Chance me: mid gpa from feeder for HYPSM, Caltech, Ivies [TX resident, 4.0 UW, 36 ACT, Math/CS]

Chance Me / Match Me
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Demographics

  • US domestic
  • State/Location of residency: tx, not so popular area
  • Type of high school: probably over 70% go to t20s
  • Other special factors: none

Cost Constraints / Budget
do not qualify for aid

Intended Major(s) math/cs

GPA, Rank, and Test Scores

  • Unweighted HS GPA: 4.0
  • Weighted HS GPA: n/a
  • Class Rank: no rank, but a+ get extra weight, so i am probably solid middle of my class
  • ACT/SAT Scores: 36 act

List your HS coursework

no aps, not many take the test either, everything is at or above ap level. equivalents for physics c, calc bc, apush, ap chem, discrete math 2 foreign languages

  • Major preparation course work: java, app development, machine learning

Awards
congressional app challenge
delegate to a national conference
top 20% for nyt writing competition (5k submissions)
i am trying to qualify for aime and usaco silver, also applying to the big name merit scholarships.

Extracurriculars

  • ML research at an international research program. pretty technical stuff, I was funded too. will try and get published this summer
  • designed and developed a website to increase voting access on a state scale (vague on purpose) but i demoed to multiple counties, reached 120K+ voters
  • summer research internship with a professor @ r1 institute focusing on bias/equity in medical AI (pub unlikely)
  • another medical AI research project related to NLP, hopefully published this summer as well. will probably combine with the one above.
  • designed and developed a socially impactful app using ML and APIs on the app store, I only have like 30 users (made it for friends initially)
  • president of an affinity org at school, 170 members. increased active membership by 50%, raised like $200 for disaster relief. nothing too crazy
  • dorm prefect
  • i make popular content for our school newspaper, usually average 8k views, have gone viral once. many clubs and my school’s page copy my style now
  • 3 sport varsity athlete, we’re nationally ranked in 2 of my sports. i dont rly want to get recruited tho
  • 2 instruments + dj, i dont have any awards in this but its fun so yeah
  • language learning: fluent in 2 languages + conversational in 2, i plan on studying some linguistics in college

Essays/LORs/Other
i am good writer, these will be very good. counselor has read ps and likes it a lot.

Schools
EA
UT Austin (in state)
ASU

RD
Stanford
Princeton
MIT
UChicago
Brown
Penn
Harvard
Columbia
Cornell
Northwestern
Carnegie Mellon
NYU

not sure if my gpa relative to the rest of my class will hold me back from a lot of these.

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How is a 4.0 a mid gpa?

If 70% of your school goes top 20, surely you have a college counselor from which to seek advice.

Good luck.

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having an a+ as opposed to an a boosts your gpa. 4.0 just means all As (and some Bs but that’s how our scale translates). i think our counselors do not want to stir more competition so theyre intentionally ambiguous surrounding what schools might be at play for someone

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If you’re happy with ASU, let it fly.

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I’m sure you’re aware that your RD list consists only of high-reach schools. Admission to CS or Math at UT Austin is highly competitive, so it’s hard to say how that will go. That really just leaves ASU as a likely admit. Are you open to considering other schools with strong CS and math programs that fall between ASU and your current reaches in terms of admissions chances?

What is your family’s budget though? Can they afford up to $95k/year for 4 years? Or is there a lower limit?

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The guidance counselor at your high-achieving HS would be your best source of advice.

However, to me your list looks extremely reachy and I would add a couple of true match/safety schools so you will be sure to have some options in the end.

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I don’t think you should say that you think all your school’s courses are “at or above” AP level, if you have not yet made AIME or USACO-silver. It’s true that some high schools claim that their students don’t need to take AP exams because their courses are above that level, but I have found this is rarely the case, and even more rarely believed by anyone outside the school (so should not be said to any college people, for example).

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Considering 99% of people in general couldn’t qualify for AIME or any USACO level either I’m not sure what the correlation is… And the schools I am applying to are very familiar with my school anyways, I just included it for context here, I’m not putting it on my application.

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I’m very familiar with the elite high school landscape in my 30+ year relevant career. There is no school where all the classes are at or above AP level, and the schools that could make a claim that all 11th-12th grade courses are at that level, are well known private schools and not “feeder publics”.

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I think I’m right above the cutoff for anything need based, I have checked multiple net cost calculators, so I will probably take loans worst case scenario, if I don’t get any of the merit scholarships I’m applying for. I want to go into quant or ai so I just don’t see the benefit of paying target price for a non target school where I can’t partake in cutting edge research.

ASU honors isn’t that bad so but if I really get scared come this fall I will probably just ed2 uchicago, lots of middling people from my school get in

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I don’t go to a feeder public

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This is important. You can only take $27k over four years. Your parents could take more.

But there’s a reason you can take $27k. Some of these schools will be $400k. What can you pay ?

I wouldn’t assume you can only partake in cutting edge research at target schools in regards to quant or AI.

