<p>I just go off the phone with an advisor. If you didn’t get a DA position your odds of getting into CSE are 25%. 1400 applied for those DA positions. There are 160 slots available per year. </p>
<p>I need to talk to my son about reconsidering other options.</p>
<p>That’s not entirely accurate. When I was a DA two years ago there were about 20 of us. If their number of 1400 applicants for DA is accurate, that’s about 1.5%. There are about 160 kids admitted to the major each year in total from all the different applications.</p>
<p>Generally, the number I’ve been quoted is that UW CSE admits ~30% of applicants through general admission. Those are kind of scary odds, but if you keep your grades high (I’m just going to guess ~3.5) you shouldn’t have too much to worry about.</p>
<p>They also offer accelerated admissions after you’ve completed the second intro class (CSE 143) if you got a 3.8 (I’ve been told it’s actually top 10% in both classes, although I think that’s around 3.7 or 3.8) or above in both classes. I’m not sure what the admission rate from that is, but if you do that well in the intro classes I’d be pretty confident you’d get in through normal admissions (unless your other grades aren’t very good).</p>
<p>If your son is confident he can do it, the opportunities you’ll get at UW are incredible. Three times a year we have 60+ tech companies come to us looking for interns. This ranges from startups to tech giants like Microsoft and Google. A lot of the faculty also know people in industry. I got my interview with Google (where I’ll be working this summer) because one of my professors is friends with the Google recruiter and recommended me. The UW is in the top 10 CSE departments in the nation. You’d be hard-pressed to find another school that can offer the same and be easier to get into.</p>
<p>I just ran the numbers here (<a href=“http://data.engr.washington.edu/pls/portal30/STUDENT_APPL.RPT_APPLICANT_STATISTICS_YEAR.SHOW_PARMS[/url]”>http://data.engr.washington.edu/pls/portal30/STUDENT_APPL.RPT_APPLICANT_STATISTICS_YEAR.SHOW_PARMS</a>).</p>
<p>CSE is a combination of BOTH CE and CS, so check both majors when looking for your numbers.</p>
<p>I got:
Columns are Early Admission (EA), EA average GPA in prerequisites, General Admission (GA), GA average GPA in prerequisites.</p>
<p>CE 47% 3.99 (3.75 cumulative) 27% 3.7 (3.7 cumulative)
CS 68% 3.9 (3.8 cumulative) 27% 3.6 (3.6 cumulative)</p>
<p>I don’t know Ranek. I only know what the cse undergraduate advisor told me. Also, how does the downward bell curve for those classes affect gpa?</p>
<p>What do you mean by “downward bell curve”? I’m not familiar with that term, and a definition could help me try to answer your question :D</p>
<p>And yes, the percent admitted is scary. But there are a couple things to keep in mind.
25% is not ‘odds’ per se. Some people apply who are not qualified at all, or not at the same standard, so your odds depend on your grades more. Admittedly many qualified people are not admitted, but many are. </p>
<p>It ultimately depends on how you think your son will be able to perform academically. If he is a strong student, he may very well be able to get in.</p>
<p>I’ll also confused by what you mean by “downward bell curve”.</p>
<p>From what has been said in some posts not everyone that scores an A can have an A. The grades are skewed into a bell curve, but in a way that gives students a lesser grade not a better grade.</p>
<p>Ah. I personally haven’t taken any classes that conform to a strict bell, but I didn’t take the intro calc, chem, or physics and I believe those might. The CSE intro (and upper level) classes, and intro bio do not. </p>
<p>From what I’ve heard about some of the intro sciences, it’s something along the lines of the professor sets a median grade of something like a 2.8 maybe (don’t quote me on that, but along those lines). This is a median, so grades are distributed around that point, with half the students getting above and half the students getting below. </p>
<p>The intro science classes and calculus for engineers (which is what can be used for the CSE prerequisites) are considered ‘weed outs’ for engineers. </p>
<p>My impression is that it is set up slightly differently from what you describe. It’s not that people ‘earn an A’ and then have it taken away, it’s that the threshold for earning an A can be higher depending on how people in the class are doing.</p>
<p>Like I said, I don’t know precisely how it works, but I believe that is the general idea.</p>
<p>EDIT:
From this quarters Chem 142 syllabus:
Grade Distribution. The final mean GPA in Chemistry 142 generally falls within the range 2.6 +/- 0.2</p>
<p>Professors never set a gaussian bell curve that brings your grade lower. If anything, it will be higher than an uncurved grade.</p>
<p>I’ve taken several classes with curves. They have always curved up as far as I can tell. The purpose of the curve is so that if a class is really hard or really easy one quarter it won’t provide better grades than another quarter. I think the intro classes are curved, but they have a guarantee for a lowest grade based on your percentage. I believe a 90% is guaranteed a 3.5, which is an A.</p>
<p>@momto4squirts: My daughter and I are having the same discussion. We visited UW Tacoma and WSU Vancouver who both offer BS and MS degrees in Computer Science. She could begin classes in her major immediately. The class sizes are much smaller. I think starting at a new school, living in a new place and the need to get a near perfect grade at UW Seattle in CS 143 with over 400 students in the class is a lot of pressure! We have not yet sent in deposits to hold her place anywhere. We don’t have that much longer to decide.</p>
<p>Adding onto ranek’s post - Most intro courses with curves have the guaranteed grade … with some “extra points”/curve up if needed. If the median of a course falls below 70-75%, there is generally a curve. If the median is at 90%, there isn’t an extra curve, but people who got a 90% aren’t “penalized” for being at the median; they don’t get a 2.7 instead of a 3.5 for example.</p>
<p>For example, when I took CSE 142, a 98.5% was “guaranteed” to get a 4.0. However, after all the grades were in, you only needed a 96.5% or so to get a 4.0 because of the curve. </p>
<p>In one of the Chem intro courses my freshman year, the median for the course was a 95% … crazy! I looked at the exams and they were easier than my homework assignments with another professor though… There was no curve as far as I was concerned. Everyone just got whatever was “guaranteed” for their grade, which was stated in the syllabus at the beginning of the quarter.</p>
<p>Why don’t you just ignore my post. I was conjecturing, but I believe I may be mistaken. I have more experience with classes in upper division CSE where they will adjust the numerical grade given to an appropriate median, but if you earn an A you won’t have it taken away.</p>
<p>I believe the essential issue is not one of “downward bell curves”. It is, as emmapet says, that the notion that a new college student has to hit the ground running, without room for any slip-ups is unnecessarily stressful. Speedsolver, who was teaching that chem course where the median was 95%? That seems very unusual. </p>
<p>Anyway, I do wonder how the UW CS admission policies are going to affect the composition of students in the future. The word is getting out about how difficult it is to gain admission. I see on these boards (and in discussions in my own home) that students are having to grapple with the very difficult decision of whether to take a chance on admission or just go elsewhere from the get-go. Those who are pretty much guaranteed to get into the major elsewhere are doing just that.</p>
<p>Thank you, Ranek, for the chart function. It clarifies things a bit.</p>