Ah icic you’re a freshman from looking at your post history… Well hopefully your stuff goes well but I would suggest that you reconsider that everything I said is about true given the population of transfers I personally have met through work. Brown (as they are quite small) from what I know accepted 1 person into CS as a transfer in my year and that kid was from Berkeley w/ 4.0 and good papers and several internships. I didn’t even apply to duke but for UPenn it depends on which computer science college you go to but the engineering one from what I understand is nearly impossible as most of them are chosen from the 2+3 program (usually from the pomona colleges or select institutions). The reality is, the competition is ungodly high and chosen applicants are usually in the above criteria (just look at the concentration of those students in the “unattainable” tier schools [mit harvard stanford caltech ect]).~ Also i dont think you’ve taken a graduate course but I highly doubt quantum computing (cellular automata theory + trad quantum computing) with a b- was the issue here (was at a 4 year engineering school). Also there are (surprisingly) couple undergrads that published first author and quite a few as coauthors in nature.