I’m an international who applied EA to MIT for the fall 2016 semester. I’m part of the first ever batch of international students to apply EA to MIT. I’m a Sri Lankan citizen. MIT hasn’t had a Sri Lankan undergraduate student in over 4 years. I’ve been living in India since 2007. I had to move because the civil war made life over there really unsafe.
My SAT score is 2130/2400(97th percentile). The break up is 780/800 in Math(99th percentile), 680/800 in Critical Reading(94th percentile) and 670/800 Writing(93rd percentile). My essay score was 8/12.
My TOEFL iBT score is 116/120. The breakup is 30/30 reading, 30/30 speaking, 28/30 writing and 28/30 listening
My SAT subject test scores were 800/800 in Math level 2(85th percentile). 780/800 in physics(84th percentile) and 750/800 in chemistry(73rd percentile).
My math(SAT Reasoning&Subject test), physics and chemistry are all at or above MIT’s 75th percentile scores for admitted students. I know my CR & W scores aren’t all they could be(25th percentile for MIT), but MIT doesn’t even require the SAT Reasoning test for international students. They accept TOEFL scores instead, and I’m pretty good on that(I know it’s hard to believe, but check out http://mitadmissions.org/apply/freshman/tests.
My scores in my Secondary School Leaving examinations (Conducted by Indian government) were 97/100 in Math. 99/100 in English. 99/100 in Science. 96/100 in French. 90/100 in Social Studies.
My predicted scores for my Higher secondary leaving examinations are 197/200 in Math. 193/200 in Physics. 191/200 in chemistry. 189/200 in computer science. 191/200 in English and 191/200 in French.
A score above 65% in India is considered first class and according to www.foreignstudent.com a score above 65% in and Indian exam is equivalent to US grade A. So basically my GPA is approximately a 4.0 unweighted.
My scores in examinations conducted by school during the 11th grade are pretty low. They were all above 70% so they roughly translate to A’s and will maintain my 4.0 gpa, but they are nowhere close to my results in externally conducted exams like the ones listed above. This dip in scores in 11th grade is pretty usual for all students in India, but it wasn’t because I found the tests hard. The dip was because I was too lazy to study(I thought US universities only looked at SAT scores when making admissions decisions) and MIT will know that. Also I mentioned it in my additional circumstances space. I have absolutely no idea what they’ll make of it.
My EC’s, while average to slightly under for US students, are absolutely phenomenal for one from India. There are absolutely no research or internship opportunities available to school students here and working part-time, even in college, is completely unheard of. I interned at Times of India(journalism company) last year(used influence to get the internship). I’ve been writing articles for their newspaper ever since. Students at my school are divided into 4 houses and I was captain of one of the houses. I’ve participated in and won theater competitions, debates, stand up comedy events and quizzes. Most of these were intra city events between students of many schools.
My recommendations are excellent and my essays were fairly good.
Please let me know what you think. Thank you. If anyone can tell me why I keep getting redirected to the MIT admissions blog when I try to go to decisions.mit.edu, it’ll really help. Thanks again.