US Citizen studying abroad applying for UG (Math and/or CS)

Chance Me / Match Me
1

Demographics

  • US domestic - US (domestic)
  • State/Location of residency: *India (studied in Southern CA, initial education) *
  • Type of high school (or current college for transfers): Indian curriculum (ICSE)
  • Other special factors: Nothing special - but elementary and early middle school in US (CA), 6 years of schooling in India including HS

Cost Constraints / Budget

  • Trying to keep this down to < 50K, but prefer lesser since there might be graduate studies along the way

Intended Major(s)
First choice : Math / Applied Math (major) with CS (minor) or CS major with Math (minor)
Second choice : BioMed + stats (or some math combination) (still vague here)

GPA, Rank, and Test Scores
10th - 98%, rank 3/90 in school
11th - 92%, rank top 5%
12th - around 90% (projected)

SAT : 1470, will attempt once more
3 APs - AP CS, AP Calc, AP Chem (all 5, self study, school doesn’t offer)

  • Unweighted HS GPA: *
  • Not sure how to do this overall around 90%
  • Weighted HS GPA: * N/A
  • College GPA: (for transfer applicants) N/A
  • Class Rank: top 5% throughout
  • ACT/SAT Scores: 1470

List your HS coursework
Math (Calculus), Physics, Chem, Bio (till 10th), English, Foriegn language
AP CS, AP Calc BC, AP Chem (all 5, self study, school doesn’t offer)

  • English:
  • Math: (including highest level course(s) completed) Indian curriculum, AP Calc BC (5)
  • Science: (including which ones, such as biology, chemistry, physics) : physics and chem (all 4 years), bio (upto 10th)
  • History and social studies: history, geo, civics (upto 10th)
  • Language other than English: (including highest level completed) : English all 4 years, French, Hindi (upto 10th)
  • Visual or performing arts: None
  • Other academic courses:

Awards
Multiple awards in tennis tournaments, School captain, represented school and state at different tournaments.

Extracurriculars
(Include leadership, summer activities, competitions, volunteering, and work experience)

  • Tech Internship : building AI model pipeline for vehicle/number plate detection for a product, learning about computer vision models and AI concepts. Hoping to publish something simple in the next few months (though might not be ready in time for applications)
  • Part of 5 member team building deep fake image detection for NY Academy Science competition
  • Marketing internship and event management (multiple 250+ people events) (managing ticketing, instagram profile for non-profit)
  • Internship in climate management and sustainability
  • Leading and participating in school team selections

Essays/LORs/Other
(Optionally, guess how strong these are and include any other relevant information or circumstances.)

  • Still working on them at the moment (will rate them as 8 now)
  • LORs from school as well as from internships

Schools
(List of colleges by your initial chance estimate; designate if applying ED/EA/RD; if unsure, leave them unclassified)
Looking at these (all EA)

  • UT Austin
  • UVA
  • UFL (safe?)
  • UTD (safe)
  • ASU (safe)
  • Rice (reach)
  • NorthEastern (reach)
  • RIT (safe/target)
  • UCB (reach)
  • UCSD (reach/target)
  • UWash (reach/target)
  • Purdue (target)
  • UIUC
  • CWRU (not sure yet)
  • UMich Ann Harbor (not sure)
  • Stanford (high reach, just for the heck of it)
  • Cornell (reach)
  • Baylor (target)
  • SMU (target)
  • UW Madison (reach, unsure)

Scholarships
Looking for merit scholarships, will not be eligible for need based because of income and other assets (as per NPCs)

  • Ideally schools close to big urban cities (not necessarily in big cities) - would be easy for travel.
  • Ideally not very small schools unless they bring in something in terms of merit aid)
  • Diversity and research opportunities for grad, good outcomes.
  • Ideally trying to keep costs low (<50K/year) - parents might relocate if required to claim in-state if possible (wild idea)
  • Ideally, weather should not be extreme (hence unsure about UMich and those areas)

Looking for suggestions on

  • Any other schools to consider (hoping to break into 1510s, but will have to live with 1470 I have at the moment :frowning: ).
  • Any other alternate major to consider if UT Austin is my dream school and then wiggle around
  • Any other way to get scholarships
2

Just a heads up that you need to take an arts course to be eligible for the UCs on your list.

The UCs will also be well over $70K/year since it does not appear that you will qualify for California residency despite having previously lived here.

