any chances into MIT?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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<p>I'm no.1 in my class out of 650
my unweighted GPA is 4.0, so all A's throughout high school
gender: female
ethnicity:asian/chinese
i've taken 8 APs during my sophomore and junior year
AP world, AP calc AB/BC, AP chemistry, AP Bio, AP government, AP psych, AP English Comp</p>

<p>I got all 5s for the 4 i took last year and i think all 5s for the 4APs i took this year, results are not in yet until the summer.</p>

<p>SATII score:
800 math
800 chinese
760 biology
I just took chemistry in may, i think i got around 780...</p>

<p>Taking my SAT I in june, my psat was 2250.</p>

<p>ECs/activities</p>

<p>Basketball varsity (JV captain)
Golf Varsity Captain (we won district championship this year)
Vice president for math club and asian club
founder and president of my own club
Piano Advanced examination (Nat'L music federation) Superior rating
member of mu alpha theta, national honor society, science national honor society
Hugh O'brian leadership seminar alumna
volunteer at the engineering lab at the local college</p>

<p>Awards:
Qualified for the national merit semifinalist by cut off score
AP national scholar
National writing council writer competition nominee (haven't got the final result which is in october)
Kodak young leaders award</p>

<p>I'm going to the M&TSI wharton & Penn Engineering summer camp</p>

<p>I think i'm going to have awesome teacher recommendations since both teachers gave me the school department award for the two subjects, calculus and English.</p>

<p>So any chances? my early action is MIT...</p>

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<p>Of course you have a good chance >.></p>

3

<p>neoa1212</p>

<p>are you being sarcastic?</p>

<p>My second choice is Upenn..my first is MIT. But my SAT score needs to go up...my average is a 2300 on practice tests. hope i can reach 2350.</p>

4

<p>Jesus Christ, you make me look like a lazy chump (I actually am, heh heh). </p>

<p>You seem to have all your bases covered. No.1 in school, lots of APs, great test scores (if you get 2300+ as you predict), great ECs, good recs. Just add killer essays and you have the entire package. If you want to add even more, go and get interviewd. Personally, I don't know how you can improve your resume much more, besides maybe making a nuclear bomb in the basement or designing a stealth bomber in the back yard (umm, don't do that, you'll only make me feel worse). But maybe you can join more science/engineering competitions and win those if you really want to.</p>

<p>Oh and high five for Chinese blood! We're so damn cool. :)</p>

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<p>Wow. 2300. Tough luck, eh?</p>

<p>A 2300 is great.</p>

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<p>yes 2300 is more than 700 points above my score and I got in</p>

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<p>Great chances.</p>

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<p>ahhh... River Phoenix, are you saying you averaged lower than 550 on all three sections? Or are you saying your 1600/1600 was lower than 2300/2400?</p>

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<p>i'll probaby get a lot of heat for this but:</p>

<p>you stats show a good chance of getting in but i wouldn't completely bank it. in the past few years, mit has been focusing a lot more on who would be happy at their school. the truth is there are many more students who are qualified to attend mit than they can accept. while you have exceptional stats that you should definitely be proud of, there are many many students across the country who do as well. what is most important is to show what makes you DIFFERENT. when you're applying to a school like mit, having good grades, scores, etc. does not make you different because the majority of students have those grades (which is why they're also applying in the first place). mit has no second thoughts about turning away students with perfect sat's and straight 5's on their APs. </p>

<p>my suggestion: your essay and short answer responses really really matter. period. mit loves unusual and creative students. it helps to show them a spark of your personality and can prove that you are not the average cookie-cutter straight A asian student. it's a way to distinguish yourself from the other straight A asian students who pad their resumes to look good for colleges. try to think like this. if i assume that everyone applyign to mit has just as good grades, scores, and activities as me, why would mit want me? why will i be a better fit for mit than another student? what is mit looking for and how do i fit that?</p>

<p>on a side note: things such as "national merit semi-finalist" depends a great deal on what state you live in. cutoff scores are different for different states. therefore unless you live in a fairly competitive state (california, many new england states such as new york, massachusetts, etc.) being a semi-finalist has little weight behind it. </p>

<p>same thing goes for national honor societies. since there is no set nationwide requirements for students to get into the national honor societies at their schools, national honor society looks nice but has little meaning.</p>

