Chance/match - CA female interested in CS [4.0 UW, 1470 SAT]

  • Demographics - US/CA resident, female
  • Intended Major(s) - CS
  • UW GPA, Rank, and Test Scores (also weighted GPA for systems like UC/CSU): UW 4.0, W - 4.22, SAT 1470
  • Coursework (college coursework for transfer applicants) - Eng Honors, AP History, AP Computer science, AP Computer science A, AP psychology, AP English language, AP Physics 1. Taking 4-5 APs in 12th including Physics C, AP calculus BC
  • AwardsCom - Nothing remarkable.
  • Extracurriculars (incl. summer activities, competitions, volunteering, and work experience) - Robotics team Vice captain, Speech and Debate Captain at school club, Comp sci research with a college professor (basic research process), Research on explainable AI,
  • Essays/LORs/Other - expecting strong recommendations
  • Cost Constraints / Budget - No constraints
  • Schools including Safety, Match, Reach (include ED/EA when applicable) - Georgio Tech, Stanford, UIUC, Purdue, UCs, U Wash, Purdue, Virginia tech, SJSU,

If no chance for these, match me please.

Curious why Cal Poly isn’t on your list. It’s very competitive, but you’d be in the hunt. They do a great job placing their grads into the most desired companies. You can’t beat the price, especially from in state.

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Can you calculate the following?

CSU Capped weighted GPA: GPA Calculator | CSU

The 3 UC GPA’s: GPA Calculator for the University of California – RogerHub

Are you in the local admission area for SJSU?

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Below are my guesses as to what your chances for admission might be. Additionally, do not interpret the “low probability” category as “impossibility.”

I will leave the chancing on the California publics to @ucbalumnus and @gumbymom.

Extremely Likely (80-99+%)

Likely (60-79%

Toss-Up (40-59%)

Lower Probability (20-39%)

  • Virginia Tech

Low Probability (less than 20%)

  • Georgia Tech

  • Stanford

  • UIUC

  • Purdue

  • U. of Washington (the OOS acceptance rate for CS is about 2-3%)

This is the data on admission to Purdue’s CS program:

Some additional colleges you may want to consider include:

Extremely Likely (80-99+%)

  • Arizona State

  • Oregon State

  • U. of Texas - Dallas

Likely (60-79%

  • U. of Massachusetts

  • U. of Minnesota – Twin Cities

Toss-Up (40-59%)

  • U. of Colorado – Boulder: With respect to admission to the university, I’d expect it to be an extremely likely admit. In terms of getting in for CS, I suspect it would be a toss-up, but others may have better insight.

  • U. of Georgia

Lower Probability (20-39%)

  • U. of Maryland: You must apply EA here if you want to have a chance, as it fills more than 90% of its seats in EA.

Low Probability (less than 20%)

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With an average OOS acceptance rate for CS in the low 20%s for UMD, I’d put it in the lower probability category for OP.

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Thanks! I edited my post to shift it from toss-up to lower probability.

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Should be assured (100%) if you meet the requirements listed at Computer Science - BS | Degree Details | ASU Degree Search and First-year admission requirements | Admission | ASU .

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As a general suggestion, you could benefit from considering colleges at which the computer science program is open to all interested students.

I like the suggestion of Oregon State. I think OP would be very competitive for their WUE scholarship and the Honors College. The founder of Nvidia is an alum and has donated a lot to launch a new AI and robotics research center.

Lots of other interesting projects going on also: https://today.oregonstate.edu/news/bipedal-robot-developed-oregon-state-achieves-guinness-world-record-100-meters

Attending a school with a lower barrier to entry may offer more opportunities to participate in cool research and clubs, etc., as an undergrad.

Oregon State also participates in the MECOP internship program: Internships | Electrical Engineering and Computer Science | College of Engineering | Oregon State University

Certainly worth keeping on the list as a likely admit, in my opinion

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is there even a college like this? Can you suggest which ones are those?

Plenty of colleges are like this. However, not all of them are on the radar of high achieving students intending to major in CS:

  1. Very wealthy colleges with overprovisioned CS departments relative to college size. However, these colleges are usually highly selective in general, so the college itself is inaccessible to most students (including the vast majority who apply to them).
  2. Less selective colleges, where the rigor of studying CS limits the number of students who want to major in it (or stay in it after the first CS course or few). Examples include most of the CSU campuses in California (but not the most popular ones like CPSLO, SJSU, CPP, etc.) and UC Merced.
  3. Colleges where the CS department is limited in offerings or quality, so they are not very attractive places to study CS.
  4. Colleges which are mostly known for something else, even though they may have plentiful good quality CS offerings.
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This structure is fairly common. Some particularly curricularly flexible examples for which you would be academically suited include Hamilton, Smith College, the University of Rochester and Grinnell. The admission rates of these examples vary sufficiently so that you could find both matches and reaches from among them. For a sense of what might be available to you with respect to your interest in computer science, this article on Hamilton’s planned CS building with “best-in-class technologies” may be of interest:

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Thanks! This is superhelpful.

I just realized I missed to mention about my interest in art. practicing art since childhood, 50% of volunteering is around painting/art.

I found this major called Computational Media at Georgia Tech and it’s like, super cool! It a perfect mix of computer science and the creative side. This is not being talked about much in the forums.
Is this major very competitive? Can you chance me?

Trying to find similar design related majors apart from CS in other colleges as well.(Product design/Industrial design/HCI).

For others’ ease of reference, here the info on Georgia Tech’s computational media major:
https://catalog.gatech.edu/programs/computational-media-bs/

I don’t know how much one’s selected major influences one’s changes at Georogia Tech as I believe they let all students have at least one “free” change to a different major, so it would be a relatively easy system for applicants to “game” by selecting a major that isn’t as popular. Thus, my guess is that selecting that major wouldn’t make you more or less competitive than you would otherwise be (a low probability school for you…less than 20% chance of admission).

I’ll think about some other options for you, but I’d highly recommend you check out Rochester Institute of Technology. The entire school is a combination of tech and art and combining the two. There a lot of really interesting majors there that I think might interest you.

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It sounds as if you may be interested in user experience (UX) design. This pertains to the development of products that will be perceived by their users as friendly and intuitive. For a career in this field, your choice of major or minors can be flexible. For example, some combination of computer science and art may be desirable for you. An interdisciplinary program in digital arts, or a similarly named program, may help you integrate these fields. However, on the undergraduate level, further specialization may be counterproductive.

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This article may be of interest if you would like to read about potential paths to UX design:

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