Match Me: Aspiring small-town CS student looking to go into AI (possible integration with the medical field)[TX resident, 97 UW GPA, top 3% rank, 1500 SAT]

Chance Me / Match Me
1

Demographics

  • US domestic
  • Texas
  • Public High School
  • Asian Male

Intended Major(s)
Major in Computer Science

GPA, Rank, and Test Scores

  • Unweighted HS GPA: 97 (100 point scale)
  • Weighted HS GPA: 103 (100 point scale)
  • Class Rank: 2/81
  • 1500 SAT

Coursework

4 years of Language Arts (3.5 credits, H English I, II, AP Eng Lang & Comp: score of 3, Dual Credit Research)
2 years of Public Speaking (2 credits)
5 years of Math (5 credits, H Algebra I & II, H Geometry, H Pre-Cal, H Calculus)
4 years of Science (5 credits, H Bio, H Chem, AP Biology: score of 4, H Physics, H A&P, possibly taking AP Chem upcoming year)
4 years of Social Studies (4.5 credits, H World Geo, Dual Credit Fed Gov, H World History, Dual Credit US History, Dual Credit Texas Gov, Dual Credit Econ)
3 years of Athletics (3 credits, Tennis)
2 years of Other Languages (2.5 credits, Spanish I & II)
3 years of Art (3.5 credits, Art, Band I & II, Dual Credit Art Appreciation)
2 years of Career/Tech Ed (1.5 credits, Bus Info Management, Dual Credit Intro to Comp Sci)
1 year of Gifted and Talented Seminar

Awards
Levels 4-12 TMTA Student Affiliate Theory Test Achievements
Top 5 Recognition (2022-24)
4th in Mathematics, Districts (2023) (2nd as team)
4th in Number Sense, Districts (2023) (2nd as team)
A Honor Roll (2023-24)
Rural and Small Town Scholar Award (2023-2024)
6th in Accounting, Districts (2024) (2nd as team)
2nd in Mathematics, Regional (2024) (1st as team)
5th in Mathematics, Regional (2024) (2nd as team)
1st as team in Number Sense, Districts (2024)
2nd as team in Number Sense, Regional (2024)

Extracurriculars
15.5 hours of volunteering
50+ club hours (can’t check at the moment)
Historian of STEM Club (2023)
Secretary of Astronomy Club (2023)
Pianist for Theater Club (2023-2024)
Student Council and Beta Club (2024)

Hobbies include coding/web development, piano, and music composition
Taking extra no-credit Data Analytics Courses on Coursera while furthering knowledge through boot camps free online content

Essays/LORs/Other
Work in progress.

Cost Constraints / Budget
Both parents have high salary and are willing to cover undergrad studies no matter where I go. (We do not qualify for financial aid)

Schools

  • Safety
    Stephen F. Austin State University
    Texas A&M

  • Match
    UT Austin

I don’t exactly know where else to apply to and where I have a chance to get into. Although UT Austin is a great option, I want to see if there are better options I should try my luck at.

2

Wouldn’t you be an auto admit to UT Austin?

3

@thumper1 I may be wrong but i don’t think auto-admit guarantees admission to an applicant’s desired major.

@ThatCrazyManInASuit
-Are your parents willing to play $90k or so per year for college?
-What would you like in an ideal college (ex. size, location, do you want Greek Life, big time sports, etc.)

4

A high GPA is needed for secondary admission to A&M for the CS Major. UT,Dallas might be a better safety school to consider.

4 Likes
5

You couldn’t do better but UT Austin - but what type of environment are you seeking that you’d seek more - than either of your two instates? Size, weather, rural/suburban/urban, etc.

I mean, you can’t do better than staying home unless there’s something about either of the two that you don’t like.

These are schools people from OOS aspire to for CS.

6

So, we need some details

  1. as above, size/type of school, geographic preferences, cost limitations, etc

  2. do you want to come out with the ability to be a software engineer or is that not a concern and you are happy with data science?

For data science you have 2-3 different ways to do it. (a) Traditional CS degree with focus on machine learning/AI, (b) a BS in data science, (c) some schools with less typical degrees that cover data science like info science, stats/econ or something else
Like social data analytics. Note that health data analytics / health data science / health informatics are almost always a Masters degree. But you can take electives.

However if you want crossover with health sciences, you may want to spend more time down in the data and using the data science versus learning how to build it. Hard to tell from what you have written. You certainly can do CS plus health sciences but you can also do DS plus health sciences. Just depends what kind of skills/job you want and how you want to spend your time.

The pro of the CS degree is stronger coding / algorithm skills and the potential to get SWE jobs and the downside is that you will have to take courses you may not care about like operating systems, certain Languages, etc

A BS in Data Science will likely include more analysis of data but focus only on scripting languages like Python and R. You will almost never get a pure software engineering jobs with a data science degree. Though you could be coding ML/AI.

