Purdue is a top 10 Engineering/top 20-ish CS school that’s probably a safety.
It is not yield protection to worry about; computer science and engineering is significantly more competitive at most UCs (and some CSUs including CPSLO and SJSU) than overall campus admission stats may suggest. He may want to throw in UCSC, UCR, and UCM to have some much more likely UCs on his list.
Although computer science is SJSU’s most competitive major, it is unlikely that a student with the maximum CSU GPA (same as the UC weighted-capped GPA, probably around 4.3 for a student with 4.0 unweighted and plenty of honors courses) and 1590 SAT would have an eligibility index (CSUGPA * 800 + SATRW + SAT_M) that falls short of the competitively set threshold (last few years (from most recent) were 4675, 4725, 4500, and 4450; see http://www.sjsu.edu/admissions/impaction/ ).
Purdue’s CS admission rate is plummeting. Match maybe but definitely not a safety. Lots of perfect stats were not admitted this cycle.
Also doesn’t meet the warm and sunny criteria.
@shishamo USC is not a safety for anyone. S has visited the school and is in touch with folks at Viterbi. USC does take a fair number of kids from his high school, so will definitely apply. Glad things worked out for your child.
@momofsenior1 “warm/Sunny” may be a preference but not a deal breaker. We are looking at Purdue and see it as a match. We will also look at Boulder.
@ucbalumnus Thanks for the info. UC’s seem to heavily recruit from his high school. This year UCB admitted about 65 kids and most of them were direct admits to either CS or Engg. Having said that we will add UCSC and UCR.
If “warm and sunny” are criteria, consider University of Arizona and Arizona State.
How about Ga Tech as a low reach/high match (OOS acceptance ~15%)? One of the top CS and Computer Engineering programs in the country also warm and sunny (mostly). A true safety would be RPI with a good CS program, good merit, possible D3 sports, but not warm and sunny.
@ucbalumnus thanks, will check out UOA/ASU.
@racereer We are looking at Ga Tech as a low reach. We have RPI as a safety school with the D3 sport/possible merit aid. We are trying to figure out how the Arch program plays out this summer and if their is any change in their financial situation.
@racereer
RPI thread regarding Arch, does not look good.
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/rensselaer-polytechnic-institute/2135860-rpi-summer-arch-program-run-away-p4.html
@barca2018 yeah I agree about the Arch program. That is one of the things that put RPI further down the list of my S19’s acceptances when making his final decision. It may have gotten more consideration if he hadn’t been accepted to schools higher on his list. That is why I called it a true safety.
@racereer Hopefully they can sort out the Arch issues in the next few years.
After weeks of negotiation, it seems that DS20’s list for Computer Engineering major will look like:
Super Reach: MIT, Harvard
Reach: CMU, Harvey Mudd, USC, Georgia Tech , Michigan, UCB, UCLA, UCSD
Target: UIUC, UCSB, UC Davis, CaseWestern, Cal Poly SLO
Safety: UCI, UC Riverside, Colorado School of Mines, University of Utah (Full ride), UT Dallas (Full ride for NMF)
Does this list seem reasonable?
UCI is not a safety, it should be a Target. UCI’s acceptance rate for 2019 was lower than UCSB, UCSD and UCD.
Admission Rates for California Applicants:
UCLA: 11.8%
UC Berkeley: 19.2%
UC Irvine: 21.3%
UC Santa Barbara: 26.9%
UC San Diego: 27.6%
UC Davis: 35.5%
UC Santa Cruz: 42.5%
UC Riverside: 55.8%
CMU SCS is also a High reach, as it has about 5% acceptance.
If he is applying to CMU, Mich, then add Cornell too.
@gumbymom you are correct.
@NCKris If I am not mistaken, Electrical and Computer engineering is part of Whiting and not SCS with a higher acceptance rate, but will consider it as a High Reach
About Electrical and Computer Engineering at CMU - it is part of ‘College of Engineering’. The SCS has majors in Computer Science; AI and computational Biology. To add more confusion they have a Math major with computational/applied math concentration in the college of Science with a tie-up with SCS; and Dietrich College has a data science program and another college with Information Systems + Business program.
CMU has a confusing set of majors around CS/CE each in a different ‘college’. For most students, CMU maybe a reach for any college but SCS is even more difficult to get into. But OP has great stats though.
CMU has separate admission process for each college and it is difficult to switch between them, especially to transfer into SCS.
Berkeley may be a High Match, based on his stats.
@NCKris maybe my response was not very clear. He will be applying to the College of Engineering for the ECE major and won’t need to transfer to SCS, which you are correct is impossible.
I wouldn’t be concerned about what is high reach vs reach. Those are lottery tickets. Make sure your son secures his safeties early so that he can then focus on the target schools and play the lottery.
After securing that affordable school that will certainly take him where he can get the computer courses he desires, finding some realistic targets is important. This is the most difficult part of college search, even more so in a selective major like his is. I look at Target schools as ones where you statistically have half a chance, or at least 40% given stats and major. That’s tough for computer engineering and like majors.
@barca2018 For NMF, the state of Florida offers the Benacquisto Scholarship. Full rides are available to out of state students in many of the schools, including the flagship UF in Gainesville and Florida State in Tallahassee.
Possible safeties If you prefer the smaller LACs, the choices include two 100% honors colleges, New College of Florida in Sarasota and FAU/Wilkes HC in Jupiter.
These things always end up as “my favorite school is NOT A SAFETY!, my school is a “reach” for everyone even though its the University of Phoenix.” Its like an insult to someone school if its not “classified” as something better then it is, your list is good.