Haven't taken many APs... would this affect my chances of getting into an ivy?Answered
I'm currently a junior planning on majoring in computer science, I didn't really take hs that seriously until now, and even this year, I've kind of messed up with my classes. 9th grade i had no aps and didn't know anything about the schools classes because i had just moved there during covid and no teacher or administrator had told me anything
Basically this year, I am in 5 college-level classes and 2 honors level classes; one of the 5 is AP and the other 4 are AICE, which are Cambridge classes available in my state (fl). I am currently going for the AICE diploma, which can offer the Florida Bright Futures Scholarship, which will be a backup if I perform poorly on my upcoming SATs. I do plan to take at least four AP classes next year, and most likely dual enrolling in linear algebra, and possibly other classes too. Currently, my only AP class is AP CSP, as that's the only computer science related class my school offers, and I'm also taking an online coding class so i can get some prior programming knowledge, so I know the basics of three programming languages as of right now. also i'm currently working on applying for cmu's pre college program. Originally, I was planning on taking AP European History as well as CSP, however, I do not think my school offers that class anymore, so now I made the mistake of doing US History Honors online, and not AP US History, which I feel like colleges may look down upon since it is a hard class and will most definetly think I was just trying to take the easy way out
While I know I'm not in nearly as many AP classes as I should be, would I have some chance at getting into some top computer science schools such as CMU or Mit? I think my unweighted GPA is 3.7 and my weighted GPA is a 4.1, but these may be slightly inaccurate because my school only changes these at the end of each school year. Would I only be able to transfer schools, or if I take more rigorous courses next year, would I still have a chance?
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1 answer
Hi @ashlsy
Thanks for your question.
I would highly recommend that you input all your academic and EC data and demographics into the CV Profile and run the chancing engine against all 8 ivys, MIT, CalTech, and CMU, and Stanford, JHU, Duke and see where you currently stand. If you are under 20% for these schools, they are going to be a far reach. If you have a 25%-30% chance in these schools, then you have a very good chance of getting into 1 or more of these.
If you read some of my recent posts about Ivys, I think based on what you wrote about your current academic narrative, GPA and course rigor, etc, I don't think you would be a good fit for any of the 8 Ivy schools. You can of course shoot your shot like 1/2 the people who apply to them but IMO save the money and the time and focus on colleges that are a better fit for your intended major.
As you said in your opening paragraph, you didn't take HS that seriously and... kind of messed up with your classes. And now you, unfortunately, do not have enough runway to safely land the plane at a T20 school. You can of course apply to as many as you like and see what happens so I don't want to rain on your parade.
I would suggest that you look into these colleges that have great CS or CS engineering programs. The schools I mentioned are all excellent and you will be challenged and find a lot of super-intelligent students and professors at all these schools.
-UMD
-UIUC
-VTech
-Purdue
-GTech
-UMich
-UVA
-UCBerkeley
-UWashington
-UCSanDiego
Your chance of acceptance
Your chancing factors
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the only issue is that i don't know how accurate the cv profile thing is, because it doesn't account for AICE classes and aice scores while when I'd look this up on the official Cambridge website, some schools do accept those classes