<p>Do all of them matter? Especially 10th grade. What about transfer students?</p>
<p>Yes, all your high school grades matter. Freshman year less than senior year. Upward trends in difficult classes are good.</p>
<p>Transfer students have college years under their belt, which matter more than early high school years. Again, upward trends are good. Getting in transfer is harder than as a freshman, though, simply because there are so few spots.</p>
<p>I used to be an A student and my GPA never dropped below 4.0, however, I got 3.1-3.35 GPA during 11th and 12th grade. My first semester in college was extremely bad but I got over my bad habits and got 3.35 GPA during spring 2013. </p>
<p>I would like to note that 10th grade here was probably the most demanding grade, as it contained over 10 subjects that varied from science classes ( physics, chemistry, biology, geography) and other humanities non-science classes.</p>
<p>Transfer admissions is even more difficult than regular admissions. Even on the website, they say successful candidates have a 3.5+/4.0.</p>
<p>I would say that your chances of getting in with your stats are low.</p>
<p>Yeah I fully understand that but I don’t have a choice. This fall is my last chance at some universities that I originally wanted to apply to.</p>
<p>As a side note, I can increase my GPA to 3.7+ if I got straight As during this year, but still admitted transfer students are as low as 6 students in some top universities. My chances have always been low even if I was a competitive student.</p>
<p>Why do you think you can handle MIT?</p>
<p>I have been in competition and pressure ever since 1st grade and my parents have always been part of that pressure; getting Bs and second place was something that I considered humiliating. I am used to critical thinking and being in pressure, and it happened last semester when I did a whole three team NXT robot project by myself in under a week–the typical useless and careless classmates. </p>
<p>I got over that and my goals are clear now. I want to attend MIT just for research and working under/with renowned scientists. I want to contribute to humanity and science. </p>
<p>I am not sure about the competition and difficulty of studying in MIT, and I am thought of being able to handle studying there, just as you did, PiperXP. I am just as anxious as most new MIT applicants and I took precautions by planning and applying to universities that I can handle. </p>
<p>Anyway, MIT is a reach school for me and my chances are really close to 0%. I originally wanted to apply to it as a freshman but due to a misunderstanding and interference from clueless people, I got enrolled in another university for a prep program to apply later abroad, but it turned out that I am considered a transfer student and I already received credit. </p>
<p>My fault if you thought my responses and topics were redundant, but I felt like asking around.</p>
<p>I don’t think senior grades matter nearly as much as other years. You have applied to schools prior to even 1st semester senior grades being available. Yes, bad things can happen if you tank it your senior year …</p>
<p>It sounds like you have significant time commitments out of class. I would consider dropping them during the year because it has hurt your academic record.</p>
<p>I have to get more credit hours and prerequisites. I am not sure if the administration office will allow me to take more courses this semester— due to a prep program holding me from adding courses, but I do not plan on taking more than 16 credit hours. </p>
<p>My out-of-class activities this semester are research, self-studying, messing with electronics and a project as a part of that research. I asked my adviser if I can make a physics club and she told me that I have to talk to professors. Luckily, I did before and I found out about a professor who teaches university physics and has done research+published some papers.</p>
<p>I will talk to him and suggest making that physics club.</p>
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<p>By whom? How difficult is the college you’re currently at? How bad is “extremely bad” for your freshman fall?</p>
<p>Can you expand on your outside-of-class activities?</p>
<p>*I thought of being able to handle.</p>
<p>I forgot to edit that. </p>
<p>Anyway, I meant that I had in mind that MIT might be really difficult and doubted my ability to handle it. </p>
<p>As for my current college, it is one of the top engineering universities in my country and most students consider it really difficult.</p>
<p>I want to note that most students attend a prep program that contains courses like precalculus, english courses, precalclulus physics…etc. You do not receive credits for the said courses and they do not count toward your GPA. My first fall semester had 3 of these courses and two university courses; ENGR112 ( C++ and matlab) and ENGL111( technical writing). </p>
<p>During my first semester there, I faced some problems adapting to college and other problems with professors. I don’t want to get into details about what happened, but I gave up after few incidents and problems with quizzes and the schedule. I started to study seriously during the spring semester and I did well. </p>
<p>I personally don’t feel that my current university is that hard as people make it.</p>
<p>I mainly read about physics, science and watch documentaries.
