Well-rounded student - CS Major @ Cornell/CMU/GWU/BU?

Chance Me / Match Me
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<p>Yes, another “am I on the right track?” thread…</p>

<p>I’m in the first semester of my junior year in high school in New Jersey, so naturally I’m starting to think about colleges.</p>

<p>My average weighted GPA right now is a 3.90 with my freshman and sophomore years, but my grades are much higher so far this year and I’m in three AP classes with AP weight (and the rest of the classes are honors classes and have been since freshman year) so I’m expecting the average to increase to 4.0+ at the end of this year. My school doesn’t calculate unweighted GPA but I suppose I could calculate it myself, and they’ve also stopped giving out class rank for some reason.</p>

<p>I haven’t taken the SAT I yet but traditionally I’m not the best test taker. I just took the PSAT this weekend so I’ll find out the score on that in a few weeks, but I felt really good about it (for what it’s worth). I’m also planning to take several SAT IIs in the spring (probably Math I, Physics, and Japanese). I took Bio freshman year and only got a 670 — it clearly wasn’t my best or favorite subject.</p>

<p>I volunteer as the webmaster for my school’s Habitat for Humanity chapter, I go to the district’s elementary schools as a member of the drug prevention program, I do techy stuff for the school yearbook and I’m a member of the technology club and FBLA.</p>

<p>I’m also extremely active outside of school as a web developer, which hopefully adds to my well-roundedness. I’ve created several apps and sold them to companies like Greylock, LiveUniverse, Cramster, and Revision3. The apps have also been mentioned on CNN and G4 and in AdAge and Forbes, so I’ve got some good quotes to put on the application/resume. I’m also being flown out to the west coast in January to keynote a conference hosted at Microsoft.</p>

<p>I’m settled on majoring in computer science and minoring in something like business. My reach school would probably be Cornell since I’ve heard great things about their CS program, but I realize that’s a humongous reach. My more practical choices would be Carnegie Mellon or GWU or BU, with my safety schools being American, Virginia Tech and RIT.</p>

<p>Any thoughts, especially from CS majors?</p>

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<p>Its hard to judge since you’re only a junior and haven’t taken the SATs yet.
I’d try and study hard for those, there are some basic strategies that can be very helpful if you look around online, especially on these forums.
Also, you may want to look into the ACTs as well if you’re not a great test taker, since it is a somewhat different format and some people do better on them. </p>

<p>Overall keep up the good work, keep up that GPA, and you’ll have a great chance at a lot of the schools that you’re looking at!</p>

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<p>Your extra curriculars are outstanding. Apply to CMU School of Computer Science, Stanford, USC and UCLA (if you want to be on the West coast). You need to visit these schools. Why BU and GWU? U. of Illinois Champagne Urbana is also great for CS but not the best location. Cornell is also worth applying to. What about your state school as a safety school?</p>

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<p>Thanks so much for the replies! This was more reassuring than I thought it would be. ;-)</p>

<p>@shonie: Yeah, I thought it would be a little premature. I’m signed up for a Kaplan prep class in the winter so hopefully that’ll help with the SAT. I don’t think the ACTs are very popular over here so thanks for mentioning them, they definitely look like a great alternative that I’ll look into taking soon.</p>

<p>@mdcissp: Stanford would be fantastic but that seems like a huge reach… maybe Early Decision? I’ll definitely look into putting USC and UCLA on the list. GWU and BU would be purely based on location since I love both cities.</p>

<p>I’m also looking to apply to the summer pre-college programs at Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, and Harvard since they all have some advanced computer science courses in their course selection list.</p>