<p>What do I know? If I were an admissions counselor, I’d let you in in a heartbeat. But I’m just a cynical CC regular who sees genuises/amazing kids turned away every day of the week by these colleges. It’s a crap-shoot. </p>
<p>I totally support this suggestion:</p>
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</p>
<p>Good lock.</p>
<p>No one can call any Ivies a safety. Simply no one.</p>
<p>Thank-you everyone. </p>
<p>@Southernhope, I know that such universities are really difficult to gain admission to. What I don’t understand is why they focus on “holistic” students. Frankly, all top schools should only care about admitting the most hard-working students. </p>
<p>@billcsho, yes, I suppose. But I have no idea which schools should be my “safety school.” Cornell had a 17% acceptance rate, so I thought I have a really good chance of getting in. If you know any good schools relatively easy for someone like me to get in, please recommend it.</p>
<p>@DanielHendrycks
By the way, I don’t plan on getting a CS degree. I’m not sure yet and I might do it, but I was thinking mathematics with physics/biology. </p>
<p>I spoke to a few of my friends who self-studied quite a bit but failed to prove it and therefore got rejected. That has got me very worried. Talking to a few people gave me the impression that some universities are extremely skeptical about it, and I see no way to prove it without research. Can anyone tell me my estimated chance for the aforementioned schools if I can’t prove I self-studied anything beyond let’s say calculus? Also, can anyone recommend some safety schools? </p>
<p>Thank-you once again. </p>
<p>
By being international, you are difficult to evaluate because each school will have a certain level of difficulty for internationals. If UC Berkeley treats you like any out-of-state student, and if you do some small things to prove yourself in your remaining months, then you should have a good chance (70%+) at admission there. Others would need to know the level of awards you’ve attained for computer science to evaluate other likelihoods. I’ll wait to recommend safeties, as I don’t know what your financial situation is (I need to know if some schools are too expensive).</p>
<p>@DanielHendrycks
Thank you. I realize that if I can’t prove my self-studied knowledge that I probably have no chance to MIT or CalTech. I accept that and am fine with it. Perhaps I may be able to garner some proof by olympiads/research (I plan to do it next year) and then transfer after two terms. </p>
<p>My total family income is around 55000 CDN but my parents have invested in a Registered Education Savings Plans so really money shouldn’t be too large of an issue.</p>
<p>As for computer science awards, I am one of the top rated on those algorithm/CS sites I mentioned. They use algorithms around the level of a sophomore in university. </p>
<p>
That’s a great idea.
I’d advise seeking recommendations for safety schools when the time is closer and when your application is more complete. I didn’t bother looking at safety schools because my EA decisions were good, and maybe you will not need to either.</p>
<p>@DanielHendrycks
So you think I will probably (70%?) get into UCB, Carnegie Mellon, Cornell or the likes (given that the others are sceptical about my achievements)? </p>
<p>Wanna, I think you are a numbers guy. And admission to these top-top universities is a lot fuzzier than that. Follow some of the great ideas in this thread…you’re a strong candidate. </p>
<p>
I said that about Berkeley if they treat you like an out-of-state applicant. On other chance me threads, you’ll find that Berkeley is fairly accessible; the issue is usually paying for Berkeley for great students not in California. We need a bit more to come to fruition (namely some verification—even if small) for Cornell before you can hold a reasonable hope for admission. Don’t bother with Carnegie Mellon for maths; there exist less-selective schools that have a better maths reputation.