I don’t have “static” activities or a certain schedule. I either do that or play video games; the latter seems like a waste of time but it helped me in a lot of areas like pattern recognition and introduced me to programming and design. </p>
<p>My current activities are self-learning and taking notes on research topics. I am currently building a small lab/office to gather new equipment to do projects. I decided to mess around with semi-conductors and vacuum chambers; I thought of making a plasma reactor.</p>
<p>I wanted to develop some apps and program AIs for games and other systems but that is time-consuming and I studying for SAT is my first priority.</p>
<p>I am not that busy right now, but I am studying for SAT and revising some stuff to prepare for calculus and university physics.</p>
<p>Oh by the way, I am thinking of majoring in Electrical Engineering. What kind of research are you doing, PiperXP?</p>
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<p>This sounds like way too much. At some point, doing research is good, but you’re putting the cart before the horse. The point of your classes is to build fundamentals and ideally to change the way you think. If you just cram activities in your schedule and try to wing it in class, that is not going to happen. </p>
<p>The point of research is to master the prior art, what has been done before. Then look for the holes in the literature, things which haven’t been done before. It is much easier to do this if you have mastered the fundamentals, so (1) you know what’s out there and it’s easier to synthesize a global view of the field, and (2) so you are quick enough with simple transformations and skills (for instance, analyzing a circuit) that you actually have time to try to look at things in a global manner. </p>
<p>Doing “research” as a freshman rarely puts you in a better position to be a better researcher 4 years from now.</p>
<p>And purely from an MIT admissions perspective, you are better off getting A’s at a good university than getting a good/decent record with lots of ECs, a physics club, etc.</p>
<p>I will definitely put studies as my first priority and the research will be supervised by an instructor or a professor. </p>
<p>Also, I am taking General Chemistry this semester and precalculus; I already took calculus in high school but things always get complicated here. I only have 8 credits this semester and adding any courses will be difficult because I still have precalc as a part of the prep program. I already studied precalculus and I will not spend that much time studying it; it will be practicing advanced questions only and minor revising. </p>
<p>As for research, I will try to do research related to chemistry. So it will be beneficial for my studies. The other courses that I might add are not really technical and difficult. It is technical writing (ENGL112, I already know research topics to write about and how to cite using APA) and ENGR111( a project based course). I will probably take the latter during spring.</p>
<p>I will not pick something complicated or technically demanding, or I will do part of the projects after I study the subject first. You do have a point about research; I tried to make a plasma reactor but I needed to study more as I found weaknesses and lack of knowledge. So I decided to make projects part by part, for example: messing with plasma first before attempting to observe fusion or learn more about vacuums. </p>
<p>I can also suggest the project to the future physics club and work with more students during free-time. </p>
<p>By the way, I will study hard this semester and try to get As during during spring. That will hopefully raise my GPA to 3.7.</p>
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<p>Working in a chemistry lab will only benefit your performance in lab classes in my opinion. It’s possible it could help certain advanced classes if you end up as a chem major, but it’s debatable. Certainly, it won’t help Gen. Chemistry.</p>
<p>I don’t want to discourage you from “messing around” and trying to solve stuff on your own, but you are better off doing it as a diversion, or something which you are always free to drop. I don’t advise you to have a set schedule for it. </p>
<p>I think it helps to have time to daydream. </p>
<p>And again, remember that in college it is perfectly acceptable to just go to class, at least until the summer before senior year. They would rather have you be a star student, especially in areas that are highly theoretical like EE or physics. I know a lot of MIT undergrads who did that, and had no trouble getting into the grad program of their choosing.</p>
<p>I can research carbon Nanotubes but I am not sure if I can mess around with something on the nano scale. They are formed using chemical vapor deposition and they have their uses in electronics. To mess around with that, I have to revise the basics and get a deep understanding of the subject. That definitely means mastering the subjects in the syllabus and applying that in my research.</p>
<p>Classes are obviously a priority and I have a chemistry lab class every week. I can read and try making a small project in the said subjects - chemistry and physics/EE. I felt like I messed around way too much day dreaming, playing video games and surfing the internet last semester. Now it is time to become a little bit busy and do something practical and productive. </p>
<p>Anyway, I want to point out that at my current level, doing research and experiments is to learn and get experience.</p>