Might be better to drop them from your list.

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Just a heads up that you need to take an arts course to be eligible for the UCs on your list.

thx, didn’t about this, but have seen others (from the same curriculum/background making it,will chk)

4

Over $80k now. It has gone up.

This is confusing. Do you prefer Math or CS?

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5

Several schools on your list do not provide merit aid and will cost well over $90k per year (Stanford and Cornell, for example). And there are others on your list that are well above your budget and do not typically give much merit aid (if at all), including the UCs, UMich, Northeastern, UIUC and even UT Austin.

You’ll need to redo your list, to only include schools that fit your budget - either without merit aid (like Purdue), or include lower tiered schools that will provide you enough merit aid to get the cost under $50k

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Prefer Math with CS - that would be first choice.

7

Prefer math major with cs as the first choice.

8

thx, got it.

any suggestions on schools to look at

9

Purdue (on your list already) is a great school, and will be affordable.

Aside from that if you’re chasing merit money, @fiftyfifty1, @AustenNut and @tsbna44 might be able to provide suggestions.

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University of Kentucky offers the Otis Singletary scholarship. University of Alabama will be a fair bit under $50k with the presidential merit scholarship which you qualify for: https://afford.ua.edu/scholarships/out-of-state-freshman/

If your parents want to relocate for tuition purposes, they may need to live in the state for 12 consecutive months prior to you starting university, as is the case in Texas, and also have evidence of intent to stay such as vehicle registration, paying state taxes, having a state driver’s license, owning or leasing property, employment, etc. so now would be the time to relocate if that’s the plan.

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UCs look at context - if arts was not offered, I can’t imagine them penalizing OP for it. If they were sticklers, no Indians would be able to get in due to the nature of the curriculum restrictions.

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No clue on your chances but your list won’t work. You need to build a list for $50k, not of top schools. I’d scrap nearly all of them.

UF is a keeper.
ASU is a keeper
Purdue is a keeper

We don’t know how your grades will translate but you can apply at full cost to Miss State, Ole Miss. If your grades are calculated high - Alabama, UAH for sure, Miami Ohio (maybe), Stony Brook, Buffalo, Binghamton likely, Delaware maybe, New Mexico, Nevada Reno and Las Vegas, Kansas, Minnesota (maybe)and more. Lots of privates - smaller, less known will get you there, and some like U of Denver close. Butler would etc.

Really there’s lots of schools under $50k.

A lot will depend upon your grade calculation.

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thx, would we able to claim in-state for sophomore year and beyond if we demonstrate that parents are working in the state and/or have property etc.

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It doesn’t matter because none of the UCs will be affordable.

ASU, RIT, and UTD will likely be affordable, and you’ll be admitted.

SMU and Baylor are targets and may or may not get to your price.

Purdue is probably a target, maybe low reach, and is under $50K.

The rest of the list won’t be affordable, so I wouldn’t waste the $ to apply. I second many of the schools on tsbna’s list. You might also consider U Nebraska Lincoln.

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Depends on the state. Don’t be so sure. In some you may be as you are at the beginning all four years. Tons of schools will be under $50k so no need to take risks.

16

Utah has a great math department and you can get residency after the first year (no need for parents to live there, you have to be physically present for 335 days out of 365 days in a 12 month period) which brings the cost down to ~$30K per year (would be $50K or so the first year).

They have a good track record of top math students winning prestigious graduate fellowships:

It’s a decent sized city with good flight connections (non-stop to Paris/London/Amsterdam/Seoul on Delta) and not too cold in winter.

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If it met your budget, Minnesota would seem to be a great fit. In addition to it being a truly excellent research university in a diverse, globally-connected city, a couple other nice things about Minnesota are that their NPC will tell you what merit you qualify for, and also they have rolling admissions so you can apply early and hopefully get good news early.

Then whenever someone mentions Applied Math, I typically think of Stony Brook:

It is a very big, and diverse, focus area for them. My understanding it is at least possible merit would get you on budget there–seems worth considering an application.

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Below are my guesses as to your chances for admission at the schools on your list.

