TX Male for CS/Data Science, top 19%, 1560 SAT [3.65 GPA]

Demographics

  • US citizen
  • State/Location of residency: Texas
  • Type of high school (or current college for transfers): Competitive public high school

Cost Constraints / Budget
No constraints

Intended Major(s)

Computer Science/Data Science

GPA, Rank, and Test Scores

  • Unweighted HS GPA: 3.65
  • Weighted HS GPA: 4.28
  • Class Rank: top 19% out of around 800
  • SAT Score: 1560 (1590 superscore)

List your HS coursework

Virtually all advanced courses including AP Physics 1, AP Lang, APUSH, AP Physics 2, CSA, AP Chem, Calc BC, AP Macro, AP Micro, AP World History

5s on 17 AP Exams, 4s on 2 exams

Awards

  • National Merit Scholarship Semifinalist

  • USACO Gold

  • Math contest placement

  • Professional technology certifications in Java, Python, and Azure

Extracurriculars

  • AWS internship - worked with AWS professionals designing serverless applications, built machine learning models

  • Data science company internship - built AI models for company use

  • UI/UX & full-stack development internship at cosmetics company

  • Built and deployed financial web application that teaches financial literacy and allows portfolio management

  • Built and deployed disaster relief iOS app

  • published research on tariffs and blockchains in JSR

  • president of 2 STEM related clubs

  • Tang Soo Do Black Belt

  • Kumon Lead Instructor

  • ~100 hours volunteering at organizations

Essays/LORs/Other

  • Essays 7-8/10
  • LOR
    • STEM teacher: 7/10
    • CTO at data science company I interned at: 8/10
    • Owner of the cosmetics company I interned at: 7/10

Schools

If a scholarship is necessary for affordability, indicate that you are aiming for a scholarship and use the scholarship chance to estimate it into the appropriate group below; also, for colleges that admit by major or division, consider that in chance estimate.

  • Safety:
    • A&M
  • Target:
    • UT Austin
    • University of Washington
    • Purdue
    • UC San Diego
  • Reach
    • Georgia Tech
    • UNC
    • Rice
    • UC Berkeley
    • UIUC
    • Columbia

Applying early action to virtually all schools. I want to inquire specifically abt my chances for UT Austin being outside top 5%.

I’m no UT expert, but from what I’ve seen admission to CS will not be easy.

Also: U Washington is the reachiest school on your list for CS. More so than the ones you’ve listed under “reach”

UC San Diego is IMO a low reach, and Purdue a high target at best.

Would you be happy going to Texas A&M if other acceptances didn’t come through?

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I would if I had no other option. I am applying to UT for data science though, not computer science.

Not sure A&M is safe and it has secondary admissions.

Your targets and reaches are reaches with Purdue most likely. U Washington has a 2% OOS acceptance rate.

Your ECs, on paper, seem impressive although narrow - only CS focused.

I don’t know your rigor but with 17 APs I’ll assume strong.

But you go to a public school with a 3.65 and 19% rank nothing wrong with these #s but not for these schools

I’d add Texas Tech or Dallas or Houston etc. or OOS safeties like Oklahoma or Alabama.

Are you open to small or smaller schools?

I think you are way too liberal with your guesses but hope, for your sake, I’m wrong.

Ps - if you want to be in CS, don’t apply to DS Go where you can study what you want.

Good luck.

You have a shot. Your scores are on point and, most importantly, you have solid EC for fit to major. At many competitive high schools people outside of auto admit get in to competitive majors. Data science is considered a “moderately competitive” major according to a major UT consultant who publishes his opinions on these kinds of things. Not a guarantee but since your rank is from a competitive in state school I’d say you are in the mix. Good luck.

ETA I just noticed 3.65 GPA. Not sure how I missed that when I first wrote this but your grades are low for this. Still, top 19% from a competitive in state school (that part is key) with top test scores and solid ECs would potentially keep you in the mix for Data Science. Give it a shot.

Why not CS? Can’t you list one as your first choice and another as your second?

All of your targets are reaches for CS (and at least some may still be reaches generally with a top 19% rank and 3.65 GPA).

Texas A&M College Station has secondary admission to CS (process called ETAM). 3.75 college GPA in first year engineering courses means automatic admission, but CS has very few spaces available for those not getting a 3.75 college GPA.

Of course, if you mean some other A&M (i.e. not the one in College Station, or one in another state like Alabama or Florida), then admission may be much less difficult.

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CS is more competitive than data science. I am applying CS for some schools, but data science for others, specifically UT Austin.

But why? Major over school.

If you want to study CS, then apply CS. If UT says no, there’s a million others that will say yes.

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Since Purdue is on your list, you might look at the Purdue Data Digest, here: https://www.purdue.edu/datadigest/; and especially the links to “Applications, Admits, and Matriculations” and “New First-Time Beginner Profile”. You can plug in your stats to some of the interactive links on these sites, and perhaps get an idea where you might fall relative to recently admitted OOS applicants to Purdue.

Computer science may be a hard row to hoe for admission at Purdue.

I think the entire list provided will be hard, including A&M, not to mention secondary admissions if you get in, which I’m not convinced is assured. Possible yes but safety no.

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What about my second question? If the answer to it is “yes”, then I can’t see any downside to listing CS as your first choice and DS as your second choice over listing DS as your first choice.

I know you are asking this directly to OP but I’ll chime in here generally…UT generally does not consider second major choice at all except for auto admits. They put that right on the common app. So if someone who is not auto admit applies for CS first and DS second, DS would never even be considered.

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I see, thank you for explaining. That makes a lot more sense.