<p>I'm a high school junior right now and beginning to look into colleges. Just trying to get an idea of some reasonable schools.</p>
<p>Background:
- competitive public school on the outskirts of NYC, sends 15-20 kids to ivies/mit/stanford/caltech every year
- white male
- $150k income
- prospective physics, engineering, or economics major</p>
<p>Academics:
- GPA: 4.0 UW as of right now, but will likely be 3.8-3.9 by the end of the year
- Rank: school does not rank or weight gpa, but most likely top 10%
- SAT: haven't/won't take
- ACT: 35 (35 math, 35 english, 34 reading, 34 science, 8 essay)
- Physics SAT II: 790; will also take Math 2, biology, chemistry, and world history
- AP's: us history (4), physics b (5), chemistry, biology, literature, world history; the rest of my classes have been honors
- Senior year course load: ap physics c (mechanics and electricity/magnetism), ap economics (macro and micro), ap computer science, ap calc bc, ap government and politics (comparative and US), analytic geometry</p>
<p>EC's (my weak point):
- Treasurer/writer for newspaper, most likely news editor next year
- Part of church youth group, some sort of volunteering once a month
- Science olympiad
- Tutor junior high kids
- Recently got a part time job at grocery store
- 100 hrs volunteering at local science museum</p>
<p>Schools I'm looking at:
- SUNY Stony Brook
- Purdue University (both parents went there)
- Rutgers New Brunswick
- University of Pittsburgh
- Case Western Reserve
- University of Michigan
- Carnegie Mellon
- Cornell
- U Chicago
- Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering
- Princeton
- MIT</p>
<p>It’s all about the ECs at the very top school. MIT and Olin need significant math/science achievement outside of the classroom. Olympiads, Intel like competitions, research are the norm.</p>
<p>In regards to research, I began an internship at a local university a couple months ago with the goal of doing research and entering the intel science competition. However, I gave it up once I realized that a) my mentor could not care less what I was doing and b) I was going to be needing help on 75% of anything I did, so it really wouldn’t be my own research anyway. Anyone else?</p>
<p>A lot of life won’t be perfect- the perfect mentor, profs, situations. The issue is there are games to be played to get to where you want to be and where you’ll have more control over how you want things done.</p>
<p>Clleges want to see these things. Trust me, most Intel and similar projects are won by kids who needed 75% ( or more) help.</p>
<p>I understand that in life you often have to suck it up and get through some not-so-ideal situations, but I also feel like nothing is worth my time if it doesn’t make me happy or isn’t making me a smarter, better, and/or more productive person. I wasn’t enjoying my experience as an intern and didn’t feel like I was learning. My friends have had similar results. While my EC’s are limited, they make me happy and that’s why I do them. While I would like to go to a school like MIT or Olin, I do not need to go to a school like MIT or Olin. I do spend time outside of class doing math/science activities that would not show up on an application. For example, I’m almost done teaching myself single variable calculus and I’ve made my way through most of Feynman’s lectures on physics. But back to the point of this thread: chances please?</p>
<p>Anyway, I would say that you have a 10.1% chance at MIT and an 8.8% chance at Princeton, as those are their acceptance rates. You have good standardized test scores, but should try to keep your GPA at 4.0 (some schools snub people for not having a perfect record). Good luck</p>