Chance/match my rural AK kid for computational biology, 3.95 GPA, 1540 SAT, blue states only

Chance Me / Match Me
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Demographics

  • US citizen
  • State/Location of residency: Alaska
  • Type of high school: Homeschool through public school correspondence program (very common in AK – it means kid is homeschooled, but submits grades to district, is held to their graduation requirements, and has an official public school transcript)
  • Other special factors: Rural (off the road system, several hundred person community), low income

Cost Constraints / Budget
Family is low income, but there is a grandparent 529 that can provide up to $50K or so per year. Between those two, most private school NPCs I’ve looked at seem to be OK, WUE schools are fine, many state flagships aren’t, and other state schools it depends.

Intended Major(s) : Computational Biology/Bioinformatics (or some combo of CS + Bio if that’s not available). She’s not interested in the Bio + a coding class majors, so will want to double major or major/minor to get depth in both.

GPA, Rank, and Test Scores

  • Unweighted HS GPA: 3.95
  • Weighted HS GPA: 4.07 (odd system of adding 0.021 for AP classes, DE not weighted)
  • Class Rank: technically has one (but only based on other kids in same correspondence program taking a completely different set of classes), probably in the top 5 or so out of 150-200
  • SAT Scores: 1540 = 790M, 750E

List your HS coursework

Through junior year. (12th grade plans parentheses and italics)

  • English: English 9, 10, 11, (12)
  • Math: Precalc, AP Calc AB/BC, Multivariable Calc, Differential equations, Calc-based probability, Mathematical Statistics (calculus-based), (discrete math fall, spring semester TBD)
  • Science: Advanced Bio (with AP test 4), Molecular Basis of Bioluminescence, AP Chem (4), AP Physics C Mech (4), AP Physics C E and M (5), Principles of Genetics (DE), Systems Biology (DE), (Population Genetics and Evolutionary Processes DE, Intro to Biochemistry DE, spring semester TBD)
  • History and social studies: World History, US History, AP Psych, Government, Economics, (state history, maybe a DE econ or political science in spring)
  • Language other than English: Spanish 3, 4
  • Visual or performing arts: Board Game design
  • Other academic courses: Java programming 1, Data Analysis Programming, Interactive Data Web Programming, Digital Signal Processing, (project-based CS class TBD)

Awards

Just the one for doing well on AP tests, possibly NMSF

Extracurriculars
Long term citizen science/programming project, 8+ years of around 200 intertidal invertebrate surveys, programmed a data visualization and analysis tool, did an internship with a local environmental ed group to apply her tool to their tidepool checklists, poster at a local conference and a state marine science conference showing relationships/trends/range extensions, is expanding the tool to add more statistics and wants to port it to the web and do another poster next year.

Wilderness expeditions: in remote AK with family, 1+ months at a time backpacking trips in trailless wilderness, a couple hundred miles every other year, for her whole life.

Wilderness trailbuilding: part of a decade-long all volunteer effort to build a 50 mile through hike trail that ends in our community. This involves carrying all tools and materials into remote work sites and staying there for 5 day to 2 week stints at a time. A few weeks every summer since childhood, including leader training workshops, trail design, and laying out trail for other volunteers.

Ceramics: a local woman runs an open studio/class, kid has been going regularly for many years building geometric clay sculptures.

Role playing, world building, and roleplaying system design

More coding: another long term programming project doing front end programming for a weather analysis tool in collaboration with some adults, building a tool to analyze signals from her dad’s landslide motion detection instruments.

Essays/LORs/Other
Essays: not yet written – kid is a reluctant writer, but has lots of unique content, so??

LOR: The only academic teachers she has are from online classes, but she has a few options, either her genetics/population genetics prof from 11th/12th grade or her multivariable calc/diffeq teacher from 10th, and econ from 11th for a non-STEM rec. Also will get one from her in-person ceramics teacher to give that perspective where allowed.

Schools
Note: Kid is trans and school MUST be in a state with a trans-friendly government. The school culture and policies are also important, but she won’t go to an unsafe state even if the school itself is friendly.

She’s most interested in schools that have a strong STEM culture, good ways to combine CS and Bio (either a dedicated major or enough flexibility), and undergrad research opportunities. She wants small class sizes, but also wants more offerings than most LACs have, and doesn’t want a ton of writing-heavy classes (though she does understand at least some will be unavoidable). Flexibility in placing out of classes (especially in math) will be helpful to her.

  • Assured (100% chance of admission and affordability):
  • Extremely Likely: Oregon State University
  • Likely:
  • Toss-up: WPI, Brandeis, University of Rochester, RPI
  • Lower Probability:
  • Low Probability: MIT, Harvey Mudd, Carnegie Mellon, Caltech, Brown

(she went to MIT’s rural junior fly-in last fall, and will probably apply to other fly-ins this summer for colleges that have them – I think Harvey Mudd, Caltech, and Brown)

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As an opinion, tech-oriented schools may not be as strong in the underlying field of biology as colleges with broader curricula. Nonetheless, some schools from this student’s current list, such as Brown University, the University of Rochester and Brandeis, offer excellent biology programs.

Should your child wish to continue to develop in ceramics, she may benefit from considering colleges with available ceramics facilities and courses.

Regarding difficulty of admission, a student with these qualifications will be likely to find that her match schools can, with well-crafted applications, be developed into likely admits. Even ostensible reaches may not be all that unlikely. I believe your daughter might benefit from the addition of a few high match schools though.

