Please chance a CS-interested co2027 TX senior! [3.99/4.0 4.81/5.0 GPA, 1550 SAT 760R 790M, <$40k]

Chance Me / Match Me
, , ,
1

:double_exclamation_mark: Please do not post sensitive, private, or identifying information as we do NOT delete or edit posts on College Confidential! :double_exclamation_mark:

Guidelines

  • Please check back to answer questions.
  • Please do not share identifying information.
  • Please do not include your race.

Demographics

  • US citizen
  • State/Location of residency: Texas
  • Type of high school (or current college for transfers): Charter (class size ~100, considered large)
  • Other special factors: None

Cost Constraints / Budget
(High school students: please get a budget from your parents and use the Net Price Calculators on the web sites of colleges of interest.)
Not entirely sure, the lower the better. Admission is the first priority.

Intended Major(s)

Computer Science or bioinformatics (leaning CS)

GPA, Rank, and Test Scores

  • Unweighted HS GPA: 3.99
  • Weighted HS GPA: 4.81/5
  • Class Rank: Does not rank, I would estimate top ~10%
  • ACT/SAT Scores: 1550, sticking to it, 760R 790M

List your HS coursework

(Indicate advanced level, such as AP, IB, AICE, A-level, or college, courses as well as specifics in each subject)

  • English: AP Lit & Lang
  • Math: AP Precalc, AP Calc AB, AP Calc BC, AP Stats
  • Science: AP Physics 1 & 2, AP Chemistry
  • History and social studies: AP US Government & Politics, AP World History, AP European History, AP US History
  • Language other than English: AP Mandarin (did not take AP)
  • Visual or performing arts:
  • Other academic courses: AP CSP, AP CSA

Scored 5 on all APs except European History (4)

College Coursework (Transfer Applicants)
(Include college courses taken while in high school if not included above.)

  • General education course work: None
  • Major preparation course work: None

Awards

State award for cybersecurity competition

Local research award for the summer session (mentioned in ECs as well)

2x Local chemistry olympiad award

Random AP awards and National Merit commended student

Extracurriculars

President & team captain of a cybersecurity competition team, top 50 every year nationally at the semifinals level, in the highest division

Conducted mentored 2yr bioinformatics AI research at nearby university through application to a formal program - there is a manuscript in writing, but I don’t expect it to be reviewed or published before application due dates

1yr internship at school, learning IT management & rewiring VoIP system

Co-developed a discord bot with peak ~200k users, ~1000 servers (however this was a while ago, the bot has since ceased development)
Part of school FTC team that qualified for states, won many small awards

Essays/LORs/Other

Essays would be a 7/10 at the lowest, I’d say

LORs would be at lowest about an 8/10

Schools

  • Assured (100% chance of admission and affordability):
  • Extremely Likely: UT Dallas, UT San Antonio
  • Likely:
  • Toss-up: UT Austin
  • Lower Probability: USC, Rice,
  • Low Probability: CMU, Cornell, Harvard, Princeton, MIT, Stanford

Current plan is to EA to MIT, UT Austin, and USC, and RD everything else, but I’m very open to suggestions

I will probably add more to likely and toss-up as time goes on, any recommendations are welcome!

Please let me know if more information is needed, or if I missed anything.

2

Congrats on an exceptional record.

But let’s take a step back.

When you build a list, you need to build it, not just on where you want to be, but on budget.

Here is the MIT Net Price Calculator. Have your parents fill it out. MIT is near $100K a year. Can they afford it? If MIT says they can, are they willing to?

So you need to build around a list but you do have in-state schools so hopefully you can afford them.

UTD, for tuition, room and board - is about $34K. There could be merit - but can they afford that.

As for UT, I thought all Texas schools ranked - so you can check into that.

I think you have a shot everywhere but again, budget matters - because if you can’t afford a school, then there’s no reason to apply.

It’s hard to get a sense of what you like - besides big names - to add more.