Both will get into ML/AI coursework but you may get deeper “into the weeds” with the CS degree which makes sense for NLP engineer, MLOps Engineer, and AI engineer jobs. However, you can probably go any path and take electives to get you close to the other path (for example, I did an MS in Applied Stats but took all my electives in CS to build DS/ML competency).

1 Like
7

I think that you are doing very well.

I think that your in-state public schools are great choices. I am not familiar with what specifically you need to do to get your desired major at UT Austin. However, it is hard to imagine a stronger student somehow taking your place.

For a potential CS/AI major, I would recommend that you also keep up in math (which might be sort of like telling a fish to keep swimming – it looks like something that already is you). Both math and CS are very relevant in AI. Things like probability and statistics, calculus, and linear algebra are going to be relevant. Some algorithms courses will too, but will also be part of a CS major.

I got my master’s degree at Stanford in a subfield of applied math. The other students in the program had come from a huge range of undergraduate schools. I am pretty sure that the large majority came from schools that were lower ranked than UT Austin (which of course covers a lot of schools). There are not a lot of secrets of mathematics that MIT or Stanford are going to teach an undergraduate student that you couldn’t have learned at 50 or 100 other universities. Something like a bachelor’s degree at UT Austin or at T.A&M plus a master’s at Stanford might be less expensive compared to just getting a bachelor’s degree at Stanford or MIT, and also would give you at least some experience at two different very good universities, and would get you a very good master’s degree. Of course MIT and Stanford are reaches for pretty nearly any student.

By the way, the overlap between math/cs and music is also something that I have seen multiple times. Working in high tech and liking music, I have on several occasions gone to a music event and seen someone I know from high tech get up on stage and play, and mostly play very well.

I think that you are competitive at any university in the US, and probably any university in the world that teaches in a language that you speak. The real questions might be whether there are any universities in the world at all that would be a better fit for you, and whether the top ranked universities in the US would be worth the cost. Neither is obvious to me one way or the other. Also, being competitive for admissions does not make admissions likely at the tiny, tiny handful of schools that would be as strong as UT Austin for CS or math.

Between CS, AI, machine learning, and applied math, you can take a bit of each and decide on a major well after you start university (although different universities vary in terms of how hard it is to switch majors). You could most likely get a bachelor’s degree in one of them, and a master’s degree in another of these same fields. If you want to apply this in the medical field, then you will most likely want to also take some other presumably biology/chemistry/biochemistry related courses (which gets into an area that I do not know well). However, you can start doing this as a freshman in university, and decide over time whether this makes sense to continue.

And I think that you are doing very well.

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8

Top 3% rank for a Texas resident frosh applicant means automatic admission to UT Austin (which takes top 6% automatically), but that does not mean automatic admission to competitive majors like CS.

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9

Yes, Texas A&M admits to first year general engineering (which is not automatic admission for top 10% that automatically admits to the campus), from which one applies to specific majors later (process is called Entry To A Major or ETAM; there are threads about it in the Texas A&M forum section). A 3.75 college GPA is needed to guarantee choice of major; very few who apply to CS with below 3.75 college GPA are admitted to the major.

Agree that UT Dallas and other Texas public universities would be safer choices for CS than Texas A&M.

10

How is this only 3.5 credits? If it is only 3.5 credits, that could be a concern since many colleges require or strongly prefer to see 4 years of English from frosh applicants.

11

AP Eng Lang & Comp was offered for only that year and was never offered beforehand and may never be offered again. Therefore, the counselor is deciding whether you should be forced to take a fourth year of English, which is typically replaced by Dual Credit Rhetoric (English). After all, if you score high enough on the AP exam, you could get the college credits equivalent to a semester of Dual Credit.

It’s a flaw from the school, and they’re likely to send out an update soon.

12

I don’t exactly have too much of a preference, but if I had to say, I appreciate the cooler weather much more than the sun. That being said, I do like being close to home for easy visitation.

I love nature, but the thing I like the most is modern architecture with overgrown greenery.

As for college life, the ability to establish connections is important to me, as I’d like to be able to give myself an easier time working towards a job.

13

This site might be helpful as you can select certain areas of CS to see which schools are stronger in those particular areas: https://drafty.cs.brown.edu/csopenrankings/

U. of Texas is a strong option and will come in at a great price. If you’re accepted into the CS major, that will be a tough option to beat particular since Austin is really growing as an additional tech hub.

If you want something completely different in terms of an experience, you could always try a place like Stanford or Carnegie Mellon, but those options will be in the $90k/year vicinity if your family is full-pay. Your family should run the Net Price Calculator at Stanford to see if it qualfiies for any need-based aid, as it’s amongst the most generous schools in defining need.

Seconding (or thirding) UT-Dallas as a solid safety for you.

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