How is that even possible? I’m OOS for all these schools but I figured Purdue might sort of a safety and UMICH and UC Berkeley being reaches. I applied EA for Purdue and UMICH, but regular for UC Berkeley (they only have regular). Is it possible I was “overqualified” for Purdue? I don’t think I was under-qualified because then Berkeley nor UMICH would waitlist me. Below are my credentials.
Objective:
list
- SAT I 1490 Reading and Writing:690 Math:800
- SAT II (Type, Score):Chem-770 Math II-800
- Unweighted GPA (out of 4.0):3.83
- Rank (percentile if rank is unavailable): top 6.4%
- AP (place score in parenthesis):
Biology(4)
Human Geography(4)
Chemistry(5)
French Language(3)
World History(3)
English Language(3)
U.S History-(3)
Physics 1(4)
Psychology(4)
Statistics(5)
- Senior Year Course Load:Computer Science 1, Computer Science 2, Calculus AB, Calculus BC, AP U.S Government, AP Microeconomics, APES, English 4
- Major Awards (USAMO, Intel etc.):AP Scholar with distinction two years, National Honor Society, Science NHS, French NHS
Subjective:
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- Extracurriculars (place leadership in parenthesis):Student council(10th-member,11th-class secretary/treasurer, 12th class vice president) French Club(9-10th-member, 11th-Historian, 12th-Publicist) eBay bookseller(9-12th-owner)
- Job/Work Experience:Wendy’s(summer before senior year)
- Volunteer/Community service:Teen court(1 hour per week ish) and local town for a few hours over one summer
- Summer Activities: Engineering camp at in state college and computer and application design camp at another college
- Essays:8/10
- Teacher Recommendations:
Teacher one 8/10
- Counselor Rec:8/10
Maybe Purdue sensed you were using them as a safety.
Purdue CS appears to be considerably more competitive than the school overall.
Your other posts suggest that you applied to UCB L&S, which is not direct admission to CS, so the increased competitiveness of CS does not affect you there (UCB L&S students need to earn a 3.3 GPA in the first three CS courses to enter the L&S CS major).
Each place sets its own admission policy. That is why a student can be rejected from a place that they thought “might be sort of a safety”.
If multiple students with your profile from your high school had applied to Purdue and been admitted over the course of the past few years, then you would have good reason to feel it was pretty safe. Was that the information you based your notion about relative safety on? But even then, this year Purdue could have tweaked its policy so that you were out.
The only truly safe institutions are the ones that offer automatic admission for a particular set of stats that you happen to possess.
I think your AP scores turned some Purdue readers off.
Your AP scores in English and social sciences confirm your SAT reading score (below the 700 benchmark). You are not overqualified. But why do you want to think about it now? It’s over.
Michigan puts way more people on their WL. Their WL is about 70% of their offer pool. At Purdue it is only about 17%.
Purdue CS is uber competitive and is no one’s safety.
Michigan’s waitlist is basically a rejection. They waitlist thousands.
Purdue only accepts around 10% of direct-admit CS applicants. If you thought that their 57% overall acceptance rate applied university-wide, you didn’t do your research.
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When did you apply to Purdue? They fill their CS and Engineering primarily EA so if you only applied RD they may have been full up.
Purdue engineering acceptance rate is around 44%. Purdue CS was 28% last year.
you have a hook for UC: that OOS tuition money! If you were instate with those stats, you would have been rejected.
Actually, the acceptance rates are now lower. We attended the Purdue for Me engineering presentation in February. The 2019 engineering acceptance rate was 37% as of February 2019.
Hopefully you have booked your NSC and paid a housing deposit at TAMU?
How much interest did you show at Purdue? Schools sometimes look at email traffic, info session attendance, etc., and find students that aren’t actively interested but just toss in a ‘safety’ application. They’d prefer to offer to someone maybe less qualified but more interested. Especially in a high-demand major, as noted above.
The college admission process is pretty random. i got rejected by cornell but got into several t20s.