Chance Me for MIT CS

Colleges and Universities A-Z Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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Demographic : Asian
Major : Computer Science
Education: Competitive Public HS in Houston, Texas
Class Rank: 7th out of 810 (Top 1%)
GPA: 4.75/5 (W) and 3.97/4(UW)
SAT: 1570 (800M, 770R) Essay: 19
ACT: Did not take
SAT II: Math 2 (800) Bio (800) English (760)
Classwork: All AP/PreAP Courses throughout High School
AP Exams:
AP Computer Science Principles (5)
AP Computer Science A(5)
AP Statistics (5)
AP Spanish Language(5),
AP Human Geography (5).
AP Physics (5)
AP US History (4)
AP Language and Composition (4)

NO HOOKS

Senior Coursework: AP Calc BC, AP Physics 2, AP Bio, AP Env. Science, AP Lit, AP Art History, AP MicroEcon, AP MacroEcon, AP Gov.

Extracurriculars:
FIRST Robotics Team (REDACTED) : Team Strategist (9-12)
Worked on programming autonomous and tele-operated robots in NI LabVIEW; developed subsystem coordination using motion profiling and vision tracking.

Computer Science Team : Vice President (9-12)
Competed in various local/national circuit competitions, grew school’s computer science program; started peer tutoring system for all CS courses.

Sewa Houston: Student STEM Mentor, Volunteer (9-12)
Mentored students of less fortunate communities in the Greater Houston Area through various STEM classes and activities.

Technology Student Association: Vice President (11-12)
Competed nationally in computer-science related events, attended conferences on future of STEM Education and networked with IT professionals.

Mu Alpha Theta / Math UIL Team : Vice President (10-12)
Represented school in Texas UIL competitions(2x District Finalists, 1x State Qual.); organized school-wide peer tutoring for all math courses.

UT Austin Center For Space Research SEES Internship (11 Summer)
Worked on natural disaster response projects and research by analyzing geospatial information technologies and image analysis of NASA and ESA datasets

Humanitarian OpenStreetMap : Community Mapper (11-12)
International team dedicated to resolving global crises through open mapping; added new geographic information in areas affected by natural disasters.

Grow with Google Developers Scholarship Program (10)
Learned key skills in creating mobile/web applications in Android Studio; developed several interactive multi-screen apps for teaching basic math.

Neural Networking Analysis Research (11, 12)
Worked under mentorship of Rice Professor (REDACTED) in analyzing communications between neural networks; wrote paper on complexity of these networks.

HP Software Development Internship (11 Summer)
Worked on designing and modifying software enhancements; developed new infrastructure for testing newer applications and data structures.

Honors
Google Code Jam Round 2 Qualifier (Top 5% of all competitors globally) International (11)
USA Computing Olympiad Gold Medalist - National (11)
TSA National Conference Coding Gold Medalist National (11)
National AP Scholar Award - National (11)
Presidential Service Award Gold (200+ Hours) - National (9)
HP CodeWars Advanced Division Finalist - State/Regional (11)
Lamar University ACM High School Contest Winner / First-Year Keys Success Award Recipient - State/Regional (11)

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I think you have a very good chance. Your application is very well centered around computer science, and you have a some really great accomplishments. However, I’m sure there are several great applicants for computer science, similar to or even than you (IOI participants, USACO platinum, etc), so I can’t be 100% sure. Good luck!!!

Also, can you let me know what you did to study for USACO? I’m almost at gold without studying, and I’m wondering what to do to improve (any books, websites, and stuff will be highly appreciated). I’m hoping to reach gold or possibly platinum by the end of 11th grade.

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@ktong777 Thank you for your kind response. Honestly, I did not prepare with any books or websites to reach gold. I I got to sliver in one attempt and it took me 3 attempts to finally get to the gold level. I have friends in gold as well who say they primarily use the USACO online practice. Good luck!

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I got to silver and then gold in one contest (in-contest promotions) and am now stuck in gold for the past 8 contests rip. I’m not really sure how the silver problems are right now but I guess just make sure you know BFS/DFS, data structures (heaps, stacks, queues, etc.), prefix sums, floodfill, etc. USACO training also helped me a bit.

If anyone has any tips for making platinum, that would be much appreciated haha. I’m so close to the cutoff every time but never make it.

Good luck y’all

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Wow do you ever sleep? Maybe you are a twin and each of you did half? How is this even possible. Good luck. You seem amazingly strong.

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MIT does not admit by major. Thus your chances for CS at MIT are just your chances of being accepted at MIT.

Your stats are great. This is probably true of 80% of the applicants at MIT. Being ORM will probably hurt you. I would guess that there are probably slightly fewer applicants (relative to the population) from Texas compared to states closer to Massachusetts. Being 7th in your high school is a bit low for MIT, and a bit surprising given how strong your stats are. Having three 800’s on various SATs is very good.

MIT has an acceptance rate of about 8%. Your chances are probably not all that far off from 8%.

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@DadTwoGirls Thank you for your insight. My high school is VERY competitive with a size of 810. I spent ALOT of time on ECs, competitions, and programs so I didn’t really give as much attention to my grades. Does MIT care alot about class rank?

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@DadTwoGirls This might be a dumb question, but what does ORM mean?

@abhonsley00 Oh nice! I didn’t get a chance to do silver this past contest since I started 2 days late (I forgot about it until then) and had to study for finals. Maybe it’s not as hard as I think? No one does USACO at my school except my friend and me. We’re both at silver, but he’s been stuck at silver for the last 3 or so contests (and he’s really good with computers too), so I’ve always considered it to be hard. He says there are tons of small details you have to be careful about, and they’re not always obvious, so it’s really hard to debug your code when something goes wrong. He’s been really close to making Gold several times. I have noticed that I’m able to catch on to shortcuts faster than he can, so maybe I could make gold?
I’ll probably study some more this weekend for the next contest next week. The official training website’s pretty good practice. I was just expecting for some more resources like there are in math Olympiads. Maybe this is because I haven’t done too much on the website, but I feel like the problems on the training website are probably not hard enough to adequately prepare us for gold and platinum levels.

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“what does ORM mean”

Over-represented minority.

“Does MIT care a lot about class rank”

@abhonsley00 I am not sure. I got my acceptance before I knew what my class rank was, so probably not. My suspicion is that my acceptance depended a lot on SAT scores. It is one of the few ways to distinguish between many students who are all top in their school in math and who all have great references. Your SATs are relatively similar to mine, except you did much better in English. I am not sure whether your ECs are better than mine, but they look better to me.

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OP, I couldn’t tell if you are a male or female from the post other than your self described ethnicity. that being said, if you are a male, you should really earn your eagle scout award, and if you are a girl, you should really earn your gold award. my D got her gold award her freshmen year in HS and is all the better for it. she also did IB. does your school offer IB? is it too late to do it?