But I can see (not knowing costs) - a Purdue, UMD, UMASS and RPI being great additions. The first three are great programs that are a notch below UT and RPI is a mini-MIT. And what about A&M?

You do have the kind of list, where other than your safeties, you could get shut out - so that’s the risk but that’s why I like the four I mentioned. They give you pedigree/prominence and I think you get in all four.

But getting in and paying for it- two different things.

So get with your folks because there’s no point applying to $80-100K a year schools if they’re not able to pay.

You can go to in state - like Tech, UH, etc. or even to an Alabama for low 20s given your stats, etc - if that’s all they can afford. Or want to afford.

Have your folks fill this out - and let us know.

Great profile. Good luck.

Net Price Calculator

3 Likes
3

Sorry, I forgot to mention this - For most of the “super reach” schools on my list, I qualify for free tuition. A big reason why I’m applying to so many big-name schools is because of the generous financial aid.

I go to a charter school where we don’t rank at all

I’ll have to do more research on A&M before I decide if I will apply to it or not.

1 Like
4

So there are other meets need schools too. If you need free tuition or free cost, you can look at them. Or if your family makes $65k or less and it can be more but that’s a rough guide, there is Questbridge which gives you another, maybe better way to apply, but it’s getting late for that.

Most everyone has CS. So putting in some highly but less selective may be smart too. Your family should run a net price calculator on any of interest.

QuestBridge

5

Can you clarify what you mean here? “Free tuition” does not include room and board and other expenses. Or do you mean you are eligible for full financial aid, which would cover those other things? There is a big difference.

3 Likes
6

Your current target list of colleges in quite good as it is. I don’t really see any reason to add more schools. You could decide to replace 1 or 2 with alternate choices, ones previously suggested for Likely.

Don’t neglect this! Your GPA, test scores, awards, & ECs are 8 or 9/10. Your essays and letters of recommendations should match this. You are scoring your essays at 7/10 meaning needs improvement. The recommendations: can at least one be a “7”, one be an “8”, and the third be a “9”. Remember, there is also the guidance counselor recommendation. That one could be a “9” or a “10”. Students are often misinformed or unaware of how much power the guidance counselor has & underestimate the weight of this recommendation. You have an excellent chance of getting admitted to many of the colleges you are applying to.

1 Like
7

Note that Texas A&M has secondary admission to major (entry-to-a-major or ETAM) for for CS after starting as undeclared general engineering. The automatic admission college GPA is 3.75, and CS tends to be filled up so that very few with college GPA under 3.75 get into CS.

UT Austin should be considered a reach for direct admission to the CS major, which is more competitive than general admission to the campus.

1 Like
8

You should probably figure that something like 80% of applicants have excellent academic records which are not very far different from your excellent record. You know what the acceptance rates are for these schools. I think that they are worth an application and you at least do have some chance for admissions. MIT is a lot of work. If you want to do it then to me it looks like you can handle it. Stanford is on the quarter system so if you get in be aware that the end of the quarter is going to come up faster than you are expecting it. If you get in make a strong effort to stay ahead in all classwork (which is a good idea for any of these academically challenging schools).

Otherwise I think that you have a good list. I also wondered about whether you should add TAMU to the list but I am not from your area and do not know how TAMU compares with UT Dallas and UT San Antonio for computer science.

Cybersecurity does involve some math. Your excellent math SAT score and somewhat advanced course work in math makes me think that you will handle this quite well.

And do try to solidify what your budget is, and pay attention to your budget when deciding which university to attend.

I think that you are doing very well and have a good list of schools to apply to.

For your essays, I would emphasize just that you be authentic, and be yourself. You might be doing better in this area than you are giving yourself credit for.

9

Thank you all for the replies!

The reason I rated my essay a 7/10 is because I’d rather err on the side of caution, and I can’t really objectively rate my own essays.

