<p>Hey everyone. Right now, im enjoying my freshman year at Stanford. I can say with almost complete certainty that I would not be here if it wasn't for CC. Anyway, I figured I would just give my thoughts on admissions for anyone out there who is curious. My top choices when I applied were Stanford, Caltech, and MIT. I was waitlisted at MIT and accepted at Stanford and Caltech. This is pretty much all of the advice geared towards these three schools I would give myself if I could go back to my freshman year. So here goes...</p>
<p>Freshman year-
Freshman year isn't too important as far as your record goes. Some applications don't even look at freshman grades or ECs. However, you should definitely prepare for the next few years ahead. Try to get your big ECs down, whether its playing and instrument, a sport, robotics team, etc. Realize that you will have to do some techy ECs. Make sure your GPA is looking good. You don't really need to be worrying about APs yet and I didn't take any my freshman year.</p>
<p>Sophomore year-
This is when you should have your ECs planned out for the most part. If you are considering tech schools, be sure you've got some science ECs. Make sure you are taking a relatively heavy workload in terms of classes as well. You will also probably be taking the PSAT your sophomore year. Although it doesn't matter, it will give you a decent indication of how you will do on the SAT I, and how much you will have to work to bring your score up if you need to. I brought my score up on the PSAT by nearly 40 points between sophomore and junior year, so don't be discouraged if you do badly.</p>
<p>Junior year-
This is the worst year. You've got to ace your SATs, take as many APs as you think are manageable, and try keep all of your grades at A- or above. For the most part, you should be continuing ECs you picked up freshman/sophomore year. I started FIRST Robotics my junior year though, so don't let an opportunity slide by if it presents itself. This is a good time to go for leadership positions in clubs you're a member of. Look over your resume and try to patch up any last weak points, because there isn't much you can do after junior year.</p>
<p>Summers-
You cant spend your summers just relaxing unfortunately. The best thing you can probably do is an internship or research program over the summer. If you cant get into any of those (i didnt), programs such as SSP or EPGY at stanford will do (but they will cost $$$). Summer is also a good time to volunteer. I volunteered at a local museum here, working at a solar telescope exhibit. Having 100+ hours of community service is something you should probably have on your app.</p>
<p>About ECs-
The best EC you can probably do is some sort of research project that you can enter in westinghouse/ISEF. Although I never did research myself, it seems like a lot of people who do well at these competitions get into their top choices. In addition, im guessing it would make a good essay topic, and you need it to have a good shot at RSI. After that, I would say doing well at one of the olympiads would be the next best thing. The problem about the olympiads is that they are hard as hell though. Even if you spend a ton of time practicing for them, theres the chance you may not do well anyway, and so all that time goes to waste. It also probably wouldn't make as good an essay as an interesting research project. The main techy EC I did was FIRST Robotics. Its pretty much like battlebots except you build the robots to play a game that changes every year as opposed to destroying each other. It takes up a lot of time, but the competitions are fun as hell and you'll learn a lot from it. Although I don't think FIRST robotics looks as good as being an ISEF or IPhO finalist, its definitely worth doing if you can commit. At the bottom are the school clubs, such as Mu Alpha Theta, debate team, or whatever. At my school at least, these were never a huge time commitment. Try to participate in a couple of these and make sure you get some leadership positions in them. Starting your own club looks good too if you can pull it off. I tried starting a comp programing club at my school, but nobody at my school was interested in programming so it never took off unfortunately. I would recommend having one strong EC outside of science, such as sports or music. This will help with MIT and Stanford...caltech probably wont care though. Check the applications of your schools to see how many ECs they let you list and try to commit yourself to about that many.</p>
<p>Awards-
Pick up a few good awards if you can. Winning at some competitive club, such as FIRST Robotics or JETS TEAM+S while having a leadership position in it should look pretty good. Try to at least get a high enough score on the AMC to qualify for AIME. Just so you know, school awards don't count for much so don't stress if you're not getting many. Also, go for national merit on your junior PSAT - check your states cutoff for scores on this. </p>
<p>Learn to program-
Knowing how to program was useful to me in a number of ways. If you apply to summer internships, programming skills are often a big plus. Also, it is easy to program cool stuff that can make a great essay topic. The summer before senior year, I spent a lot of time making an artificial life simulator I read about in a book called AI Application Programming (a very cool book on basic AI programming that I highly recommend). I talked about this program on all my application essays, and my caltech and stanford acceptance letters mentioned it. I personally consider CS as important a science to learn as chem or bio. So take AP CS or teach yourself to program if you can. I took a couple of basic programming classes at school, taught myself C# over junior year, worked as a programmer on my robotics team, and took an online course for AP CS AB senior year.</p>
