Chance me for EA?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Massachusetts Institute of Technology
1

<p>Got nothing better to do, so why not post a chance thread? :D</p>

<p>SAT I: 1570/2370 superscored (770 M, 800 CR, 800 W, 10 Essay)</p>

<p>ACT: 36 (35 E, 36 M, 36 R, 35 S); Perfect 36 Superscore</p>

<p>SAT II: 800 US History, 790 Math II, 770 Bio M, 750 Chemistry</p>

<p>PSAT: 224 (79 CR, 78 M, 67 W) - am NMSF</p>

<p>AMC 12: 93</p>

<p>AP: Sophomore: US History (5), Chemistry (5); Junior: Calculus BC (5/5), Macroeconomics (5), Microeconomics (5), English Language (5), Biology (4), Physics C Mechanics (4)</p>

<p>GPA: 5.08 W, 4.00 UW</p>

<p>Class Rank: 1/377</p>

<p>Extracurriculars: 4 years Varsity Cross Country, 4 years Captain School Quiz Bowl, President - Science National Honor Society, President - Chemistry Club, Played piano for 8 years, Worked to mentor at-risk high school kids (was paid), Research w/local university Professor</p>

<p>Volunteering: Hospital (200 hours in ICU/Oncology), local Science Center (50 hours), tutoring struggling students (50 hours)</p>

<p>Honors: 2013 Siemens Competition Semifinalist, 2014 JSHS National Finalist, 2012 and 2014 Intel ISEF Finalist, 2014 Intel ISEF American Society for Microbiology Special Award, 2012, 2013, 2014 1st Place State Science Fair, Provisional Patent, 1x AIME Qualifier</p>

<p>Major: Chemical Engineering</p>

<p>Indian male from Alabama</p>

<p>Post a link, and I will chance back! Thanks!</p>

2

<p>If MIT doesn’t accept you it is their loss. Your stats are very impressive. I think you will get into most of the colleges you apply to as long as your essays and recommendations are good.</p>

3

<p>Reach. Asian male is near impossible. MIT does have a soft spot for people who do ECs like that but all the same (and your stem isn’t anything that super impressive for MIT although it’s very good). </p>

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<p>@theanaconda‌ You think being an Asian male is such a big disadvantage? I didn’t know it would hurt me that much. :frowning: Won’t being from Alabama equal it out?</p>

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<p>@indianboy2400‌
It is huge. Go to math competitions, 70% of the top performers will be Asian male at least. At science things, I’m guessing about 50%. Yet at MIT they make up 15-17%. That should tell you all you need to know. I forgot about your state being Alabama though, that could help you a lot, especially if you’re the best person from Alabama (idk whether they care about underrepresented states having more than 1 student or not).</p>

6

<p>@indianboy2400:
You may want to read this from MITChris, from the MIT admissions office.</p>

<p><a href=“Reminder: No one, not even me, can give you an accurate chance at MIT! - Massachusetts Institute of Technology - College Confidential Forums”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/massachusetts-institute-technology/939227-reminder-no-one-not-even-me-can-give-you-an-accurate-chance-at-mit-p1.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>From the slice of application data that you listed, you have a strong profile. Do realize you’ll have lots of company. But definitely do apply. </p>

7

<p>What exactly are you hoping to gain from this chance thread? I’m sympathetic to students asking for chances when decided where to apply early when the decision of where to apply to depends on probability of admission but I don’t see how knowing your chances for an already submitted application is beneficial. This answers on this thread are for the most part equally unhelpful with large doses of speculation about the effects of race and gender in MIT admissions.</p>

<p>As to Chris’s contention that no one can give you a “meaningful” chance this appear to either be pure nonsense or involve some usage of “meaningful” that is incomprehensible to me. </p>

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<p>@"UMTYMP student"‌ </p>

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<p>Can you expand on why this doesn’t make sense to you?</p>

