Ask HN: College Advice
tl;dr: incoming cs freshmen at uiuc. Is it worth transferring, what are my chances, I think I might have been able to fair better.

I'm an incoming cs freshmen at UIUC. UIUC was a bit of a safety for me (though in hindsight maybe it should've been a safety/target). My feelings about going there are really sort of mixed, for various reasons, and I'm, very idly at this point, considering possibly transferring to a different school.

1. Should I even bother? I'm very serious and passionate about going into CS - from what little I've seen of the school so far I'm fond of its overall student community and the CS community - the very fact that there is a noticeable CS community is something that's important to me, and part of why I picked UIUC over my other main option, NYU. Anyway, my point is that there are few schools that beat UIUC in CS anyway. In my mind, the places that are better than it for undergrad cs are MIT, Stanford, probably CMU, and possibly Berkeley - I think UIUC is better or at least on par with any other CS department, and none of the ones close to UIUC have other qualities (eg, being a better overall school) that would make me want to transfer there. So, given that those are my choices, should I bother transferring? I hear MIT and Stanford have very very low transfer accept rates. CMU and Berkeley seemed a bit more promising, but the figure I saw for CMU was overall, not for SCS, and I think I heard somewhere that Berkeley only accepts junior transfers. Are any of those departments better by enough to make it worth disrupting my time at UIUC and readjusting to a new place?

I have anecdotal bias against this: my dad had been rejected from Wharton as a high school senior and went to NYU. He was pretty happy there, had pretty good grades, liked the people, but he still wanted to try for Wharton and got in as a transfer. He then hated it at Wharton - it took him 5 years to graduate, his grades were pretty bad, and he couldn't get any jobs. He says he would've been much better off going to NYU, which was at the time pretty far behind Wharton for economics and business, what he was interested in. So I don't want this to happen to me - I don't want to leave somewhere I may be perfectly happy at and doing well in for a "better" school where I'll end up doing worse for unforeseen reasons.

2. What are my chances, at any of the places I mentioned (MIT, Stanford, CMU, Berkeley)? My junior GPA was a 3.933 - it's probably going to drop a bit from my senior year grades, but hopefully not too much. SAT was a 2270 (super score from 2 tests - 690r, 780m, 800w). If I begin to seriously consider transferring I'd probably retake them and actually study this time. SAT II math2c was an 800, chem was a 680 (I'll probably retake, and study this time). My ECs were okay, not terrific, hopefully I'll have some research or an internship at UIUC to talk about.

As far as how I faired this year: my two main choices were MIT and CMU - I got rejected at MIT and waitlisted at CMU (I know some people from this year and last who were about as or possibly less qualified than me who got in to SCS at CMU, but they had applied ED - I applied regular decision). I also applied to Princeton, Columbia, and Cornell kind of randomly (ie, without having shown any kind of interest in them) - got rejected from them. Like I mentioned, I also got in to NYU, and also to Rutgers. I had also applied to UMich and got wait listed, though I'd say that was probably because I applied right on the deadline and also had shown no interest - a friend of mine who did get into UMich (and had applied earlier) got flat out rejected from CMU (while I got wait-listed). I hadn't applied to Berkeley or Stanford. I doubt I would've gotten into Stanford, and relatively optimistic about Berkeley, based on how other people from my school faired.

Friends of mine were sort of surprised that I didn't get in to MIT and CMU. A friend of mine who did get into MIT had once told me: "You're definitely getting into CMU. I'm willing to bet that you will get into every school you applied, with the possible exception of Princeton." Me: "And MIT?" him: "No - you'll get in. I am 100% sure". He seemed pretty convinced at times that I was going to keep him out of MIT - ended up working out for him, though. A teacher of ours said to me (in private): "[MIT] took [him] and not you? Well, maybe they only wanted to take one person from our school" (which wasn't the case, but anyway). Another friend (the one who got in to CMU), also told me (after I had heard from my schools) that he had been sure I'd get into MIT. I'm mentioning this stuff just to explain why it's sort of in my head that I might want to try to transfer.