<p>Suppose I had awful grades and SATs, but was an IMO gold medalist and had published two papers in Nature (with myself as first author). What would be my chances at Harvard/Yale/Princeton/Stanford/Caltech/MIT?</p>
<p>Just curious.</p>
<p>how awful are your grades and SAT? if your gpa is below 3.0 and SAT below 2000, don't bother to apply sinceyour chances are below 5%. Consider other colleges that you could become a key leader, colleges not like Harvard, but colleges like Michigan, Texas, UNC, George Washington, Tulane.</p>
<p>If he has a (damn good) reason why his SAT and GPA sucks, he might have a chance. Having anything published in nature is a feat, much less having a HSer published under his own name in nature.</p>
<p>No school wants "Creative & Lazy." There was an article in the news recently about MIT and they specifically mentioned this.</p>
<p>Depends how bad your GPA is. Having EITHER a B average (with 2100+ SAT scores) OR a 1950+ SAT score (with As) would get you through.</p>
<p>Why would you worry about admission to Harvard if you are the first author of two papers in Nature? You'd be considered smarter than many of the Harvard professors.</p>
<p>Hm, let's suppose Mr. Hypothetical Person had a 2.5 GPA and 1650 SAT.
But had ten papers published in Nature :P</p>
<p>easily rejected everywhere with that GPA...the low SAT I think would be an easier hurdle to overcome in terms of admissions...GPA would kill though, there's no getting around that. no school wants a brilliant and lazy student (again, I'm referencing that news article where they said creative&lazy is still a no-go)</p>
<p>anyway, there are kids with awe-inspiring extracurriculars and equally strong grades and test scores. and there are kids who are decent all around but not awe-inspiring in any one category. both of these types populate the top schools. those schools simply don't need the type you brought up</p>
<p>Funny that a person like that would get rejected from most undergraduate programs, because a person with two first author publications in Nature with an awful GPA and GRE would be a very good candidate for acceptance into the graduate school of all the above mentioned schools (and I would guess that Yale would be more of a safety school for that person)</p>