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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My DS applied for computer science. He did not get in to any top 50 in early action round, and I got the impression from these type of forums that regular decision was even more competitive. However, one top 40 deferral turned into an acceptance, and he was also accepted regular decision at a top 50. I would not say that I was worried at the time of the early action round, because it may not have been top 50, but he was accepted for an honors program and a respectable computer science department where he could have been happy too.[/quote]

CS is a much harder major to get into than basically any other major.  When people talk about admissions to a given school, the acceptance rates for different majors can be night and day. [/quote]

This. Threads like this one are so misleading, even pointless. People: do some arithmetic. The demand for spots in CS across the country, in state flagships and in top privates, is insane relative to the number of spots available. What is more, top 20 schools do not want a campus full of career-oriented programmers. They want dancers, comparative literature majors, physicists, yes even gender studies majors. My son's close friend has mediocre grades, a 1550 and no ECs. Applied as a music major -- he is not that good, to be honest -- and was admitted to a number of schools (like Vanderbilt) to which he would not have had a chance in hell to be admitted in a more competitive major. Universities want to be universities, not CS coding camps.

Try to understand how a university/college works, and understand the game you are playing. Act accordingly. And no, your high stats kid does not deserve to be at Cornell or Rice. They applied in an ultracompetitive field and lost the spot to someone with a better application. [/quote]
Yep because the country needs more dancers with $300k in loans [/quote]

The world actually does pay some dancers and needs them. It’s mean to them, but it doesn’t need them.

It doesn’t need a lot of bright but soul dead CS drones who have no interest in CS but major in it, anyway, because that’s the only way Mummy and Daddy would pay for college. Those kids are in trouble. [/quote]

There is nowhere near the demand for the number of graduates with soft majors that are churned out every years. Unless the school is HYPSM, all a large english/dance/history department does is ensure employment for history professors and applicants for law schools (because the one thing we need is more lawyers). Meanwhile applicants are clearly telling schools that there is more demand for business, engineering, computer science because students know that they will need to earn a living especially if they graduate with massive debt  [/quote]

yeah, and universities are saying to those applicants that they don't want to be trade schools. I suppose if tech bros ran the world we'd bulldoze Carnegie Hall and the Met and mine bitcoins in their ruins but others have decided, for now, that a society in which humanistic concerns are not subjected entirely to the career aspirations of 18 year old children is the one they want to live in.

the fact of the matter is that universities serve a social function by NOT transforming themselves into trade schools in response to whatever "applicants" say they want. I fully expect them to be destroyed in the next few decades in favor of a philistine's vision of what's useful but in the meantime enroll your kids in dance or fencing because they're not getting in otherwise.[/quote]

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