Remember the following:
Although that’s for grad school, we can assume there isn’t a sharp change between undergrad quality and graduate quality. At worst, you’d apply to Minnesota (I assume MIT is talking about the university in the Twin Cities) and get in, assuming that they’re reasonable toward internationals. (Also, MIT’s rankings are US only, as I’m sure you noticed. If they considered non-US schools, then University of Cambridge would be the top school. (Another aside that does not matter: Here in the US, when considering an n-dimensional space, mathematicians write it as R^n, as you know; at Cambridge, they write it as d-dimensional space denoted with R^d. It’s possible Cambridge’s way of writing it will be more adopted, because d is slightly more descriptive than n.))</p>
<p>Let’s reconsider the transferring possibility. Hopefully, you’ll have some Olympiad success next year, and you could get into a better school. With Olympiads in mind, I recommend that you take a practice AMC and AIME test this week, because you may not do as well on it as you might think; if you’ve already taken practice tests, then ignore this.</p>
<p>Keep in mind that the transfer acceptance rate at these highly selective schools is quite low. Harvard is 1%; MIT is 5%. </p>
<p>@skieurope</p>
<p>I thought Harvard was 6%, and MIT at 9% or 10%, with Stanford’s acceptance rate lower than Harvard’s, at around 5%</p>
<p>For freshman. Transfers are lower.</p>
<p>@skieurope </p>
<p>But this guy isn’t a transfer… is he?</p>
<p>Second page, the post from 3:08 p.m., he talks about transferring after 2 terms as plan B.</p>
<p>Man, I really hate not having post #'s</p>
<p>Thanks all of you.
@skieurope
If MIT refuses me for transferring with proof for my self-study along with olympiad medals, it’s not a school worth going to for me.</p>
<p>@DanielHendrycks
If MIT, CalTech etc don’t believe me, then I couldn’t mind going to a not-so-good schools for maths and the sciences. In the first two terms, what I am doing more then just the requirements? Nothing much and I should get advanced standing credit for calculus, multivariable calculus, classical mechanics, introduction to biology and introduction to chemistry at the very least. After gathering some proof, then I can transfer to a more reputed school. Of course, this only applies if MIT, CalTech etc don’t believe me - which might happen.</p>
<p>So can you all recommend some schools with a good reputation which I’m very likely to get into? </p>
<p>Thanks. </p>
<p>Barring increased difficulty for internationals because the difficulty increase varies too much to keep track for each school, I think you have a reasonable likelihood for admission (at least more likely than not) at all the state schools from the top 16 maths schools list from earlier (including Berkeley). However, some of those state schools might be one-field-wonders. For example, the only great things I’ve heard about UCLA in terms of maths greatness is Terry Tao, so UCLA might be a good choice only for aspiring number theorists, but I’m not sure. Minnesota at Twin Cities might only be very strong in combinatorics (but I’m not too sure).</p>
<p>@DanielHendrycks
What’s your opinion regarding me thinking I have a decent chance of getting into, ignoring the self-study (it’s sad that I studied so much but now it’s not even useful for university admission):
UCB, UCLA, Yale, Princeton, University of Chicago, Cornell Carnegie Mellon and University of Penn?</p>
<p>And I’m having a tough time deciding safety schools.</p>
<p>By the way, I forgot to mention that I’m a sophomore. I am able to graduate early. </p>
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</p>
<p>You should have led with that. Just because you can graduate early doesn’t mean that you have to graduate early. What is wrong with graduating on-time with olympiad medals and applying as a freshman?</p>
<p>
I recall that on an MIT admissions blog (or here on CC, I’m not sure) an adcom said chances for admission are reduced for students that graduate early because they need more reasons than typical applicants for there to be admission (update: in my search for the bit to which I’m referring, I found another MIT adcom say they will mainly look for signs that you’ve exhausted all your opportunities). I don’t know to what extent graduating early affects admissions, but I did not take the opportunity to graduate early so that my college chances are not reduced. Not graduating early could fix those award issues, and, in general, you’d have a better chance in admissions.</p>
<p>Assuming you don’t graduate early, I would predict the following results:
Accepted (greatest to least in likelihood): UCLA, Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon CIT
Waitlist (greatest to least in likelihood): Cornell, UPenn (Ivies probably want more leadership in your EC’s)
Rejected (greatest to least in likelihood): Princeton, UChicago, Yale (I’m least confident in my Yale estimation)
I don’t know how this list would look if you graduate early because the criticalness of the adcoms to early graduating students probably varies considerably.</p>