Good luck.

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If 70% got to top 20s then likely colleges do believe this in OPs case.

I have a kid in private and public and the private’s 9th grade English was harder than public’s AP lang or lit and it was a very very good public. At private, History is taught like a college level seminar, etc. There are a number of truly outstanding private schools..

I don’t disagree that there are not a lot of these (eg they are rare) but OP seems to be at one assuming not a huge sports school

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With high schools like yours, there is very little outsiders can do to contribute to assessing your chances at Reach-for-everyone colleges.

In fact, I am surprised your HS-provided college counselors are not being more helpful–this to me is a major part of the value proposition at feederish private high schools, that they bundle very good college counseling. But absent that, they might have available historic data for recent applicants, and you can sometimes use that to get an idea what would be competitive GPAs for different Reach colleges.

Again, I am really not sure what outsiders like us could add that would actually be helpful.

As a final thought, I have seen several application cycles now, and I have seen a lot of kids who have basically one public “Safety” and a bunch of private Reaches. And when this is pointed out, they swear they would be fine with the Safety.

OK, then some of them end up blanked by their Reaches, and have to go to the Safety. And then it turns out, many are not so fine at all. They are instead very upset, they feel like they did a tremendous amount of work in HS and in their applications, maybe made a lot of sacrifices, and then they ended up with their only college offer not being something that would have required all that.

I think this happens because often very high-achieving kids can really struggle to internalize the idea they would get into NO Reaches at all. They recognize it as a theoretical possibility, but they really don’t FEEL like it could happen to them.

And then sometimes, it does happen.

So at our feederish HS, we do have very good college counseling, and they do try to make sure every kid has some Likely and Target colleges that they actually really like. Like if the kid prefers midsize private universities for Reaches, these Likely and Targets are often also going to be midsize private universities (or at least publics like William & Mary, which are very similar in feel). And often there are serious chances of merit as well.

And then most kids get into a college more toward the top of their preference list. But in the cases where that doesn’t happen, they are still happy to have multiple other offers to consider. And again, merit might play a real role at that point, which is nice too.

To me, it is really cheap insurance to do that. You may not need it, but if you do need it, I think you will be glad you gave yourself more options to consider.

But that’s ultimately up to you.

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Ok, fair.

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I can’t emphasize this point enough. This happens every year . . . it’s a real risk. And, this is a situation where mitigating risk almost cost-free. It just takes some time - first to come up with a handful of targets and safeties that match the student’s criteria, and second to apply to them. As @NiceUnparticularMan points out, it’s cheap insurance . And, if it turns out you don’t need it, great. But if you do, you’ll be thanking yourself for taking the time.

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AND, you might end up like my son, who decided he liked the “target” more than the “reach” after the visits!

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Reading your post, the first thing that I wonder about is whether you would prefer ASU to Texas A&M. If you would prefer TA&M to ASU, then add it to your list.

The second thing that comes to mind is that while you might get accepted to one of your reaches, given your list there is a pretty good chance that you will end up at ASU. If this happens, then would you prefer to have applied to at least one additional university for which admissions is more likely compared to your long list of reach schools?

Also, you have a very long list of reach schools. It might be better if you can take a look at these schools (probably mostly using online resources) and decide which you like the best. Then cut the rest from your list. There are at least two issues here. One is that it is going to be difficult to do a good job when filling out so many applications with multiple essays each. Another issue is that your chances at any particular reach school are likely to be better if you can answer the question “why is this school a good fit for you” in a way that does not sound like “I want a big name prestigious school”.

In terms of which I might personally prefer for math + CS (which is pretty much what I did, and IMHO is a very good combination) I will note: Stanford is great for both subjects. MIT is a LOT of work, and has a “math + computer science” combined major (course 18C). Princeton is also excellent for math and has been working on strengthening their CS program. Princeton is also very good for undergraduate study. It is probably #1 on my list of schools that I never applied to and cannot figure out why. Brown might be a tiny bit easier to get accepted to compared to many of the schools on your list. I would leave UT Austin on the list largely because it is both a great university and in-state. IF you get in then it would be relatively affordable. It is not however a safety IMHO.

If it were me then I would probably look carefully at the rest of your reach list and think about what to cut from the list. Your preferences might be different from mine. You need to think about which schools you like best.

I don’t think that you should apply ED (nor ED2) anywhere unless it was clearly your #1 choice. Given this list plus a “math + CS” intended major Chicago is very good, but it would not be clearly my #1 choice.

This is a very important point. $27k in loans is not much help when you are comparing it to a potential $400,000 cost of university over four years. Loans can restrict your career choices down the road.

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Are you saying that the only way that you have to pay for college will be either loans, or merit scholarships? How much are your parents willing to pay out of pocket for college?

When you mentioned merit scholarships, do you mean that you are applying for outside scholarships (not associated with the universities you are applying for)? Most of the universities you listed do not offer merit scholarships.

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Yeah I mean outside scholarships like coke and some related to research