Hello everyone,
I wanted to create this post as a chance me to see how my chances were at the top schools. Here are my stats:
1560 SAT, 770 reading, 790 math
3.813 unweighted GPA, with C+ and two B+ in freshman year, but straight As after.
took 3 APs, got 5 on all, taking 3 more next year.
Took IB Spanish, 1 IB Physics, got a 5 on physics, taking 2 more next year.
Won scholastic art and writing honorable mention and silver key
Created coding company and taught 4 kids for 1.5 years
Started tech startup incorporated in Delaware, building a social media app with large team, looking to raise funding by November
Columbia summer immersion program accepted and attended corporate finance
Martial arts for 10 years
Swimmer for 7 years
coder and stock trader for 5 years
made crypto trading bot, market predictor using neural nets
co-started investment club
White, jewish male who volunteered a bit in jewish center
Build robotic bird from scratch in research, doesn’t fly yet
Chess club
Filled up all time in high school with technical electives, like AI, ML, computer security, etc.
Build multiple websites for various companies
Build multiple apps or various purposes, learned a lot of general cs knowledge, game dev, security, ai, general app and web dev, and much more.
I want to get into MIT really badly, possibly even Harvard, Stanford, and Carnegie Mellon. I anticipate good recs and am applying for computer science and also electrical engineering if they offer it as a double major.
Any help or advice would be largely appreciated, thank you!
The schools you named are insanely competitive for CS so even the most qualified applicants get rejected. I would recommend you ask your school guidance counselor for their opinion as they’ll be the most familiar with what it takes for someone from your school to get in.
I am puzzled by your post. First of all, your title says “first year student”. However, your post does not look like you are a freshman in high school. What is your current situation?
Secondly, your list of ECs does not look possible. There are too many different ECs on it. Do you really do everything on this list?
I would look at yourself through a comparative lens relative to other students at your school. Sounds like an exceptional school so you probably have better access and insight then anyone on CC.
You look like a very strong student with a chance at these schools, but how much of chance is hard to tell. Unhooked students (which it appears you are) have a generally low chance of admission. If your school sends a lot of kids to elite schools, your chances might be greater but you will need to be at the top of your class - is that the case?
So, if the OP wants to be competitive at MIT, Stanford and Harvard they need to be in the top 10% of their class. I’d say that even then MIT and Stanford would be long shots as only 1 or 2 kids a year are admitted to those schools. If this student wants Ivy+ his/her best chance would be at Cornell as they send a lot of kids there every year (compared to 2-4 per year at other Ivys).
Admittedly the OP did himself no favors by stating his county (since edited), but the appropriate action from the adults on this thread would be to flag the original post so a mod can edit and/or to write “Don’t post personal info on a site called College Confidential.” The inappropriate response was to play “Let’s guess the school” and, even worse, “Let’s have an off-topic debate about what school is number 1.”
Several of you have received PMs to edit your posts accordingly. For now the problem posts are hidden.
If you are smart enough to go to the schools you are talking about, you are smart enough to have a pretty good idea roughly where you are in your class.
Our HS doesn’t rank either, but they do have a chart showing the general distribution of gpa’s and how many kids fall into each bucket - typically about 15% will fall into the top group with gpa’s of 4.5+ and another 15% into the 4-4.4 bucket and so on down the line. Most schools provide that type of breakdown so colleges can generally understand where students fall and also to put gpa’s into context (i.e. are there tons of kids getting a 4.0+). You should talk to your guidance counselor about this to find if you can at least get a general sense of how competitive your stats are for the schools that interest you. You can also look at Naviance or SCOIR to see how kids with your stats have done in the past (knowing that those don’t take into account ECs, hooks etc)
I agree your ECs appear padded and random. Pick the ones where you have really contributed something and are most aligned to your major. Still… you should already know your chances are very very slim, as are anyone’s, even the top students. I mean, it could happen, but it probably won’t, so be sure you have some nice matches and safeties lined up. (though it is admittedly hard to have a CS “safety” these days.)