Good safeties and matches for CS major

ProfessorPlum168
Mon, 30 Jul 2018 01:06:24 +0000

Here’s the way I see things. She’s got two perfectly good safeties in TAMU and UTD. She has super stats. I would take this approach - go through a list of the Top 40 or 50 Computer Science schools. Maybe there’s an AI list out there, I don’t know. Anyhow, eliminate the ones that will cost too much (most of the top private schools) or doesn’t have the right aura. Eliminate the schools that aren’t that close to a big city, eg UIUC, Purdue, Wisconsin, Florida, etc. Of the ones remaining, then start with NPC for each. If possible, visit the school. That’s pretty much how we came up with my own kid’s list. It was a risky strategy heavy with reaches but it worked out.

For the OP’s info, here’s the list that my kid ultimately applied to, with the risky strategy that the second-tier UCs would be the safeties. You can substitute the UC schools with Texas-based public schools.

UC-Berkeley
UCLA
UC-San Diego
UC-Irvine
UC-Davis
UC-Santa Barbara
Stanford
USC
Carnegie-Mellon
Northeastern
Vanderbilt
Northwestern

He also considered Caltech, Columbia, NYU and Michigan (visited all of them) but eliminated them at the end. The only school in the list that he had never visited before prior to applying was UCSB.