UMD admissions - from which grade did your kid prep?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DD: She was identified as gifted at age 3. Lots of great opportunities.

DS: did nothing exceptional to prepare until Grade 9.

Which ones? How was she identified?

[Anonymous]

Getting into one of the better CS schools is increasingly more difficult. The arms race to show off math skills is doing so much harm. If you look at the top 20 CS schools, getting in with a sub 780 math SAT score is a very difficult task. Maryland like a lot of schools has a much more qualified applicant with respect to SAT scores and math grades than other departments.

Some of the schools on this list are really easy to get into for most other programs. But for CS it is brutal.
# Institution Count Faculty
1 ► Carnegie Mellon University closed chart 22.8 197
2 ► Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign closed chart 16.3 126
3 ► Univ. of California - San Diego closed chart 14.6 126
4 ► Georgia Institute of Technology closed chart 12.3 137
5 ► Massachusetts Institute of Technology closed chart 11.8 107
6 ► University of Michigan closed chart 11.3 106
7 ► University of Washington closed chart 11.2 83
8 ► Univ. of California - Berkeley closed chart 11.1 95
9 ► Cornell University closed chart 10.6 94
10 ► University of Maryland - College Park closed chart 10.0 89
11 ► Stanford University closed chart 9.9 62
12 ► Northeastern University closed chart 8.7 96
13 ► Purdue University closed chart 7.5 67
14 ► New York University closed chart 7.3 93
15 ► Princeton University closed chart 6.9 64
15 ► University of Pennsylvania closed chart 6.9 70
17 ► Columbia University closed chart 6.8 53
18 ► Univ. of California - Los Angeles closed chart 6.7 48
18 ► University of Texas at Austin closed chart 6.7 42
20 ► University of Wisconsin - Madison closed chart 6.5 63
21 ► University of Southern California closed chart 6.1 64
22 ► University of Massachusetts Amherst closed chart 5.9 63
23 ► University of Chicago closed chart 5.8 52
24 ► Stony Brook University closed chart 5.5 59
25 ► Univ. of California - Irvine closed chart 5.4 71
26 ► Northwestern University closed chart 5.2 69
27 ► Pennsylvania State University closed chart 4.9 67
27 ► Univ. of California - Riverside closed chart 4.9 54
29 ► Univ. of California - Santa Barbara closed chart 4.8 39
30 ► Duke University closed chart 4.7 46
30 ► Rutgers University closed chart 4.7 55



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[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Calc BC by sophomore year. Multi, linear equations and diff equations by senior year. Also, don't wait for AP Stats but start now at your community college with the goal that you complete the Data Science courses offered.

Take intro to coding at your local community college ASAP, something like Intro to Python, Prgramming Fundamentals, etc.

By senior year, complete the community college's CS sequence. That's why it's important to have Calc BC by sophomore year so that you can take upper level courses like optimisation algorithms, etc.

Get a 1530+ on SAT with 780+ on Math portion.

Do this and you have an okay shot at gaining acceptance.

How does the Math path work from MS to get to Calc BC in sophomore year?

DP.. here's what my kid did:

H Alg 7th
H Geom 8th
H Alg2/Trig 9th
IB Precalc 10th
AP BC Calc 11th
MVC 12th

The AP BC Calc is in Junior year, not Sophomore?

What choice do we have if our MS doesn't offer Honors Algebra?

Which high school are you zoned for? Can you DE math 131, 132, and/or 165 at Montgomery college? That would be faster than the four year highschool math sequence

https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/curriculum/partnerships/dual-enrollment/

https://docs.google.com/document/d/11vdAS0pMlM6njiun7D4-r-KTkVvRzaWrCHdhSRn6Njw/edit?tab=t.0

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10ioH1EHiOHwCyEZsm7caNYS_A5avqM23PWoKTFvW0tk/edit?gid=0#gid=0

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:UMD doesn’t care about ECs. It’s a numbers game. I know this because DD with no real ECs was admitted to a different LEP. CS is crazy hard since they cut the program size. Here’s my take on any school program that is competitive. Do not make decisions based on the belief it will mean admission. Ask yourself if you/your child would regret decisions for course rigor, tutoring and ECs if rejected. Will they regret the sacrifice? There is a greater chance that you check all the boxes and don’t get in than that you do. Do not, I beg you, put the extra pressure on your child. Make sure they want this for themselves. It’s hard to imagine most kids won’t change their area of interest between middle school and college. My finance major at UMD wanted engineering until senior year of HS.

CS isn’t all that rosy these days. CS majors at UMD like many schools are struggling to find internships and jobs. The market has been saturated. And the classes are very difficult even for strong students. So don’t push for CS unless this is what your child has said in their own words they want.

This. I also have a 7th grader who looked at what I do (I'm a programmer) and said "I think I want to do CS, too!" I've been encouraging her to consider related fields. I think she could absolutely handle the work - so EE and ECE are options - I just think the market for straight CS grads isn't great.