<p>an 800 on the chinese sat ii also has little meaning. too many students who lived in china before and moved to the united states choose to take this test and get 800 scores on it (obviously). therefore the percentile for an 800 on this test is incredibly low, and especially since you yourself are asian, it is likely to mean little more than it was just another test you could take to get a good score to put on your resume.</p>

<p>sports are not as typical for asian students applyign to mit, especially golf, so those are good things that make you stand out. </p>

<p>anyway, good luck with applying. whether you get into mit or not, i'm sure you will end up in a great school. keep in mind that mit is the most difficult school to get into in the country based on admittances, so again, best of luck</p>

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<p>i whole heartedly agree with techie620.</p>

<p>"your essay and short answer responses really really matter. period. mit loves unusual and creative students. it helps to show them a spark of your personality and can prove that you are not the average cookie-cutter straight A asian student."</p>

<p>definitely. i don't know how creative my essay was but i wrote on math equations predicting the future... and i got in! that has to mean something...</p>

<p>also, based on the featured discussion "what ecs top schools really want," it'll probably help your chances if your ecs are more focused.</p>

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<p>
[quote]

i'll probaby get a lot of heat for this but:

[/quote]

I don't think anything you said was controversial. Most people in MIT's applicant pool have high scores and good grades -- that's why they applied to MIT, after all.</p>

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<p>thanks for the suggestions. There is no heat! better to say everything straightforward than to not say anything at all. We need to all deal with weaknesses. </p>

<p>I know academics don't really mean a big big thing. My friend had perfect SAT, took around 20 APs in high school and got all 5's, was class no.1, but was only accepted to berkeley and had to transfer to cornell.</p>

<p>I'm thinking of writing golf integrating with math/science. I'll do my best to make the essay as creative as possible. starting my essay this summer.</p>

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<p>It doesn't matter where you go to college; it's what you make of the college.</p>

<p>You spend all this time and energy getting into college, but you won't make more money, enjoy more success or anything even if you get into MIT, Stanford whatever. There's a thread WHAT ARE THE LIFETIME ADVANTAGES OF ATTENDING TOP COLLEGES? on the CC home page.</p>

<p>In 74 pages of posts, graduates of the top colleges mostly agree that there were no real benefits from attending the top colleges; many said that they experienced disadvantages in the real world such as difficulty findnig jobs, holding on to jobs, etc. because of their prestigious diplomas.</p>

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<p>I don't think it's about making money, I think it's about finding a school which will make you the most happy. For many people, that school is MIT.</p>

<p>I don't think I've ever heard of an MIT diploma being a handicap when applying for jobs; if anything, MIT graduates are offered jobs which wouldn't even be offered to graduates of other schools (search sakky's posts for information about investment banking jobs, for example). I found my MIT diplomas to be extremely valuable when I was applying for graduate school this year.</p>

<p>The bottom line is that people who don't go to elite schools tend to say that there are no benefits to attending elite schools, and people who did go to elite schools say that there are benefits. Make what you want of that.</p>

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<p>viewpoint -- what? difficulties finding jobs? you should come to the MIT or Caltech career fair and see employers falling over themselves to give jobs to graduates... or maybe look at the founder of Intel or countless top-level managers at top-10 firms who graduated from top schools.</p>

<p>maybe if you peddle nonsense you should go somewhere where people will buy it.</p>

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<p>I have heard of companies that consider MIT engineers "too theoretical" and have issues transferring their knowledge to a practical setting. While for the most part this doesn't seem to be an issue, it isn't unheard of to see an MIT diploma as a handicap.</p>

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<p>sounds distinctly like complete bs. I have never heard of a theoretician unable to adjust to work in a practical field. sure, maybe initial confusion, but there's a reason one is much more difficult than the other.</p>

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<p>There's a reason the school motto is mens et manus. Practical education is very much a part of the curriculum.</p>

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<p>There is such a thing as an employer that will hire a community college grad over an MIT grad because they are looking for somebody who took a class in some very specific obscure computer program, for instance, like an accountancy program, or they will insist for 6 months experience in some other rather technical thing.
You don't want to work for these people, what they don't understand is that the MIT person could learn the program, or programming language, or skillset, in a day. The really top notch places to work, ie the places that ONLY recruit at MIT, Harvard, etc... understand this.
Certainly, MIT is no trade school..</p>

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<p>please, can you all start a new thread to talk about the benefits elite colleges vs regular colleges?
One thing that's true...MIT is unbeatable! That's why I'm applying there</p>

<p>Thanks guys.</p>