<p>SATs-
For top schools in general, id recommend shooting for >= 750 on every SAT section and subject test. Anything below 700 is worth a retake. I would say this is the most important thing on your application so don't mess it up. On my first PSAT that I took my sophomore year, I received a 196. My junior year, I brought it up to a 234. I actually took my SAT I the week right before the PSAT and got a 2280 on it. All of my SAT IIs were at the end of junior year and I did well on all of them. My advice is this; study your ass off for the SAT I the summer between sophomore and junior year. I did this by going through a book of practice tests and memorizing 2 pages of vocab from Word Smart by Princeton Review every night. By the way, I am a huge fan of Princeton Review. I bought a Kaplan book once and discovered that it was riddled with errors, so I always stuck with PR after that. Every book has a different author though so Im sure some might be better than others. However, Ive never been disappointed with PR. In addition, I took a PR SAT prep class right after the summer. Most of the tips they gave you can just learn from reading one of the prep books. However, I did find the course useful, had a great teacher, and definitely would have taken it again. The PR prep class also guarantees a 200 point improvement on your SAT score (if you do all of the assigned work, which i did). Also, don't forget that if you buy a PR book of practice tests, get the one with the electronic CD - it lets you take several timed practice tests online, but the main thing is that they will grade your essay for the writing part which is very helpful. Overall, I think I did over 10 SAT practice tests between june and october before taking the test. Personally, I thought it was a good idea to take the SAT I early junior year. That way, if you dont do so well, you have a lot of time to practice more. I was happy with my 2280 though and stuck with it.</p>
<p>As for the SAT IIs, they should be in subjects you are taking APs for. I took Math IIC, physics, chem, and US history. Dont forget that the physics one is more closely related to the physics B AP. If you're doing physics C, make sure you learn the extra material that you'll need. Buy practice books for all of these tests. Again, I recommend taking these at the end of junior year when the material will be fresh in your head from the AP exams.</p>
<p>APs -
Take a lot of them. I took one my sophomore year, four my junior year, and five senior year. In order of importance for top tech schools, id rank the APs you should take in this way:
Calc BC
Physics
English
Chem/CS AB
Bio/foreign language
Everything else</p>
<p>You'll want 4s or 5s on all APs you take. Be sure to go through practice books for each of these tests as well. Im not very familiar with IB programs so I cant comment on that.</p>
<p>The actual applications-
Start looking over the applications for all your schools as soon as they are released. If you are not a senior yet, look at the applications anyway just so you know what your schools are looking for. For example, caltech's app asks for your top 3 science/math/eng related ECs only. It should be clear that being a varsity athlete isn't going to boost your chances much at getting in there.</p>
<p>Most of the application should be fairly straightforward. Just try to give your letters of rec. to your teachers early. The essays are *****es though. I wrote about 10 essays I think before I ended up with two that I liked. I then took those two essays and rewrote them to fit the prompt for all six schools I applied to. I would recommend reading this book before writing your essays too</p>
<p>I cant give any other real advice on writing essays though unfortunately - it's up to the admissions officers whether they like your essay or not. Just get your parents/teachers/friends to read them and give you feedback.</p>
<p>ED/EA/SCEA-
Stanford has SCEA, caltech and MIT have EA. The way I chose between the two was simple - I simply couldn't think of an essay to answer one of stanford's prompts, so I ended up doing caltech/MIT EA. If you're trying to choose between the two with no major preference between the schools, Id say just try to do all of the apps and see which look the best. Also, don't forget that Umich has rolling admission, Rice has this weird intermediate between EA and regular decision, and Berkeley's app is due in november. I do not like the idea of ED, but if you are positively certain one school is your top choice, go for it.</p>
<p>Interviews-
From what I've heard, the important thing about interviews is just showing up and demonstrating an interest in the school. I should note that the only schools I didn't get accepted to were the two I had interviews for (MIT and princeton). My interviews didn't go bad though and I doubt they were the reason why I didn't get in. Caltech and Stanford don't offer interviews so that's not a problem. Again, there's not much advice I can give here besides the obvious stuff such as dress up somewhat nicely, prepare for the obvious questions, etc.</p>
<p>I guess thats all I can think of for now. If any of you have questions, id be happy to answer them.</p>