I apologize for providing limited information about my finances, but I qualify for free tuition (not cost of living) for most of these schools, excluding UT Austin and CMU. Cost of living is something my family will try their best to cover.

My primary concern is that I get shut out everywhere (except UTD/UTSA).

Some context I forgot to provide is that my school is overall very competitive, though I still am on the upper end of that spectrum, if that changes much.

10

Why do you say this ? Did they run the NpcS? If you are looking at income plans, they also look at assets.

Can they afford $20k? That’s living costs. $40k? $100k ? UT isn’t cheap, even in state.

First and foremost you need a budget, even when you think you don’t.

1 Like
11

image
image3840×2160 162 KB

Any interest as another potential “reach” application?

12

Sure, but why John Hopkins specifically?

13

Johns Hopkins University offers a B.S. in computer science, alongside robust undergraduate coursework, research paths, and minors in computational biology, bioinformatics, and biomedical engineering. Alternatively, you can also pursue a B.S. in biomedical engineering & minor in computer science.

Johns Hopkins also awards merit scholarships for academic and personal achievement & the John Hopkins Tuition Promise.

If you think JH is a good fit for your undergraduate studies, you may want to consider adding this one to your list.

1 Like
14

Don’t forget Turing at UT Austin. It is likely better than USC, Rice, and probably better than Cornell. If you are not budget constrained, you could also add UCB to the list. If you can’t get into non-Turing UTAustin instate, you probably won’t get into GT, UMich etc out of state – therefore you can leave them out. And there is no reason to pick UIUC/UMich/UMass/UMD/UCLA/UCSD over UT Austin. If you were not in Texas, you would have added these to your list. While you are at it, you may as well throw in Stanford into the list. The GPA seems high for someone who is top 10% of class in a 100 person class – just a thought. Admission to all these places depends on how effusive your teacher recommendations are, and how good your essays are, given that the rest of your application looks reasonable. Especially for the non publics, show some demonstrated interest / significant footprint on the non-STEM side of your transcript – languages/humanities etc. You should look interesting.

15

We don’t know the finances yet so these schools may not work.

But OP has a drop from UT to UTD so the UMass / UMD / Purdue type schools were noted as a mid point - closer to UT than the safeties in the situation where OP, as strong as they are, strikes out. While th get into UT, it’s unknown as to whether they’d get in for CS.

Hopefully OP develops a budget bcuz if it’s low, then these out of state publics wouldn’t work anyway.

2 Likes
16

There is some nuance here. UT Austin is instate. If he can’t get into UT Austin, the other OOS schools will be harder. I am distinguishing between Austin and Austin Turing. Perhaps Purdue is possible OOS, and it may be better than UTD. But I wouldn’t pick Rutgers, Penn State etc over UTD. Rice can be tougher than Austin to get into, because it is very small. UMich OOS will be tough. UMass Amherst OOS may be easier than Austin instate. And it may be better than UTD – this is marginal, and the weather is far different. I can see the strategy as the OP laid out, and it makes some sense to not apply to the rest of the mid-rated publics. The high rates privates are an entirely different situation, and I wouldn’t mind picking them over Austin, and over Austin Turing, with the exception of Cornell. I would pick Cornell over Turing only if there are non CS interests in addition to the CS interests.

2 Likes
17

An estimate for a budget would be ~40k per year for everything, including living costs. I will let you know if this changes.

1 Like
18

Are you hoping for merit aid, need based aid, or just outright costs? Only Purdue among the publics will be in the ballpark probably. And the privates make sense only on a need based basis. The ones you picked are not in the merit game. I know that Johns Hopkins has given merit aid in the past, but that is for majors like Language and Writing.

19

I’m hoping primarily for need-based, but I will apply for merit-based aid. I will also apply for as many outside scholarships as possible.

2 Likes
20

I think GT has a Stamps scholarship. You could also consider that. Sometimes U Mass Amherst gives enough aid to come upto instate costs for you.