Chance Me for UPenn/MIT/CMU

Not going to lie, this thread has wayyyyyy too much pessimism. I know many students who got in to schools on your list (and similar caliber schools) with half the resume that you do. If you haven’t read this article before, I would do so. Then, rank your academics, extracurriculars, and athletics using the ranking system. Finally, make a guess for your personal ranking (which is based off of essays and interview). Then, you can calculate your admissions chances at the very top schools (MIT, Harvard) and then expect chances to be even better at slightly less prestigious schools (Berkeley, University of Penn., UCLA, CMU).

Last thing is essays for UCs are extremely different than regular college essays. UCs essentially what you to answer the prompt with a thesis and back it up with evidence, proving why you deserve admission. This strategy fell flat on its face for the privates I applied to.

tl;dr: read link. don’t stress. just pay for a very nice college counseling service to help you extensively with your essays and I would be dumbfounded if you didn’t get in to most of this list (except for Washington, because it is EXTREMELY unfriendly to OOS CS applicants)

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