Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Kid got a 1600 SAT Score and is looking for CS Major. Are there any good colleges which his score would give him an edge on. ECs average.

Share more info.. unweighted/weighted GPA; Rigor of courses, Number of APs, ECs. Top CS schools are all targeted by TJ kids so hard to get in. UMD may give enough money to make the cost about the same as UVA. Apply ED to UVA and he may have a good shot of getting in. Folks here can get more specific if you share all the details.

1600 by itself is not a differentiator coming out of TJ.

+100

This is the correct answer.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The advantage was there but not so much now at many competitive schools.

Most competitive schools would really like to see gender parity in cs and engineering. So girls do have an advantage since even today there are still far more boys interested in those two majors.

I have 2 girls. This is not true from my experience in top schools. Actually, being a girl is a disadvantage in Ivy admissions.

Second this. Females who are not URM are far overrepresented so it is a significant disadvantage in almost every major, and our kid’s ivy said for CS specifically odds are “even”: they have 55/45 male to female applicants and 55/45 ratio accepted , so no gender advantage to females in CS anymore. There are just too many who easily clear the bar, and CS is very popular.

CMU likes high stat TJ kids.

Anonymous wrote:GPS is over 4, weighted

But where does that place the kid? With a 1600 score(or anything above 1530 actually), colleges will expect that the applicant has taken the hardest courses and is in the top 10% or so, assuming the goal is T10 unis/T3 CS .

4.2 weighted is average at some virginia schools, just to be crystal clear.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The advantage was there but not so much now at many competitive schools.

Most competitive schools would really like to see gender parity in cs and engineering. So girls do have an advantage since even today there are still far more boys interested in those two majors.

I have 2 girls. This is not true from my experience in top schools. Actually, being a girl is a disadvantage in Ivy admissions.

Maybe for other majors but not CS.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The advantage was there but not so much now at many competitive schools.

Most competitive schools would really like to see gender parity in cs and engineering. So girls do have an advantage since even today there are still far more boys interested in those two majors.

I have 2 girls. This is not true from my experience in top schools. Actually, being a girl is a disadvantage in Ivy admissions.

I’m the PP challenging this notion so agree. I imagine these folks have boys and not girls applying this cycle to CS and engineering with high SATs.

Check the Naviance scattergrams for TJ. but short answer is 1600 won’t help as much as you want.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The advantage was there but not so much now at many competitive schools.

Most competitive schools would really like to see gender parity in cs and engineering. So girls do have an advantage since even today there are still far more boys interested in those two majors.

I have 2 girls. This is not true from my experience in top schools. Actually, being a girl is a disadvantage in Ivy admissions.

Anonymous wrote:Honestly your kid’s biggest problem will probably be that they’re coming from TJ. They need to knock their application questions out of the park.

This. No college will have unlimited opening for students from any HS. So a qualified student will always partly be competing against other students from the same HS for the N admissions slots that a particular college will allocate. Yes, TJ probably has an N greater than say Robinson, but TJ is filled to the brim with qualified students many of whom will have a bunch of quality ECs and other non-test/non-GPA differentiators.

My kid graduated in 2023 from VA. Currently a CS major at UMD. 3.98/4.5 and 1560 SAT. He was WL at NEU and UVA. Perhaps that 40 points puts your kid in a different category but unfortunately, smart kids can still and do get denied admission outside the Top 25.

Anonymous wrote:My CS major got wl at Cornell, rejected from MIT, and Brown. straight As (minus one B 9th grade) Blair Magnet. Sure it helps but it is just luck at top schools.

Attending UMD with merit aid.

Very similar outcomes for my very similar Blair magnet CS kid with uw4.0 GPA. And Blair has <100 stem kids competing for spots, TJ has, what, 400 or so? I agree that the publics seem a bit more stats focused. And agree that the uw GPA is still an important missing piece here.

Honestly your kid’s biggest problem will probably be that they’re coming from TJ. They need to knock their application questions out of the park.

Anonymous wrote:The advantage was there but not so much now at many competitive schools.

Most competitive schools would really like to see gender parity in cs and engineering. So girls do have an advantage since even today there are still far more boys interested in those two majors.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Girl or boy? Girls with high stats will likely do better with CS applications than boys.

This is not true!

For CS (and engineering) that’s absolutely true. They will be at a disadvantage for most other majors.

Agree. CMU especially trying to keep a gender equal class.

The advantage was there but not so much now at many competitive schools.