Thank you both of you for all the help!
She will certainly apply for CMU, RTI , Penn State , Upen, OSU , Rutgers.
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Just one more question to both of you. Should she put test optional for SAT while applying Upen or CMU? Because her score is on the lower end? Please suggest.
Is she hoping to stay close to home, or not necessarily?
Whatâs your budget?
CMU CS is highly, highly competitive. Most students in that program will have extensive coding and âhackathonâ experience in high school. My sense is that pushing through an ED2 application here is not the right use of energy.
Iâd get the Pitt application in ASAP - the sooner she applies, the sooner sheâll hear back; and competitive programs like CS may get tougher to get into if she waits.
It sounds as if she has a strong but mostly-hypothetical interest in CS. (Does she have any coding experience yet?) This is totally fine, and she may stay in the CS major, but IMHO itâs a good idea to emphasize schools with multiple options (such as data science, as you mentioned) so that itâs not an âall or nothingâ situation vis-a-vis staying in CS. It sounds as if most of her ECâs are more social-science oriented (speech & debate, mock trial), and Data Science combines very well with that. In particular, have her look at the SoDA major at Penn State: https://soda.la.psu.edu/programs/undergraduate/major-goals/ This is a distinctive program at PSU, and very well-regarded.
You mentioned Ohio State already; have her take a close look at their Data Analytics major, in comparison with their CS program, before deciding which to apply to. https://data-analytics.osu.edu/ The multiple specializations within the major give students many opportunities to find an area of particular interest, while still building a strong computational skill-set.
Outside of Cleveland, not far from OSU, Denison U is a smaller, highly-regarded school that has a fantastic Data Analytics major in addition to a CS major.
Computer Science | Denison University They have a diverse student body and a great student quality of life - could be a really nice environment for your daughter.
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IMO, test optional has made the average test scores very skewed. I would personally send the score.
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Probably yes, because her scores are not very competitive for these schools.
But again, CMU is very much a âfitâ school. Some students are fine with the intense âgrindâ culture but many end up hating it. I would not recommend applying ED2 if you and your daughter donât know the school enough.
My personal recommendation is to take a gap year instead of rushing through the apps at this late stage. This will give her a chance to raise her test scores as well.
She can use the gap year to explore her CS interests, perhaps through an internship or participating in hackathons or competitions. Not only will these strengthen her app, but itâll help her discover how much she enjoys CS.
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Penn State is indeed good for computer science. If I were in-state, I would be happy to have a child go there to study computer science.
U.Mass Amherst is also quite good.
In high tech, where you attend university is not particularly important. âPrestigeâ is not important (thus all the t-shirts and blue jeans). What you can do is important. Whether your code is relatively bug free is important. However, you can learn good practices at a wide range of universities, and there are a lot of jobs in computer science.
Question, since schools will be closing for winter break will getting transcripts and LORâs in before deadlines be difficult? Even though I had 5 kids apply to college I was not involved at all with applications.
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I second this.
It took my daughter 2 months to apply to 8 schools. And one of those months was August, before school started. Itâs one thing to put in some apps to safeties or applications that donât have additional essays, but the essays for reach schools really need to be very polished.
And as just noted, letters of recommendations need to be requested and written and itâs very, very late in the process for that, if it hasnât already been done.
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I spoke with the career guidance counselor at school. He and 2 more teachers have written the recommendations. My daughter has written her essay. She is working on the supplemental essays now. The transcript is loaded to common yesterday. So the leg work is going on. I though most of the universities are accepting common app, I thought Christmas break is enough. Please point out any other things I am missing, please advice. THANK YOU.
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Glad to hear that your D has already started on the essays and supplements and that the LoRs are already done. That wasnât clear to me from the thread. It sounds like she should be good to submit before the deadlines.
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The common app does save work by requiring you to do the shared elements of the application only once. But each school will have its own supplemental section, as youâve seen, and some are more time-consuming than others. She can do this over the break, but it will be a lot, and youâll want to prioritize. Itâs better to do a great job on a few, well-chosen applications than to rush through a larger number.
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CMU has 3 essays, RPI has 2, UPenn has 3, Penn State, OSU and Rutgers I donât think have supplemental essays unless applying Honors College though not sure about deadlines for honors college anyway. Thatâs 8 essays, some shorter than others.
Deadlines: 1/3 for CMU RD, RPI 1/15, UPenn RD 1/5, Penn State rolling adm after 12/1, OSU 2/1, Rutgers rolling adm based on space avail after 12/1
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Thank you all for the help! Really appreciated.
But check for secondary admission requirements to the CS major.
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While this is often the case at schools right now, the midrange of Carnegie Mellonâs CS scores were close to perfect well before COVID. The middle 50% for math was an 800 five years ago.
She sounds like a strong student, but her chances of being accepted for CS at Carnegie Mellon given what you have described are near zero. Itâs not impossible, but itâs very unlikely with her test scores and ECs.
Carnegie Mellon likes to see scores and hers are significantly below their CS expectations. Although they are technically a test optional school, they have a question on their application where an applicant is asked if they want to explain why they are test optional. Very few students will have a compelling reason, so it seems that you are damned if you do and damned if you donât.
I would NOT apply to CMU ED2. She would be in an incredibly competitive pool, likely being compared to other strong CS students who didnât get into REA/ED schools like Stanford, MIT, and similar.
As someone else said, I would get in RD apps, including an expanded group of safeties. Pitt isnât even a safety at this point. If you look at the Pitt thread from last year, a similar caliber in-state student was not admitted when applying this late. I believe the student was waitlisted. My guess is if your daughter were waitlisted, she would eventually be accepted, so Pitt is a good place to apply, but she needs a couple of sure things that are affordable.
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Knowing that CS is an extremely competitive major and that this student has already missed the EA deadlines, can anyone recommend a list of safeties and/or target schools?
I suggested Rutgers above. Stevens is another great school that I think would be a target in RD.
Drexel and Lehigh might also be worth checking out.
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There are so very many, letâs start with these:
Arizona
ASU
Alabama
U Dayton
U Cincinnati
Drexel
UT Dallas
Iowa State
Michigan State
DePaul
RIT
U Utah
Oregon
Oregon State
George Mason
Some of these are very easy apps, with no supplemental essays. Some are also rolling, so will have a decision by mid Jan.
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She should be adding state schools like Bloomsburg or others that are ABET accredited. She could also consider privates like Scranton, but I donât know enough about them to name the best ones.
She would likely get into Pitt at some point and she would almost certainly get at least a 2+2 offer (2 years at a branch campus) at Penn State, but at this point I would want something more certain than those options given how competitive the CS results were last year.
Iâm biased: highly recommend my alma mater: Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, MA.
- great C/S program
- easy free application, TEST-BLIND (wonât look at SAT/ACT), w/ 1 short Why Us essay
They are trying to raise the female ratio, so love female applicants.
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