Extremely Likely (80-99+%)

  • Arizona State
  • Rochester Institute of Technology
  • U. of Texas - Dallas

Likely (60-79%)

  • Baylor
  • SMU

Toss-Up (40-59%)

  • UIUC – if going for math…if for CS, this would be low probability
  • UWash – if going for math…if for CS, make that low probability (I think it accepts 2-3% of out-of-state students)
  • UW - Madison

Lower Probability (20-39%)

  • Purdue
  • U. of Florida

Low Probability (less than 20%)

  • Cornell
  • Northeastern (if you want to start at the Boston campus…if you’re okay starting elsewhere, then I would call this a likely admit, though it’s very unlikely to meet budget)
  • Rice
  • Stanford
  • UCB
  • UMich
  • UT – Austin
  • UVA

As others have mentioned, the bulk of the schools I classified as low probability are pretty close to impossible to meet your family’s budget. The ones in buckets higher than that either should fall within budget or have the possibility of doing so (excluding UWash).

Some other schools you may want to consider, some of which have been suggested by others as well, are sorted by my guesses as to your chances for admission:

Extremely Likely (80-99+%)

  • U. of Cincinnati (OH): About 31k undergrads at this school, and Cincinnati has also historically been a Delta hub

  • U. of Houston (TX): About 38k undergrads

  • U. of Minnesota: About 40k undergrads at this Twin Cities school

Likely (60-79%)

  • Illinois Institute of Technology: About 3300 undergrads at this Chicago school

  • Rensselaer Polytechnic (NY): About 6k undergrads at this school outside of Albany

  • Rutgers - New Brunswick: About 37k undergrads at this school not far from major international airports. Not known for tons of merit aid but reportedly gives more to out-of-state students than in-state students.

Toss-Up (40-59%)

  • North Carolina State: About 27k undergrads at this school in Raleigh (one of the corners of the Research Triangle). Leaning likely for math and lower probability for CS.

  • Worcester Polytechnic (MA): About 3800 undergrads at this school less than an hour from the Boston Logan airport

Lower Probability (20-39%)

Low Probability (less than 20%)

  • Georgia Institute of Technology: About 20k undergrads at this Atlanta school
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Will defer to @Gumbymom on that account. There may be exceptions - she will know for sure.

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IMHO this is a very good combination. This is also pretty much exactly what I did, and it worked out well. There are for example quite a few problems that people use computers to solve, but where the problems include a lot of mathematics. Perhaps people actually use math to solve the problems but need computers to do the calculations and to gather and store the data. I also saw a few cases where we were using canned software programs to solve a problem, got results that clearly looked wrong, and I needed to look very closely at what math the software was using to figure out what was going wrong. This can actually be quite a bit of fun (and they pay you).

You might want to take a look at Operations Research and understand what it is. I did my bachelor’s degree in mathematics (with an applied math focus) and my master’s degree in OR. AI and machine learning also combine mathematics with CS.

I will comment on schools with this in mind. Some of the schools on your list are unlikely to fit this budget.

ASU does indeed look safe to me, including both admissions and affordability.

Stanford has no merit aid. They have good need based aid. They also have athletic scholarships (including for tennis). One obvious question is whether your tennis is good enough to get you an athletic scholarship. To me your combination of athletic and academic achievements looks like what Stanford coaches are looking for. It is a reach, but if your tennis is strong enough or if your parents want to stretch to full pay then I would leave it on the list. If your tennis is strong enough then I would contact the coaches.

Cornell has no merit aid, and I do not think that it has any athletic aid. If you do not qualify for need based aid then it will not be affordable.

The universities of California will not fit your budget and will not be close, unless you count as an in-state student.

Northeastern might be as much of a reach for affordability as for admissions. One daughter got admitted with stats that are not quite as good as yours, but it was unaffordable for us (she went elsewhere and did well).

I would leave Purdue on the list, I think that it is a good choice. UW Madison is very good for math. I do not know what it costs for an out of state student.

I am wondering if there are schools in Canada that would meet both your education goals and your budget. For the University of Toronto I think that it would only meet your budget if you qualify for a Lester B Pearson scholarship. This is a very competitive scholarship and even to just apply for it you need to get your high school to nominate you. However, IF you get it (a big if) then this is a great scholarship to a very good university. McGill might be close to your budget one way or another. Some of the less well known schools might be more affordable, and are still very good and likely to meet your budget. Do not forget to take the exchange rate into account when looking at prices. Also, I do not see any grade 9 results in your post, but grade 9 results are something that universities in Canada just will not care about at all (assuming that you passed your classes).

Best wishes.

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