Public schools’ CS programs don’t take any kids who didn’t say they are gonna study CS in their applications. But I think many private schools are more flexible? Kids can get in first in say their math program and change majors later on I think?
Depends on the school, manch. Some like Stanford accept kids and the kids choose a major later. Others you apply directly to the program.
He applied to schools other than the UCs. 16 schools including safeties. He checked the button for the rest of the UCs to contact him to make an offer. My understanding was that that was essentially an application to all of them with a preference for some of them given the Statewide guarantee. A guarantee which in retrospect may mean nothing.
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Did you guys know it’s normal to apply to 30 schools now? I had no idea. I thought 16 was a lot.
We’re also finding out that Safeties don’t like being used as safeties - wrecks their yield. If you want to get into a safety, you need to commit through Early Decision.
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What’s done is done for us this year, but for those of you with kids in Cupertino or PA schools, you’ve been warned! It’s not the college admissions process the rest of us went through.
Right. I think kids in super competitive schools like CU and PA will be in a disadvantage. But it can’t be some random high schools that don’t have much of an AP program either. Something in the middle maybe.
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I see. So this is for undergraduate, Not graduate. My bad.
I applied to almost 20 back when I went to college in late 2000s. With Common App, it’s easy to apply to many. The essays did suck for those schools requiring extra. Realistically for half of the schools, I had 0 intention of attending.
I didn’t bother applying to UCs or CSUs since I wanted more financial aid and scholarships than these big uni’s can give me. Also I wasn’t a great student like your kid.
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Interesting… I applied in 1989 - I only had four colleges that I planned to apply to. I guess it makes sense that the insane # of applications would have started with the consolidated online applications portals.
I think the way things are heading is to a triple ED process (ie, three Early decision application deadlines) and you get three chances to wow your top three choices and then you’re stuck with regular admissions from which no one will get admitted.
Definitely some schools we were watching added a second ED round last year.
electrical engineering and computer science at UCB.
Undergraduate Demographics
- Percentage of freshman EECS applicants admitted for the 2020-21 academic year: 5.2% (EECS only)
- Percentage of undergraduates who are international students: 18% (EECS & CS)
Seems low
Average Starting Salary
Class of 2017
- Bachelor’s: $108,250
Class of 2018
- Master’s: $110,000 - $119,999
- PhD: $130,000 - $139,999
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What a waste.
I wonder how much of that is difficulty getting required classes vs. inability to finish the program due to difficult classes…
Article from 2 years ago, may be outdated already:
Reddit thread on changing majors. Looks like it’s pretty doable in many private schools.
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Super useful!
If each person applies to 10+ or 30+ schools, then how does that even work? Schools will accept people who end up not going, so spots should open up. If someone gets accepted to 5 schools, they can only attend 1. That means once they pick a school 4 other spots become available.
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The schools have historical data so they roughly know the conversion yield of admitted students to enrolling students.
For some schools with too many students choosing to enroll, sometimes they don’t have enough dorms for you so you must reside in alternative housing or they grant you admissions a semester later.
.
For UC Berkeley since data was easily available.
The number of enrollees seem stable, assuming 2020 and 2021 had some anomalies due to covid.
| 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Admits | 13,975 | 14,549 | 13,301 | 14,277 | 15,390 | 16,295 |
| Enrollees | 6,252 | 6,379 | 6,012 | 6,454 | 6,117 | 6,903 |
| 45% | 44% | 45% | 45% | 40% | 42% |
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Study hard kids!
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Study medium, play hard - Varsity sports for the win. MIT is recruiting athletes. You’re still going to have to be top 1%, but you don’t need to be top 0.1%. Because MIT doesn’t want nerds anymore.
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I like how a friend put it “Getting rid of the SAT just allows the admissions officers to hide their shenanigans.”
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This has been true for decades. A ‘jock’ with a 130–140 IQ who is an ultra-competitive varsity athlete will on average decimate a ‘nerd’ with 140–150 IQ in terms of career trajectory and lifetime earnings.
Many of my friends who are VCs now were varsity athletes in college. I can’t think of a single one that didn’t at least play a varsity sport in highschool.
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It doesn’t help that the nerds stay in school to get a PHD and then go into Academia…