed perspective. It’s incredibly valuable to get a perspective from someone within Linguistics.

I’m mostly interested in computational linguistics, but recently I’ve become more interested in psycholinguistics as well after reading a paper about colorized word embeddings and the process reminded me of Synesthesia. I’ve always had an interest in psychology but never really gotten to explore it, and doing so through a linguistics lens seems really interesting. I also want the chance to do something more practical within Linguistics like native language preservation or documenting Chinese dialects that are becoming more obscure.

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Gotcha, thank you so much! I’ll make sure to talk to them about this.

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Thank you so much for this perspective. I really needed to hear it.

I’m the eldest child in my extended family and my family has very high expectations for me with regards to what college I attend, and I admit that over time I’ve come to associate attending a prestigious school with a lot of sentiments that harm me more than they do me good. I will make sure I keep this in mind going into the college admissions process and keep my need for external validation in check.

Thank you once again!

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Computational lx and psycholx (often via language acquisition), those you can get from any of the colleges on your list—so you’ve got some freedom there.

Language preservation is harder to find, but honestly it’s something that usually is only available at the graduate level, unless you go somewhere where it’s a central focus (like Arizona or Alaska-Fairbanks).

And on a different note, I’d like to echo @tsbna44 on not seeking after prestige for the sake of prestige. For both linguistics and comp sci, many (maybe even most) of the best programs are at Big State Schools, not the hyperselectives that tend to dominate so-called “best colleges” lists.

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