Advice to rising senior on elite school apps

Applying to College
21

Unless addressing the OP’s question, let’s move on from the Harvard debate

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All good points brought - I’m hopeful, really was my point, that OP chooses a school based on knowledge of and not name alone was what I was getting at and thanks everyone for your comments. Always learning.

So I hope OP invests in finding that right school where they’d best excel.

And I hope they’d choose based on that.

I’m not sure we can make that choice for them.

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This is not to add to the debate about Harvard, but rather my justification to drop it. The OP said they’re interested in CS or CompE. Harvard doesn’t offer CompE. I’d pick schools with both where it’s relatively easy to switch. CS only, Harvard is fine, as is Yale. Engineering is a different story.

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Congrats on your accomplishments! Make sure you apply early or rolling to your state flagship and if it has a honors college/program do that as well. Agree with above posters that say go with fit on REA or ED (MIT effectively becomes REA relative to other REA schools like HYPS).

How dead set are you on CS/EE? Do you want to be in a STEM focused environment or are you looking to explore? It sounds like @hebegebe’s kid has the best of both worlds. I’d say the same thing for Stanford out of your initial list.

The good thing about Stanford REA is that they reject most and defer very few. If you are in the defer pile, it means your app is very strong and you should have confidence that you will be competitive anywhere else. Harvard historically has deferred most of its REA applicants (78% this past cycle), so you have no clue where your app stands.

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I think that is a plus for Stanford - I wish more highly competitive schools would reject more ED applicants instead of deferring them. Most will end up rejected anyway, and it would be great to let kids move on - especially if they are debating ED2.

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Fantastic. But what do you want to do with your life? You have some great options listed but like some have alluded to, it might be best to align your goals in life to what you seek in college.

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