<p>good thing their main focus is how you compare to others in your school/community. I go to one of the worst high schools in my state.</p>
<p>not really… i mean how would they know how well those in your community are like? they compare you to the applicant pool and take into consideration what your community is like … they are still comparing you to the applicant pool… they even say it in their interview that the first part of the process is strictly a cold statistical comparison</p>
<p>source: <a href=“http://tech.mit.edu/V119/N13/admissions.13f.html[/url]”>http://tech.mit.edu/V119/N13/admissions.13f.html</a></p>
<p>thanks for the link. I meant more like they look at you in your context, your school, your family, your background. Then they see what you did with what you were given. But I’m not an admissions officer, so I can’t really speak for them :p</p>
<p>BuddyMcAwesome, I wouldn’t jump to conclusions. Life has a way of sneaking disappointments.</p>
<p>Besides, humility is always a valued characteristic.</p>
<p>OMG HECK YES I’M SCARED…ouch sorry for the all caps. MIT was not originally my first choice, but after a while I kinda got obssessed and here I am. I think I can reasonably assume that all of us here are alternating between feeling confident about our chances and then completely sure we’ll be rejected at all of our choices…my main worry for MIT is that although I’m class nerd, salutatorian, ad nauseum, I am not the “typical” (or stereotypical) student for the school. My SAT I math was 650, and my SAT II math 500 <em>winces</em> but on the other hand, my CR was 800. I love math and science, and I want to do neuroscience more than anything, but despite top marks in AP/Honors calc, bio, etc. my focus for most of high school has been on humanities, writing, and music, and I’ve been worrying about that a lot. What attracts me about MIT is the number of POSSIBILITIES there, the learning climate, the hacks 
and irreverence coupled with the desire to explore and study seriously. That’s something I didn’t see as much in most of the other Ivies. I’m trying to prime myself for a likely rejection, so I’m not disappointed if it happens, but all the same I can’t help being really, really nervous and hopeful. Imagine if we all got positive decisions just before Christmas/the holidays? Oh…freaking out again! Good luck to everyone! I hope the admissions people don’t think it’s too weird that I submitted a poetry portfolio…</p>
<p>I’m not sure if we actually will be getting tubed physically this year. It would be awesome, though! In the past, didn’t the tubes have confetti in them? 
That would be something majorly scrapbook-worthy, haha. AArrgh, anxious! I have one kind of funny small impetus for wanting to find out the decision–my school is one of the lower schools academically in the district, and we’re new; for the past two years there have been several MIT students accepted from our RIVAL school (and our UIL Science/Math archenemies). It’s driving me just a little nuts, in a non-serious way. I would love for my other two friends and I to get accepted…we’d be the first in the school’s history.</p>
<p>Shutting up. Overly garrulous. Sorry!</p>
<p>Yeah reading about other CC candidates is, at times, thoroughly depressing. </p>
<p>But I made my application as competitive as I could, and now its not something I can control. </p>
<p>Best of luck to you all!</p>
<p>I really love the fact that MIT looks much more at you as a person as long as you have decent grades. It’s good to know that even though my grades and test scores could be better, I still have a decent shot because I’m interesting and I’m a perfect fit.
I know everyone wants to think rejection so it’s easier, but I can’t help but think about just how amazing it would be to get in.</p>
<p>What makes me worried about acceptances is that I don’t have national awards except for the regular ones for good testing</p>
<p>Does anyone have any international awards??? </p>
<p>I cant think of any…</p>
<p>well as far as cards go, I’d say that I think the cards are in everyone’s favor. that’s the scary part. :(</p>
<p>EDIT: is anyone else scared by the fact that we have ~22 days left? (I’m using Dec. 15 to calculate, but yes, I do know they could come earlier or later.)</p>
<p>@T-bird
I just realized this. It freaked me out. We are more than halfway there, and it was almost painless (besides the panic of adding safety schools to my list and midterms).</p>
<p>@Pretty Much Everyone
This applicant pool is so ridiculously qualified that there is no shame in any negative outcome. I’ve just convinced myself superficially that I’m going to be deferred (my EC basically said so… 
) and hope for acceptance.</p>
<p>I think this is actually going to go pretty quickly with most of us dreading final exams around the notification date. All my finals are before the 15th (mostly on the 14th), so I’ll be dreading those and the time will fly, but I won’t have to take a final the day after I know. Yay!</p>
<p>Wouldn’t it suck royally to have to take a final exam the day after being rejected/deferred? I know I’d bomb that one.</p>
<p>If we all just hold on and worry about finals instead of applications, this will go fine. Hey, whatever outcome, you’ll need the good grades!</p>
<p>My school doesn’t have finals until May, and I will probably be exempt from all of them :)</p>
<p>It really just hit me today that we only have about three weeks left =o</p>
<p>hahahah and wouldn’t it be interesting to take a mid-term the day after you were ACCEPTED! I would just be thinking OMGMITOMGMITOMGMIT the whole time</p>
<p>only 3 (ish) weeks left. That’s a really scary thought, but exciting at the same time :)</p>
<p>wow… where is everyone else applying, i need to consolidate my application lists:</p>
<p>Current list of colleges: MIT, Caltech, Stanford, Princeton, Cooper Union, Fu Foundation (columbia), SUNY Stonybrook, RPI, Carnegie Mellon, Harvard, Yale</p>
<p>MIT, Caltech, Harvard, Princeton, 4 UC’s, Stanford, and maybe Wharton</p>
<p>MIT, Caltech, Princeton, Harvard, Brown, Cornell, Stanford</p>
<p>Cambridge, Cornell, Dartmouth, Edinburgh, Georgetown, Harvard, Manchester, MIT, Princeton, SOAS, Swarthmore, University of Chicago, University of Michigan, Yale, York</p>