Whenever I ask what my chances are and stuff, my counselors treat me like I’m super neurotic or something and I need to chill.
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@AustenNut provided you with some info. For highly rejective colleges (your list of reaches), it is my opinion that “recommended” should be viewed as “required”. Many of the students applying to these competitive colleges will have met these recommendations…and more.
I think you are a very strong student. I DO think you will be attending a great college! But, in my opinion 13 reach schools is too many…and again I ask…why so many!
Are you just now (prior to senior year) starting to research this? I only ask, because we started looking at colleges when our kids were earlier in HS. The STEM kid found out before 11th grade course registration that ALL of the colleges she was interested in required three years of a lab science. She had a general science plus was taking her second lab science in grade 11. She then knew she had to take another lab science in grade 12…even though she had three years of science. This was required by her colleges.
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I may not apply to all of those reach schools. I have only taken core courses from 9th-11th grade (aside from the art graduation requirement), and I am still able to change my courses for the upcoming year. If I do so, I can get 3 years of history and (possibly?) 4 years of foreign language. So I didn’t really make any mistakes in 9th-11th grade for course selection, thankfully.
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You’ve already received a lot of good advice and pointers. All your reaches are high reaches, but I think if you really like CMU and are familiar with its culture and environment, an ED application there should give you a big boost as they try to achieve a 50-50 gender ratio.
Additionally, given how reach-heavy your list is I suggest adding some OOS public schools that are very strong for CS, yet are somewhat easier admits than the majority of schools on your list. An honors college at one of these schools will provide you a great environment with a small-school feel. This is typically a great backup plan in the event you get shut-out of all your reaches.
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Below are some additional schools that you may want to consider. Some are in college towns while others are in big cities, some have self-contained campuses while others are intermixed with other downtown buildings, some are medium-sized while others are large, etc. Perhaps in learning more about the schools you may figure out what preferences you do have about the college experience.
As I am not familiar enough with all of the schools’ requirements with respect to high school coursework, I will not chance you for these schools. Instead, I have classified them according to their acceptance rates for the fall of 2023, per College Navigator. I suspect that the higher a school’s admissions rate, the less impact your social studies and foreign language coursework will have. But if there’s a requirement, particularly at a public school, they may not have any wiggle room to accept an otherwise terrific candidate. For those that do accept you, I suspect that most will accept you with merit aid.
Additionally, some of these schools have rolling admissions (like Pitt) and/or a very rapid turnaround (Iowa State). You might get a response within 24 hours at Iowa State if you’ve met the requirements and at Pitt they open their admissions for the fall in August, so if you put an early app in, you are likely to have a decision in hand by October. Having an acceptance in hand from a school that you’d be happy to attend is a great stress-reliever for senior year, particularly if you plan to apply to a lot of low probability schools. And if you get a rejection earlier on, then it can help you to rethink your college application list while there’s still time before most deadlines.
Without further ado, here’s the list:
Extremely Likely (80-99+%)
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Iowa State: About 25k undergrads
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U. of Arizona: About 39k undergrads
Likely (60-79%)
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Southern Methodist (TX): About 7k undergrads (61% admit rate…so close to toss-up)
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U. of Minnesota - Twin Cities: About 39k undergrads
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U. of Nebraska - Lincoln: About 19k undergrads
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U. of Texas - Dallas: About 22k undergrads
Toss-Up (40-59%)
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George Washington (D.C.): About 11k undergrads
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Rensselaer Polytechnic (MA): About 5900 undergrads
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U. of Maryland: About 30k undergrads
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U. of Pittsburgh: About 24k undergrads
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U. of Wisconsin - Madison: About 36k undergrads
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Worcester Polytechnic (MA): About 5200 undergrads
Lower Probability (20-39%)
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Case Western (OH): About 6k undergrads
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U. of Rochester: About 6800 undergrads
Low Probability (less than 20%)
Would you be happy attending UC Merced or UC Riverside?
Have you visited any of the schools on your list?
Not all private high schools are elite ones with high quality dedicated college counselors.
Agree with others that these are potential deficiencies as seen by some colleges. What is the highest level of foreign language you completed or will complete? Three years finishing at level 4 is different from three years finishing at level 3.
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The Iowa and Arizona publics have published automatic admission criteria, so they would be assured (not just extremely likely) admission for applicants meeting those criteria. Check their web sites.
I would be at level 3. Since my school is very small, if I were to take a 4th year of language it would be basically self-study with weekly meetings with a teacher because there isn’t enough interest to have an actual class. That’s why I was initially not very interested in taking it, since I thought taking a real CS class would be better than sitting around myself reading a book with occasional checking in with a teacher
You have a strong background and are a competitive candidate at every school. That being said, your reach schools are high reaches and many, many students with strong backgrounds, like yours, will be rejected from them. I would cut your list of reaches down significantly because it will be very difficult to do a good job on the numerous supplemental essays that are required. Also, I’d add more targets - UMaryland (must apply EA) and UWisconsin (also apply EA) both have excellent CS programs and you’d be a strong candidate at either (as long as they are affordable).
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So off hand, my reaction to your profile is it is very STEM heavy and not so much HASS. People have been discussing the issue of you maybe getting up to three years of History/Social Studies, which would help a bit but I think still leave you quite STEM focused.
That’s perfectly fine but kids like that from our feederish HS tend to have the best luck with colleges that are similarly more STEM-focused. Like, to me, a lot of your Ivies do not seem like a natural fit, so I would consider trimming those. Stanford and maybe Princeton you could leave, but I would maybe consider dropping Yale, Harvard, Penn, Columbia, and Brown, as well as Northwestern, but maybe adding Cornell (assuming you bump History/SS up to three). I think that would still be six private Reaches in addition to the UCs, which is probably still too many if anything.
OK, then you have all these midsize private universities for Reaches, but none as Targets or Likelies. Part of that may be you like your UC schools, which is fine, but usually the STEM-heavy kids in our HS also take a look at privates like RPI, Case Western, Rochester, and so on–all of which offer merit, and although I know you said cost isn’t a factor, it doesn’t hurt.
It is also worth noting that some schools on your list have significant humanities, social science, and/or arts requirements to graduate. MIT, Caltech, Yale, and Columbia are examples.
Indeed.
I think it sometimes surprises people that, say, MIT seems to have nearly, if indeed not actually just the same, sort of HASS standards for its successful applicants as Yale, Princeton, Harvard, and so on.
But MIT is very much in the same sort of liberal arts tradition, and its required HASS classes are taught at a very high level. Indeed, that is part of why it has some excellent HASS graduate departments even when few if any undergrads are majoring in those departments.
Of course I wouldn’t suggest this means the OP should not bother with MIT, because you never know. But I would suggest when applying, the OP could maybe find some ways to create a somewhat different impression than the one I got.
I don’t want to elaborate too much on my personal statement for privacy reasons, but I do mention how I’ve come to appreciate the social sciences, etc. over the years.
My high school is very STEM focused hence the lack of APs and stuff. They just aren’t offered.
Did you qualify for ISEF? If so, did you win any awards?
ETA: rereading your thread title where you write you have no “big” awards, I will assume my question is irrelevant and any discussion about the value of such award(s) moot.
That said, you’re a strong applicant but your list is very reach heavy. Consider trimming your reaches and focusing on those colleges where you would be a good fit. All the best to you!
And just to be clear, I am confident a lot of great colleges would want you on these terms! Some enough to throw serious merit money your way.
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