My son likes all the three colleges and is applying for CS major. We are wondering where he has maximum chance for ED. Below is his profile.
Below is his profile.
Demographics
US: Upstate NY
Public high school
Asian male, US Citizen
Rising Senior
Intended Major(s) - considering:
Computer Science with Arts or minor in arts
GPA, Rank, and Test Scores
98% score – all most rigorous subjects in high school – top 5% of 500 kids
Total of 9 APS in high school. Done five APS – all 5s. Already complete AP Calc BC with a 5
SAT super score: 1550
ACT: 35
Coursework
9 APs - 5 APS done till junior year with all 5’s as score.
4 Dual Enrollments including UHS Physics
3 computer courses done in summer from community college.
Awards
PSAT - Score - 214 (Most probably he will be commended)
National Honor Society - Nominee
11th grade - Scholastic art awards submissions - gold key award for 2 paintings competing at national level.
11th grade - Winner of Congressional District Award (art hanging in US Capitol)
11th grade - Art selected in Hartwick College exhibition.
11th grade - Selected art in 25th Annual High School Juried Regional art exhibition (29 school districts participated)
11th grade - Blue Marble Review magazine publication- Art selected for publication in the magazine.
11th grade - Received editor’s choice recognition for 5 submissions to teenink.com and 2 publications in teen ink magazine (1 of which was the cover of the issue!)
11th grade - Olympic of Visual Art - 2nd at regional level
I assume you have checked and all three of these schools will be comfortably affordable for you, and you have no interest in comparing offers including merit offers if your son is admitted to one of these colleges.
If so, I would encourage your son to choose the one where he thinks he will be happiest, as happy people tend to do better, and how well you do in college is a very large factor in what options you get next. And ED is binding, so you don’t want it to “work” and then realize you might be happier somewhere else.
Including the possibility of getting into one of these other colleges RD, which many people start taking more seriously once they get into one such college ED. But at that point they cannot reconsider.
I think it is possible CMU will be the hardest admit for a CS intender. Of course if true, that would be because a lot of CS kids particularly value their CS program.
Sorry forgot to mention - we are in upstate NY and from our school - CMU usually take 3-4 kids every year.
U penn and columbia is showing nothing in Naviance.
We dont have stats for CS major
He is clearly qualified academically for a CS program and I think that his interest/accomplishments in art (rather than CS) actually make him a unique candidate. He clearly did what he truly enjoyed during HS, instead of what would look good for college applications. I would suggest he (and you) do the same for the ED decision - pick the one that he clearly is in love with (not the most prestigious or easiest to get into), in terms of program, campus, culture, everything. CMU will be harder than the other two - they’ve been the top CS program for decades.
Ok…here is my opinion. Since he doesn’t have a clear top choice, perhaps he should apply regular decision to all three. I think he is a strong student, although CS is a very competitive admit at most places. CMU is the most highly regarded of these programs in CS in the circles I know.
But maybe, just maybe he should apply to all three RD, and see what happens, and make his decision amongst acceptances at the end of April.
I think you are getting into why trying to figure out where your odds are truly the best becomes basically impossible at this level. Any published ED statistics involve many cases completely unlike your son’s. If you had a large sample of data of truly comparable individual cases, maybe that would be useful, but you don’t.
So that is part of why many people here will suggest thinking about this decision in a different way. Trying to strategize about chances isn’t very promising when you don’t have the information you would need to reliably determine your chances.
None of us can tell you at which of these programs he has the greatest chance. What does his HS counselor say? It does seem like the HS may have a more established path to CMU than the other schools?
CMU SCS acceptance rate is around 5%
Columbia combined CC and Engineering 4%
Not sure Penn’s Eng acceptance rate, but overall Class of 2027 acceptance rate was 5.9%
Penn and Columbia accept 50%+ of the class in ED, CMU less at around 36% (class of 2027).
I agree with others that your S should choose the school he likes best. Does he like the Columbia Core? And its foreign lang requirement? That info, compared across these 3 schools, could help make a decision. The Core Curriculum | Columbia College and Columbia Engineering
Has he visited all 3 schools or at least done virtual sessions? CMU is a fit school, more so than Penn and Columbia, so would strongly encourage a visit to experience the vibe there.
FWIW, Columbia does not admit by major including CS. Pretty sure CMU specificaly admits by CS and it’s by a large margin the toughest admit at the school. Not sure about UPenn (if I had to guess they don’t admit by major either but that’s just a guess). So in that sense, it’s probably a tad easier to get in to a school not specifically admitting by CS since it’s always the most popular choice. But when those non-admit schools have 4% overall admit rates, that’s a small consolation indeed. Though ED was closer to 15%.
He will do RD in two and ED in one. He is applying to many targets and already gotten in one safety. Thank you for the replies. he has emailed his HS Counsellor today morning. lets see what he says. He is not leaning on any specific college out of three except he loves NYC.
For Computer Science he could apply to Columbia College or the School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS). The latter doesn’t do the full Core, if that’s not his thing. I’ve never seen Columbia break out admit rates between CC and SEAS. Once there, despite different requirements, the students are completely comingled – same dorms, same orientation, substantial overlap of both groups in most classes, study groups, clubs, etc. In general for Columbia he should look into both schools and decide which one fits him better. (It’s also relatively easy to switch after being admitted in the first couple of years.)
The Core Curriculum is Columbia College’s “distribution requirements.” They are more classic “liberal arts” than many of their peers, and more regimented. CC students first year’s, for example, are pre-enrolled in a full year of “Literature Humanities” and alternating semesters of “Frontiers of Science” and “University Writing” so half of their schedule is picked for them that year. Second year they are forced enrolled in a year of “Contemporary Civilization.” Eventually they all have to take, with more scheduling flexibility and agency for the rest, Music Humanities, Art Humanities, 2 “Global” courses (they have choices), and 2 other STEM classes (many choices) and complete or test out of 4 semester of foreign language, plus a couple physical ed courses (and they all have to pass a swim test). With the exception of foreign language, none of these classes can be skipped regardless of AP, IB or dual enrollment credits. And foreign language is a fairly narrow criteria to skip – a 5 on the AP or taking Columbia’s own test for placement. So 4 years of a HS language and a 4 on the AP still means starting from scratch unless their placement test puts you up any of the levels. A 5 on the AP waives the full requirement. Dual Enrollment still requires the placement test which will completely determine the starting level. At least the STEM course requirement can be virtually any math or science class and overlap with course needed for a major, minor or concentration. Theoretically the Global courses can too but there’s very few that would satisfy any STEM major requirements.
As noted above, this is for Columbia College. The engineering school Core is a bit different and somewhat less humanities-focused.
Columbia is proud of its Core. It’s been in a relatively similar form for over 100 years and is changed very modestly over time. They like to say that when you are networking with an alum 40 years older than you when pursuing jobs, you’ll both be able to talk about having studied the same books in LitHum, etc.
To expand a little, for Columbia Class of 2023 (students starting in fall '23, the most recent year Columbia has provided a Common Data Set for to date), Columbia’s ED acceptance rate was ~14.7%. This compares to the RD rate of ~2.8%. Columbia filled ~58% of it’s class ED.
