Computer Science Major

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Aside from high grades and SAT scores, what can a student do to stand out when applying to top CS programs?

No idea. My kid had multiple internships, even one paid, a few competition wins and was deferred from Ga Tech and Northeastern and flat out rejected from UIUC. Very high stats and highest course rigor.

Any luck at UMD?

Yes, in Direct admit to CS at UMD from VA.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Aside from high grades and SAT scores, what can a student do to stand out when applying to top CS programs?

Win the Peter Thiel "don't go to college" award and you will be guaranteed admission wherever you want to attend.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Apply to Pitt on August 1st.

My son is like the previous posts and was rejected at UT and UIUC.
Deferred at Madison, Perdue and Ga Tech.
In at Pitt, GMU, Boulder….
Hates VT and would rather do community college than go there.
The Pitt acceptance has kept everyone sane during this process and we all really like the school after visiting and talking with lots of people. Waiting on Rice as well. If (and this is like a unicorn) his Ga Tech deferral turns into an acceptance (and if it does I guarantee it will be for a summer start) he will decide between Ga Tech and Pitt (he really really likes Pitt and I like that they haven’t played games like I feel a lot of these other schools have). CS is INCREDIBLY competitive and the qualifications of the applicants are like reading resumes of 10YR+ professionals.

He likes Pitt, GMU, and Bolder but hates VT?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Coding on their own.
Projects they did.
Languages they already know to code in.

Most CS programs are strictly data schools with strong SAT/ACT/GPA.

Ignore DCUM that your kid needs a ton of extras they do not.

I don't think claiming to know more programming languages will impress anyone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When your kid fails out of CS, have them switch to information technology.

or data science

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Aside from high grades and SAT scores, what can a student do to stand out when applying to top CS programs?

No idea. My kid had multiple internships, even one paid, a few competition wins and was deferred from Ga Tech and Northeastern and flat out rejected from UIUC. Very high stats and highest course rigor.

Any luck at UMD?

DP.. my kid got rejected to both UIUC and GA Tech, accepted to UMD honors for CS.

Deferred at MIT and UMich.

Very high stats.

Very strange college admissions world.

I'd go with UMD over GA Tech and UIUC. Sure, the latter two are highly ranked, but when you look at the specifics of their programs, I find MD to be stronger since it has fewer 1950s-era electrical engineering and physics requirements that aren't all that helpful for CS. Look GA Tech and UIUC are fine programs but as someone who has worked in the industry for 40 years and has advanced degrees, there are only a handful of programs that I like better than MD. About half of those ranked above it to me aren't really worth the bother.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Aside from high grades and SAT scores, what can a student do to stand out when applying to top CS programs?

No idea. My kid had multiple internships, even one paid, a few competition wins and was deferred from Ga Tech and Northeastern and flat out rejected from UIUC. Very high stats and highest course rigor.

Any luck at UMD?

DP.. my kid got rejected to both UIUC and GA Tech, accepted to UMD honors for CS.

Deferred at MIT and UMich.

Very high stats.

Very strange college admissions world.

I'd go with UMD over GA Tech and UIUC. Sure, the latter two are highly ranked, but when you look at the specifics of their programs, I find MD to be stronger since it has fewer 1950s-era electrical engineering and physics requirements that aren't all that helpful for CS. Look GA Tech and UIUC are fine programs but as someone who has worked in the industry for 40 years and has advanced degrees, there are only a handful of programs that I like better than MD. About half of those ranked above it to me aren't really worth the bother.

PP here. Thanks for the feedback.

But, then why is GA Tech and UIUC ranked so much higher than UMD for CS?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Aside from high grades and SAT scores, what can a student do to stand out when applying to top CS programs?

No idea. My kid had multiple internships, even one paid, a few competition wins and was deferred from Ga Tech and Northeastern and flat out rejected from UIUC. Very high stats and highest course rigor.

Any luck at UMD?

DP.. my kid got rejected to both UIUC and GA Tech, accepted to UMD honors for CS.

Deferred at MIT and UMich.

Very high stats.

Very strange college admissions world.

Sorry to hijack this thread, but which honors college is your kid doing?

PP here. University Honors. First choice. Not very interested in cybersecurity, so ACES was second choice.

[Anonymous]

PP - he has never liked VT mainly bc he does not like Blacksburg and it’s relative isolation. He wants to be in or at least near a relatively large city. Boulder hit his radar bc of proximity to Denver and combines a decent program with a beautiful campus and we have roots out west. Was accepted there but after much thought will decline bc it’s not worth the distance and cost. He also does not like the non direct admit to CS at VT. The major is so super
Competitive that he really doesn’t want to risk any school suddenly capping it; applying to college was stressful enough he does not want to apply again to his desired major. He wants to go somewhere where he starts directly as a CS major.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Aside from high grades and SAT scores, what can a student do to stand out when applying to top CS programs?

No idea. My kid had multiple internships, even one paid, a few competition wins and was deferred from Ga Tech and Northeastern and flat out rejected from UIUC. Very high stats and highest course rigor.

