<p>Would it be easier to gain admission into Harvard if someone applied for computer science engineering?</p>
<p>Given the following stats etc....would you say that admission is likely?:</p>
<p>The person takes computer science at his school gets a 5 on the AP computer science tests and is interested in mathematics (mathematics by the way is related to computer science) etc. and won a small state-wide award in java programming</p>
<p>top 3%
95/100 gpa
toughest courseload possible
5's on all AP's
2250+ SAT
750~ on SAT IIs
Decent EC's with board positions etc..
mediocre awards
nice recs and essays</p>
<p>Since the person's applying for COMPUTER SCIENCE ENGINEERING, he does face less competition rite?</p>
<p>If you want CS to be an advantage for you, try doing something big with it. One student, for example, wrote some kind of program during his senior year in high school that Microsoft offered to buy for $2 million dollars. Obviously you don't have to do something quite like that to get in, but it's the kind of project you might think about--writing a genuinely useful or popular application probably would be a pretty good hook, not to mention a rewarding experience in and of itself.</p>
<p>Wow. $2 million? He is really killing three birds with one stone-paying for college, bolstering his resume considerably for college, and building a pre-emptive reputation in the professional world.</p>
<p>He actually turned down the deal--and regrets it now. He would've netted $1 million, since he had a co-writer on the program. But I think he's doing pretty okay for himself right now; he's dropped out to work on the Facebook, which he founded.</p>
<p>
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Since the person's applying for COMPUTER SCIENCE ENGINEERING, he does face less competition rite?
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<p>Not really. Harvard undergrad admissions are unified, which means that you have to compete against everybody else who is trying to get into Harvard, whether they are engineers or Art History majors. </p>
<p>Besides, think of it this way. If engineering really was an easier way to get into Harvard College, then everybody would just apply that way, and once they got in, they would just switch to whatever major they really wanted to do. Hence, everybody would just game the system.</p>
<p>Other schools, such as Berkeley, do run separate admission for engineers. But then they also make it fairly difficult for you to change majors later. </p>
<p>I do agree that it is probably easier to get into Harvard for graduate school in CS or engineering than it is in other fields. But it's not easy to "switch majors" in graduate school. For example, you can't get just apply to the Harvard PhD program in electrical engineering, get admitted, and then once you're there, decide that you would rather get your PhD in English instead.</p>
