Hey guys, so I am a freelance programmer that has worked on many projects with companies as well as college students pertaining to web development and cool software in general.
My grades are horrible(mostly B’s), but would my passion for programming take precedence over my grades since I am making money from this? I also participate in my schools programming club and volunteer at elementary schools to teach programming.
I want to be accepted into either Stanford or MIT (preferably Stanford), but if those two are not possible, my next choice is Georgia Tech.
Work/EC’s do not overrride academics especially for schools like MIT/Stanford. So what is your unweighted GPA?
Do you have SAT/ACT scores?
You can google common dataset for each school and see what the average enrolled GPA and test scores are for these schools along with the percentage of enrolled students within a specific GPA range.
For example for Stanford:
Percent who had GPA of 3.75 and higher: 94.51
Percent who had GPA of between 3.50 and 3.74: 4.01
Percent who had GPA between 3.25 and 3.49: 0.91
Percent who had GPA between 3.00 and 3.24: 0.58
Percent who had GPA between 2.50 and 2.99: 0
So if you are a B average student in the 3.0-3.24 range, you can see only 0.58% of applicants were accepted/enrolled.
So my son applied early admission to GA Tech and got outright rejected. His stats are: ACT 34 (not superscored, just on one test), GPA 3.98, SAT 2 Math: 790, Science 710, 12 AP credits. Many extracurriculars along the lines of Technology Student Association 1st place in state, Robotics World Championships, National Honor Society, Science National Honor Society and Key Club. He has summer employment experience and wrote a very good essay. He does volunteer tutoring and does volunteer I.T. work for a local senior living center.
He is in state and goes to a uber-competitive high school, this is the only rationale I can see for a rejection (not even deferral?!)
Yeah. MIT/Stanford won’t accept you, period, unless you solved PvNP or something. Take tests, those might be able to help you make a case for yourself at some other great CS schools. GTech will be an extreme reach as a B average student; I know lots of 3.7+, 34+ ACT people with strong CS ECs who got flat rejected EA a few days ago. Look at UMD, maybe UIUC as a reach if you get really good test scores. Good luck, be realistic about the schools you apply to. ECs will, except in the most, and only the absolute most extreme of cases, always be second to grades and scores.
In CS, what you can do is much more important than where your degree comes from. Given your grades, don’t put much if any effort towards applications to the tippy top schools - apply mostly to programs in the 25-50 range for CS (as well as some safeties). They will serve you plenty well. Your experience will help, but its hard to say how much and it will vary by school. A high volume of applications, if feasible, will be in your favor.