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<p>If I understand correctly Chris thinks that because the process is holistic you can’t make accurate chances based on the limited information listed in chance me threads. This is an empirical claim that he provides no support for whatsoever. I think it’s pretty clear that even a model that just used SAT+demographic factors would be able to make substantially better predictions than assuming everyone has the same chance of getting in (you can evaluate this with a number of scoring metrics). I’m pretty confident a machine learning algorithm that had access to more data would do even better. UT Austin apparently uses such an algorithm for a preliminary sort in admissions decisions for their CS PhD program <a href=“https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~austin/papers/waters.iaai13.pdf”>https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~austin/papers/waters.iaai13.pdf&lt;/a&gt;. That algorithm obviously has different inputs than chance me threads using natural language processing instead of student self-evaluations for written pieces and letters of recommendation but I imagine you could get similar results for undergraduate admissions (a very small number likely to be admitted, a moderate number with decent chances, and a large number with close to no chance). Such a model doesn’t offer perfect predictions but I think by reasonable standards it would offer “meaningful” predictions.</p>

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<p>I think that what MITChris was saying, from the perspective of being an MIT Admissions officer and sitting on the admitting committee, is that given an individual set of stats, and usually absent context, the best he can say is “Has a chance for admission” Every admissions officer I have met tells the tale of how every year there are students who they champion, their own individual favorites, who do not get admitted. So from the admissions officers perspective, they can honestly say that even if you are one of my absolutely favorite applicants all year, I do not know with certainty whether you will get in. Therefore, the best that an admissions officer can say is “might get in”, which frankly anyone with the OP’s scores knows before they post here.</p>

<p>Indeed, suppose we were to gain vast quantities of admissions data and were able to run some hypothetical monte carlo simulation with that data, so that for a particular set of scores/activities (ignoring for our model context and match which of course are in the real world critical to the admissions decision) we could say that student (a) has a 72% of getting in, versus student (b) who has a 67% chance of getting in. Does knowing that “fact” help students (a) or (b) in any meaningful way? I do not think it does. And I do not think that there is a meaningful chance as a result.</p>

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<p>I would probably agree that models couldn’t really distinguish your student (a) from student (b). But I think if model is predicting they have like a 2/3 chance of acceptance when the overall acceptance rate is like 8% that prediction already contains a lot of information*. Maybe my impression is wrong but it seems you and Chris believe that there are really only two categories of applicants: those who “might get in” and those who have no chance. I’m not sure how mean meaningful categories a machine learning algorithm could produce but I would guess roughly 6-10. I think even four (admittedly arbitrary) categories: 1% chance, 5% chance, 20% chance, and 60% chance contain a lot more information than “might get in” and no chance. The other question is whether the chance me threads contain enough information to sort applicants into 4+ categories. I admit I cannot prove that they do but I strongly suspect that it the case. Whether or not the actual chances given in these threads are any good is another question entirely.</p>

<p>The other question is whether these predictions are actually helpful. I would generally agree that they provide little value to students although I think they are potentially very helpful to students contemplating applying early decision. I would also disagree that predictions have to be useful to applicants to be meaningful.</p>

<ul>
<li>This post discusses a similar question in the context of election forecasting <a href=“Is it meaningful to talk about a probability of “65.7%” that Obama will win the election? | Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science”>http://andrewgelman.com/2012/10/22/is-it-meaningful-to-talk-about-a-probability-of-65-7-that-obama-will-win-the-election/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
</ul>

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<p>@"UMTYMP student"‌, one reason why chance me threads are almost* useless is that they are a reflection of what the applicant thinks is notable about themselves, whereas we are interested in what is notable to us from applicant + LORs + interviewer, as compared against a vast pool of people and priorities the applicant knows nothing about. </p>

<p>I say almost* because sure, if someone comes in and says “I have all Fs and a 300 on the SAT math,” and they aren’t trolling, I would feel comfortable saying “you are not going to be admitted to MIT because we have no evidence you are prepared to do the work here and indeed strong evidence to the contrary.” But chance threads are never about this. They’re only ever about people sharing the few things they know about themselves, and thus the few things they weight inordinately (because they are known and also mostly mathematized), and these things are almost never enough to tell me, the person who reads MIT applications for a living, anything about whether they are more or less likely to get in except in the broadest of strokes. </p>

<p>Put another way: in ~5 yrs on MITCC, I’ve never seen a chance thread where my own answer was anything other than “idk? maybe. Let me see the rest of the app.” </p>