Seems clear you will not get into MIT.
So you already have CLEP credits? What about AP credits? In your shoes, I would be seriously tempted to test out of as many general eds as possible with CLEP and AP, and start at a public university as a sophomore. (Or a college that accepts those credits.) You’ll be able to take your math classes early on in your college career.
Or study abroad at a university that doesn’t care much about your American academic record.
From their latest available CDS, 97% of admitted students are in the top 10% of their high school class and 100% are in the top 25%. Those other 3% likely have specific characteristic (athletes, for example).
Saying you studied from textbooks and passed sample CLEP tests won’t get you far, to be honest.
I agree…use your credit for public school…if you are an awesome mathemetician you will shine at your State U as well and then can go to graduate school.
Take the GED/ACT/SAT/SAT Subject tests, if possible, to show your college readiness.
“I borrow textbooks on the topics, read them, and do every other problem. I use StackExchange and reddit for proof verification whenever the answer isn’t obviously correct.”
One issue with self-study is that it is hard to know how thoroughly you have gotten all the concepts and all the details. It is also hard for a university to judge how well prepared you are. If you sit in a class and take exams, then they can see some concrete evidence of how strong your abilities are.
“I wanted to go to MIT in part because everyone I knew was calling it a ‘math school’.”
MIT is indeed very good for math. I was a math major there. However, there are also a lot of other universities that are very good for math. The top ones (MIT, Harvard, Stanford, …) tend to accept students who they can know are going to do well. Other still very good schools might be more willing to take a chance on a student who has great potential but who took a somewhat unusual path to get where they are now.
There are a substantial number of non-math requirements to get a bachelor’s degree at MIT.
“Nearly all of my bad grades were freshman year”
Freshman year will matter a lot less than more recent years.
“I hope that college will be better.”
I think that it will be. Even if you go to a “pretty good” university (such as an in-state public university in an average state) there will be professors who know their subjects very well, and there will be a LOT more students like you than there were in high school. If there are subjects that you really like, you can in university visit the professor and get extra work in the subject – I know that this seems like a strange thing to do but it can be and sometimes is done.
If you go to a “top 100” university for undergrad and do very well, this will open up the possibility of going to a “top 10 or maybe even top 3” university for graduate school.
You are not in a bad position, however I will add that you will be able to do well at other strong research schools (r1s). Just talk to profs and grad students! They will give you the peer support that you need. Don’t care about people talking about you being “one-dimensional” (if they mean it in a sort of derogatory/have-no-life kind of way rather than just strongly focused). You don’t need to be too adamant about getting into mit, you will succeed anywhere else.
I would also highly recommend looking into the top UK schools. I know quite a few people who did not have the best grades but were also really into higher mathematics but got accepted to Oxbridge.
Some math majors who have already graduated from US colleges can’t even do the STEP 3 entrance exam papers.
Ha, made me laugh. I know a guy who did STEP and passed, you’re correct its famously difficult.
It seems very unlikely you will get into MIT. You might find college as boring as high school as most/many colleges are not going to allow you to have credit for those classes you have self studied and you must retake them.
We actively tried to slow DS down in math and he was actively involved in math/programming competitions so almost by default he was very accelerated in math. From looking at the courses he will take as part of his math (double) major, he will have to sit through a lot of repeat courses as his uni limits testing out to 9 hours.
Try to learn or do something other than math would be my advice and definitely keep your grades up!!! No excuse to not have As.
I guess we’re going to restart this thread.
A few points to consider. One is that, as others have said, self-reporting how much math you know is less impactful than demonstrating it. Contests are a common way to do this. Avoiding this kind of demonstration will cause people to jump to unfavorable conclusions.
Also, I think you need to consider the very real possibility that you don’t know as much as you think you do. You’re going 3-4 times faster than a math major, without benefit of an instructor. That is a recipe for superficial understanding.
If you want a quiet place to work alone, MIT is a terrible choice. MIT is collaborative at its very core.
Now let’s consider what you are asking. You’ve heard what MIT wants: demonstrated academic success across a broad range of courses. You feel that you should be granted an exception because you’re exceptional (that’s what the word means). OK, two questions - how exceptional are you, and how exceptional do you think you have to be?
Are you among the top 10% of students? Top 1%? Top 10 in the country? Best this year? Best in ten years? Best in a century? Best ever? And how many exceptions do you think MIT will grant in a year? Can’t be 1000, because then it’s not an exception. Same problem with 100. So how many? 10? 5? 1? Now compare those two numbers.
And I’m gonna stop it. The OP has not been online since January, so there was no reason to have resurrected the thread. Closing.