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Take a look at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, MA. They do a lot of computational biology and have co-op programs with at least Harvard and MIT, and perhaps others. That seems like such a great program, I would encourage your student to apply to any college associated with the institute in the hopes of perhaps landing a co-op or internship there.

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Do the UCs come in as affordable? Do any of them offer WUE for the desired major?

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I’m going to PM you about what S23 is doing at Colorado State (A WUE School) because it sounds like they have some overlapping interests.

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Wesleyan

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Wesleyan also offers a quantitative analysis center:

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By “state with a trans-friendly government”, would you mean that the state’s minimum score at LGBTQ Equality Landing Page - Movement Advancement Project is “high”, “medium”, or something else, or that specific listed issues must have a favorable law or policy in the state?

High: CA CO CT DC IL NV NM ME MD MA MN NJ NY OR RI VT WA
Medium: DE HI MI NH
Fair: PA VA
Low: AK AZ NC ND WI
Negative: AL AR FL GA ID IN IA KS KY LA MS MO MT NE OH OK SC SD TN TX WV WY

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Of potential interest, Caltech and Harvey Mudd from your current list appear in this Princeton Review survey-based site:

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Only UC Merced among the UCs offers WUE. It offers majors in computer science and engineering, biological sciences, and data sciences and computing (option of biology emphasis), but not a specific computational biology major.

Some CSUs offer WUE.

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Computational biology and Stem culture sounds like Michigan Tech. You don’t hear much about it on CC but it’s a great school. Hard to get to, but sounds like you’re used to that. They offer some full scholarships that she would be competitive for.

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What about Cornell? It’s very strong in both bio and CS, and has a strong STEM culture.

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Adding re: Wesleyan that it is not only very strong in the sciences but also an exceptionally friendly school for trans students (located in Connecticut, one of the safest states for trans people in terms of legal protections).

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The University of Washington (which is elite for Bioinformatics) seems to be ideal in every way for what you described.

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I think your list is looking good so far, and you are also getting some good suggestions.

Since you are already looking at CMU, you might want to consider Pitt as well:

I note Pitt and CMU are physically neighbors, you can take classes at either, and this is one of the areas in which they have a variety of ties, including in fact a joint PhD program:

Obviously you wouldn’t be doing that program specifically, but it is just indicative of how there is a sort of common community there which you can access from either institution.

Of course Pitt would be OOS and maybe not affordable, BUT it does sometimes offer OOS merit. Maybe worth a shot, including because they have rolling admissions so you could get an early offer in the bank.

It might also be a good idea to check out Carleton College in Minnesota. Carleton does not have a formal Computational Biology major, but they are among the strong for science and math LACs that leans into integrating natural sciences with math and CS (like Wesleysan, also rightly suggested above)

The University of Minnesota is another high quality public with OOS merit (their NPC actually reports their auto merit). Computational Biology is a minor there, but that could still be interesting:

I’ll finally note that my S24 is doing a double major in Classics and the Biology Major with Genomics and Computational Biology Specialization at WashU:

WashU’s location in Missouri may be a dealbreaker, and if so that is fine. But I thought I would mention it anyway in case it would be of interest.

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Side note, may I message you?

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The good news is that there are many colleges which like to say that they draw their student body from all 50 states. With Alaska’s small population, it means that chances of acceptance increase at schools which want to have students from all 50 states.

I’ll second the recommendation for Wesleyan. It’s a small liberal arts college with about 3000 undergraduates. Such colleges focus on undergraduate education and an undergraduate research with few or no graduate program. Wesley is an exception. Not only do they offer Bioinformatics as an undergraduate major, but they also offer graduate degrees up to the doctoral level in both Biology and Math. This increased the available course selection in these departments for undergrads. Finally, Wesleyan offers a 5-year bachelor’s/master’s program in selected fields including natural sciences and Math & Computer Science, guaranteeing that the master’s will be completed in only one extra year. This 5-year program is heavily research focused in the 5th year. With regard to facilities, Wesleyan is opening a brandnew, state of the art Science building this year, built from the ground up. It will hiuse the departments if Biology, Molecular Biology, Biochemistry, and Chemistry.

Wesleyan is sometimes referred to as the “mini-Brown” because of the many similarities between the 2 schools. And like Wesleyan, Brown also has an excellent program in computational Biology. It is a concentration within the Biology Department with 3 different tracks available: Math & Statistics, Biological Sciences, Computer Science. Brown is the university with the original “open curriculum”, so students basically design their own 4 year programs while accounting for prerequisites. This makes it relatively easy to do a double major at Brown.

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Mostly would like to stick to High and Medium – looking at those scores as a proxy for what they might do (laws that make it difficult for my kid to use any public spaces at all are rare still, but more likely to pop up in low rating places), and also somewhat as a reflection of the views of the population outside the college, which might affect how my kid is treated moving around off the campus. I did put one PA school on the draft list despite the fair rating, because its city is somewhat protective and my kid particularly likes the program, but in most cases I’d prefer to stick to high or medium.

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To the best of my knowledge, this is not the case. Nonetheless, bioinformatics tends to appear in modules within multiple biology courses at liberal arts colleges, or at least at liberal arts colleges with such an orientation. As an opinion, I might recommend this approach over that of more intense specialization at the undergraduate level. Nonetheless, I would look for a few dedicated courses in bioinformatics.

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The Biology department lists Bioinformatics as one of the options for double majors: “Genetics, Genomics, and Bioinformatics”. The OP stated a possible interest in a double major.