Any luck at UMD?

DP.. my kid got rejected to both UIUC and GA Tech, accepted to UMD honors for CS.

Deferred at MIT and UMich.

Very high stats.

Very strange college admissions world.

I'd go with UMD over GA Tech and UIUC. Sure, the latter two are highly ranked, but when you look at the specifics of their programs, I find MD to be stronger since it has fewer 1950s-era electrical engineering and physics requirements that aren't all that helpful for CS. Look GA Tech and UIUC are fine programs but as someone who has worked in the industry for 40 years and has advanced degrees, there are only a handful of programs that I like better than MD. About half of those ranked above it to me aren't really worth the bother.

PP here. Thanks for the feedback.

But, then why is GA Tech and UIUC ranked so much higher than UMD for CS?

Not so much really, by most reckonings UMDCP is ranked around 13th in the US for CS. If you are interested in a specific area like say machine learning, it's around #8 according to csrankings.org. My point is it's not significantly different. I think GA Tech and UIUC are fine but as someone who went through this when I was younger, I'd avoid any school that requires you to study engineering for CS. The most attractive thing about the UMDCP CS program to me is it has a lot of flexibility baked in. So you could study say networking and cybersecurity if that's your thing or avoid that altogether and focus on machine learning and algorithms...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Apply to Pitt on August 1st.

My son is like the previous posts and was rejected at UT and UIUC.
Deferred at Madison, Perdue and Ga Tech.
In at Pitt, GMU, Boulder….
Hates VT and would rather do community college than go there.
The Pitt acceptance has kept everyone sane during this process and we all really like the school after visiting and talking with lots of people. Waiting on Rice as well. If (and this is like a unicorn) his Ga Tech deferral turns into an acceptance (and if it does I guarantee it will be for a summer start) he will decide between Ga Tech and Pitt (he really really likes Pitt and I like that they haven’t played games like I feel a lot of these other schools have). CS is INCREDIBLY competitive and the qualifications of the applicants are like reading resumes of 10YR+ professionals.

He likes Pitt, GMU, and Bolder but hates VT?

NP but my kid also preferred GMU and Pitt to VT (we didn’t visit Boulder). He didn’t like that VT “was in the middle of nowhere.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Aside from high grades and SAT scores, what can a student do to stand out when applying to top CS programs?

No idea. My kid had multiple internships, even one paid, a few competition wins and was deferred from Ga Tech and Northeastern and flat out rejected from UIUC. Very high stats and highest course rigor.

Any luck at UMD?

DP.. my kid got rejected to both UIUC and GA Tech, accepted to UMD honors for CS.

Deferred at MIT and UMich.

Very high stats.

Very strange college admissions world.

I'd go with UMD over GA Tech and UIUC. Sure, the latter two are highly ranked, but when you look at the specifics of their programs, I find MD to be stronger since it has fewer 1950s-era electrical engineering and physics requirements that aren't all that helpful for CS. Look GA Tech and UIUC are fine programs but as someone who has worked in the industry for 40 years and has advanced degrees, there are only a handful of programs that I like better than MD. About half of those ranked above it to me aren't really worth the bother.

Which one please? My kid is a junior this year and interested in CS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Apply to Pitt on August 1st.

My son is like the previous posts and was rejected at UT and UIUC.
Deferred at Madison, Perdue and Ga Tech.
In at Pitt, GMU, Boulder….
Hates VT and would rather do community college than go there.
The Pitt acceptance has kept everyone sane during this process and we all really like the school after visiting and talking with lots of people. Waiting on Rice as well. If (and this is like a unicorn) his Ga Tech deferral turns into an acceptance (and if it does I guarantee it will be for a summer start) he will decide between Ga Tech and Pitt (he really really likes Pitt and I like that they haven’t played games like I feel a lot of these other schools have). CS is INCREDIBLY competitive and the qualifications of the applicants are like reading resumes of 10YR+ professionals.

He likes Pitt, GMU, and Bolder but hates VT?

NP but my kid also preferred GMU and Pitt to VT (we didn’t visit Boulder). He didn’t like that VT “was in the middle of nowhere.”

DP. This is funny as my DC had the exact opposite reaction - he didn’t like the urban setting of Pitt but felt right at home when we drove through the mountains to visit VT. Different strokes!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Coding on their own.
Projects they did.
Languages they already know to code in.

Most CS programs are strictly data schools with strong SAT/ACT/GPA.

Ignore DCUM that your kid needs a ton of extras they do not.

Most of what you wrote would be consider extras since it's done outside of school.

High stats yes, but demonstrated interests in CS is important, too, and that means extras.

"Extras"
Sure just not travel to another country and pretend you are helping. Or John Hopkins gifted programs.

Any kid that is into CS can do a coding project at home and put it on their college app.

My kids got into MIT< CMU, GA Tech, Standford, and many other equally as good schools without any "extras"s strictly high GPA's and high test scores. As I said CS no need to be that OBO player.

And from a public HS. LOL

[Anonymous]

Minnesota for the win. Rolling admissions. You’re welcome.