US Citizen (Canada dual citizenship)
California
Public High School, well ranked
Intended Major(s)
Computer Science and Mathematics
GPA, Rank, and Test Scores
Unweighted: 3.94 (out of 4)
Weighted: 4.33 (+1 for Honors and AP, does not apply to 9th, no weight for +/-)
SAT: 1520 (800 math, 720 reading) (planning to retake)
English:
English 9A
English 10A
American Classics H (sem)
Creative Writing (sem)
Math:
Geometry H
Algebra 2/Trigonometry H
Analysis H
Science:
Biology H
Chemistry H
AP Chemistry
History and social studies:
World History
US Government (sem)
Contemporary World History (sem)
AP US History
Language other than English:
Japanese 2
Japanese 3
AP Japanese
Visual or performing arts:
Freshman Concert Band
Wind Ensemble (3 years)
Jazz Ensemble H (3 years) (changed to honors course after 2 years)
Electives:
CS Capstone
Awards
JLPT N4 (2024) and JLPT N3 (2025)
Unanimous Superior / Gold 1st at various band/orchestra competitions as lead trumpet
All State Band
Extracurriculars
1600+ rating on Codeforces
Tri-M Music Honor Society
Vice President of Japanese Culture Club
Chartered and Secretary of Card Game Club
Competitive Programming Club
420 Intermediate Sailing Racing team
Helped improve website for Japanese Teacher
School District’s AI Ad Hoc Committee member
Interned at Semiconductor Company where I configured code for NFC tag testing purposes
Tutored for SAT and middle school AMC 8
Essays/LORs/Other
Hopefully will be good. I enjoy writing.
Schools
Not sure about ED/EA/etc. Do some of these seem reasonable (especially the Canadian schools)?
Canada:
University of British Columbia
University of Toronto, St. George
McGill University
University of Waterloo
US:
San Jose State University
George Mason University
Arizona State University
UIUC
Cal Poly San Luis Obispo
UCs
Georgia Tech
Carnegie Mellon
U of Chicago
U of T minimum requirements for Arts & Science are here, and Computer Science will be the most competitive in terms of the grades they’ll expect: U.S. High School | Faculty of Arts & Science
UBC is more complicated because they don’t have direct admission to the major. Here’s UBC’s page on the various pathways to Computer Science, I suggest reading about this (if you haven’t already) and then browsing around to look for the specific requirements: High School Students | Computer Science at UBC
I don’t know much about Waterloo’s application process, as my son only applied to the above three Canadian schools.
In general, the Canadian schools don’t care nearly as much about your extracurriculars as the US schools do (and McGill doesn’t even look at ECs). The important factors will be the courses you took, your grades (especially in the prerequisite courses for your program), and your test scores. For competitive programs (like CS), they’ll expect you to have top grades, especially in math.
Welcome to College Confidential and congratulations on being a competitive applicant.
For the California UC’s, they calculate 3 UC GPA’s (unweighted, capped weighted and weighted uncapped) using 10-11th a-g course grades with honors points given for UC approved HS Honors, AP, IB and DE/CC UC transferable courses taken during this time.
For San Jose State University, it uses a recalculated HS GPA that is the same as the UC weighted-capped HS GPA (as mentioned in post #3). Multiply by 800 to get your SJSU impaction index. The competitively determined thresholds used for fall 2025 frosh are shown at Freshmen Impaction Results | Admissions ; they may change next year, but can give an idea about how competitive each major is (for fall 2025 frosh, the threshold was 3440 for CS, equivalent to a 4.3 GPA if no extra points are gotten for graduating from a Santa Clara County high school or other factors as listed at Impaction | Admissions ).
For more selective colleges with holistic admission (including UCs, CMU, and Chicago), will your 12th grade courses include English, calculus, physics, and social studies (preferably honors/AP)?
Do you have cost constraints, and (if you do) have you and/or your parents used the net price calculator on each college’s web site?
For 12th grade, I intend to take AP English, AP Calc BC, AP Physics C, AP Econ, and two music periods. Is it recommended that I also take AP Psych? (I currently have two free classes but I am hoping to TA for one of them).
I do not have any significant cost constraints, especially for Canadian schools where I have canadian dual citizenship.
Depends on if you are interested in the subject. If economics and psychology are semester courses, you may want to use psychology or other elective history or social studies to complete the fourth year of history and social studies that some colleges may prefer.
For our school, AP Econ is a two semester course which does micro and macro for each semester, similar to AP Physics C. I’m just a bit worried that five APs might be too much (especially with Physics and Calc).
Also, regarding the ASU automatic admission, does it not require you to be an Arizona Resident?
See the linked Arizona State web page. If using test scores to meet the admission threshold, the non-resident threshold is slightly higher, but still well below your test score (and your GPA is well above the GPA threshold).
In terms of workload, perhaps you can compare your 11th grade courses to your 12th grade courses, with my guesses (but you should make your own comparison):
English (1 semester honors) → AP English – probably slightly harder
Analysis (precalculus) honors → AP calculus BC – probably slightly harder
AP chemistry → AP physics C – probably similar, but may be harder or easier depending on student
AP US history → AP economics – probably easier for a strong-in-math student
AP Japanese → nothing – easier
CS capstone (if you took this in 11th grade) → nothing – easier
2 music courses → 2 music courses – probably similar
nothing → writing college application essays – harder