<p>I am an international student, so in my country we don't have clubs or sport linked with the school. Our High School is characterized by 5 years. I am currently in the third year so i want to know if my EC's are good.</p>
<p>First Year
Math Olympics School Selection ( Partecipation).
Rugby Team</p>
<p>Second Year
Computer Science Olympics
School Paper
Class Rapresentative
Waterpolo team</p>
<p>Third Year
Talk: Gnu/linux day : "Libre Planet Italia" (University of Rome: " La Sapienza)
Computer Science Olympics
Physics Olympics
Waterpolo team ( competitive level, every day)
School Paper
I am going to get an english exam, called Trinity.</p>
<p>Every Olympics is a partecipation at the School Selection, ( Partecipants are the best two of each class).
I am also a Free Software activist, i maintain a website, i wrote articles for the School paper (about Computer Science) and i translate some article about Free Software from english to italian for fsf.org , my mother tongue. I would like to do volunteer for Free Software Foundation next summer, i think that i will speak about my Free Software passion in my essay. In italy we have classes composed by 25-30 persons and every year two persons are appointed by the classmate to manage the class. In the second year i was appointed. In this year i have done a little talk at University of Rome about Computer Science.</p>
<p>are these good activities or i could do better?</p>
<p>Your “olympics” don’t help much as they are “Olympiads” (Sorry for being a critical here.), I’d say that they don’t matter much as you don’t show much of your achievements. Of course, it shows your passion, but your Free Software thing helps you much more.</p>
<p>I’m just a fellow applicants. Don’t take me at my words.</p>
<p>I believe it’s more important to show an interest (“passion”) for one or two things over an extended period of time, as opposed to a laundry list of clubs, contests, awards, etc. It doesn’t really matter what it is (dance, computers, music, art, reading, camping, etc.). Schools try to compose a class of complementary kids who know how to relax in a challenging environment. I think you should focus on these things for the rest of your precollegiate time.</p>
<p>So the point is not " what could i do? " to make ma Ec’s stronger, but do wathever you want, yes i agree with you. I know that i am an active Free Software activist, but i am not a programmer yet. However, when i see EC’s of american students, i am shocked, they have clubs, extra-courses and other things. In my country we don’t have ‘math club’ or ‘physics club’, therefore the EC’s of an international student are lower than american students. So i think if could it make the difference?</p>
<p>Personally, I am opposed to the specialization of high school students. If a high school student wants to participate in different types of EC’s and gain a broad base then I think that’s great. Still, it seems like the area which you are most interested in is computer science. Your free software plan for the summer seems fine, especially if you will be doing something technical there (and I assume you will be.)</p>
<p>When you say “olympics”, do you mean you were representing your country in computer science and physics? If so, these are very strong EC’s, even for an international student. If not, how far did you get in these competitions.</p>
<p>You are better off talking to an international student who got into MIT, especially from your own country, to find a typical profile of an admit. I don’t think any of the MIT students or alum that post on here are internationals. As you probably know, MIT limits the number of internationals they take due to federal funding rules, so their pool is significantly more competitive than Americans.</p>
<p>Thanks, i think that it’s impossible to find an italian international student at mit on this forum, this year there are only two italian undergraduate, take a look [MIT</a> | The International Students Office | Statistics 2009 - 2010](<a href=“http://web.mit.edu/iso/stats_09-10/general.shtml]MIT”>http://web.mit.edu/iso/stats_09-10/general.shtml) .
is it possible to find the statistics of how many italian people every year try to get in?</p>
<p>Nope. With such a small sample size, any statistics taken would be misleading and confounded anyway. You simply cannot get good statistics from such a small sample.</p>