<p>Country - India
SAT- will take it in May! and subject tests in june</p>
<p>Class 9th - CGPA 9.6 on 10
class 10th- CGPA 10 on 10(95.2%)
class 11th-not yet completed but the average is about 75%</p>
<p>I have always topped my class with 1st rank till 10th in every exam</p>
<p>ECs
Got a gold medal with an international rank of 232 in IOM
Scored 58th Rank in IPM maths olympiad
Got a rank of 223 all over india in NSO level 2
was 26 in a state level exam and received scholarship
Got scholarship in two more Maths olympiad with a good rank
Many more certificates from olympiads and stuff</p>
<p>Also I have started a blog/page for gadget news and stuff like that</p>
<p>Sports- Never took part as i wasnt interested</p>
<p>Very good recs from teachers and principle</p>
<p>Will apply with Fin Aid to need blind universities</p>
<p>i want to Major in Electronics or Computer Science...I want to apply to the following univs</p>
<p>MIT
HARVARD
STANFORD
PRINCETON
UCLA BERKELEY
CALTECH
Carnegie Mellon
and other to be decided</p>
<p>So can I make it to these universities? If Yes, how much should be my minimum score in SAT keeping in mind my ECs!</p>
<p>Well. There is no minimum required score if you’re applying for fin. aid.
So, Anything above 2300 is required unless you have been curing world hunger on Weekends.</p>
<p>As far as I know, the 1st 5 are reaches for everyone and caltech also joins the list if you’re applying for aid.
And Also Berkley and CMU doesn’t give aid to students like Us. :(</p>
<p>Despite the fact that you’re numerous Olympiad medals make you a competitive applicant for any of the top schools. A word of caution for you. Many of the top schools/Ivies look for applicants who are not only best in academics but are also well rounded. Community service and ECs in fields other than Olympiads will only help bolster your application. Write good, mature essays.</p>
<p>Also about the 75% , are you amongst the top few in your class? Then fine, or that is something I would worry about!</p>
<p>It would be good to have a SAT I score of 2100+ and SAT IIs 750+ . </p>
<p>Also, a piece of advise. If you don’t really have any other activities/sports/volunteer work, then I’d suggest that you also apply to NUS & NTU. NUS is ranked in the top 10 Engineering Ugrad schools. NTU in the top 25. Your olympiad medals are of greater worth to NUS/NTU as their admissions process is more academics based!! </p>
<p>Brother, You need to have a very strong app to be considered for Aid. So, a 2300+ is a looooooooooooooooot better than a 2100.
Thats what I meant. :)</p>
<p>I can do a bit of a community service but the thing is that i have a passion for gizmos and gadgets! Whenever i get time i write on my blog/ social network page about latest tech updates! Does this add up to my EC?</p>
<p>I was an old CC member in my time. Now when I revisit these forums, I see people making the same old mistakes again and again. Having personally worked with the admissions team at an Ivy, I can offer a few insights and some advice.</p>
<p>Why are you telling this guy to be well rounded? The OP is a true geek - let him be. He’s perfect just like that. So many people have screwed up their application by putting in extraneous bull like social service and the like when it’s either clearly not true or the person has no passion whatsoever.</p>
<p>About the SAT, your application would be very strong with a 2300+. Colleges do use 2200/2250 as sort a margin after which it doesn’t matter but it makes a difference when comparing two close applicants. Don’t take this lightly. A lot “geeks” like yourself struggle incredibly at the English part of the SAT. Luckily, the SAT can be gamed and with enough hard work a 2200+ is easy regardless of your English Language skill.</p>
<p>On an additional note, I don’t know how “real” your olympiads are. There are tons of fake ones out there and my experience has been that 9 out of 10 people have “come first” in a fake one. </p>
<p>Lastly, aid is a huge factor. I’m sure you know this. It can be a huge deal-breaker.</p>
<p>Either way, keeping all that in mind, here’s my advice:
MIT (with aid - NO) (without aid - NO)
Harvard (with aid - NO) (without aid - NO)
Stanford (with aid - NO) (without aid - 2% chance)
Princeton (with/without aid - 5% chance)
Berkeley - given that they dont accept aid, high chance.
Caltech - slim chance (don’t know about their aid policy)
Carnegie Mellon - given that they dont have aid -
(if you apply SCS - 20% chance, if you apply through normal Engineering - high, above 50% chance)</p>
<p>^ Well, I guess you have the experience. But what I infer from the tons of Decision posts on the various forums is that sometimes - a guy has a 4.0 gpa, 1st in class, wins large no. of academic honors and yet gets rejected!! Why? I don’t know, and hence I just advised him that it would have been better if he had something else to go along with his marks!! I don’t know how much it will help him, but it surely can’t hurt him, can it??</p>
<p>And I never knew there were “fake” olympiads! Really??</p>
<p>Often, you can’t tell what kind of person the applicant is from decision threads. Maybe that’s why you feel that way. It actually does hurt your application. Far too many people try and squeeze out extra curriculars from nothing just to put it in their application when they’re neither interested nor passionate about it. You’d be surprised how easy it is to figure out who’s BSing and who isn’t. You shouldn’t need to “create” an EC out of nothing. The OP says he blogs about gadgets for example - that, by definition of an EC, is an extra curricular. A lot of Indian high school students think generic things like drama/Mun/sports/social service are the only ways to show that you’ve done something. It really isn’t.</p>
<p>And yes, the real Olympiads are the one that follow the trend RMO->INMO->IMO (for Math). NSO isn’t a real Olympiad. Trust me, if you make it to the national level of a real Olympiad, you’re getting into an awesome college and if you make international, you’re getting into MIT. History has been written about all of this.</p>