Hi everyone. First post. My son will be a senior in the fall. He is an aspiring computer science major with somewhat scrambled stats. He has a moderately low GPA roughly 3.33 UW / 3.55W (grading system gives .5 bump for honors, 1.0 bump for AP's) with a vast improvement in grades his junior year. Mixture of honors (more) and non honors classes. Not taking AP's until senior year- 3 scheduled. SAT Results: 1500 single sitting: 780 English / 720 Math. Under represented minority (I want to preserve anonymity here -so will not specify which group.) EC's are a little light. He wanted to do more this year but I counseled him to focus on raising his grades. He will have had 4 years of Band, 2 years of Drama, 2 years of JV Cross Country, 2 years of Programming Club, limited number of community service hours like snow shoveling in the neighborhood and volunteering at a Goodwill warehouse. He recently attended an engineering summer camp in the North East at one of his tech reach schools and loved it there. He prefers a tech school environment and, although he is very sociable, he does not want to attend a "party" type school for reasons specified below.
He had lack luster grades his first two years of high school that are out of line with his SAT scores - mostly B's and B-'s in math and science classes. His low grades his first two years in high school were attributable, in my mind, to both a lack of maturity on his part (not sufficiently studying for tests or turning in all homework) and being impacted by living part time in a shared custody arraignment with a mom with a severe alcohol problem. I am going to refrain from describing the details of that situation here but it was definitely something that impacted his well being and his school work despite my best efforts to intervene.
As his mom's situation worsened at the start of his junior year, my son basically had a great awakening both personally and academically and started to actively minimize the amount of time spent around her. After Christmas break he basically refused to go back to her house because of the chaotic environment and has been living full time with me since then. Since the start of junior year, he has been a different student, a much happier kid and has received A- or higher in all his math and science courses and a mixture of A's and high B in his humanities classes. He is currently ranked in the top third of class in a decent public high school in the North East and moving up but the clock is running out. The most he can realistically raise his raise GPA/ class rank after his senior year 1st semester due to his rocky start would be around 3.4 UW / 3.65 W or the top 25% of his class. At this point, we recognize that his grades are what they are- not disastrous given what they could have been but certainly not as competitive as they should be for some of his top picks.
Reaches (no shortage):
RPI (Visited campus-loved it. Relative attended)
WPI (Visited campus-loved it)
Northeastern (Visited campus-loved it)
Purdue
CWU (Relative attended)
I told my son I thought he had a small but meaningful chance at some of the reach schools if he maintains his upward GPA trend and if someone at one of these schools wants to take a chance on him as bright turn around candidate but that many of the competing applicants at these schools would also have equal or higher test scores coupled with much higher GPA's and class rank and that would present an uphill battle. He is going to try to retake the SAT in the fall to up his math score. He thinks picking up another question or two in the math section is realistic. If his practice test runs go ok he will also take the SAT II in Math II and Physics in the fall to demonstrate more math/science chops.
Matches( Need more):
RIT (Visited campus-loved it)
PITT ???(Not sure if this is party school. Not in state)
Binghamton ??? (Not sure if this party school but the computer science department was described as decent in on-line reviews. Not in state)
Safeties: (Need more)
Umass Lowell (Visited campus - liked it but wished it didn't have split campus. Not in state.)
Our local in state university (I do not wish to identify the state we are from) is off the list for safety schools because of its reputation as party school.
Thoughts???
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