<p>another chances thread:
SAT I: Math 760 CR 760 WR 770
SAT II: Math 2c 800 PHysics 780 CHemistry 750
GPA 4.84 (my school does this thing for honors classes)
All As through 4 years
Senior Year
Calc BC 97
AP physics 97
AP chemistry 97
Ap government 98
English 95
Advanced Math topics 94 (surprisingly hard class dealing with discrete math, matrix calculus and physics etc.)</p>
<p>APs taken Calc AB 5 Stats 5</p>
<p>ECs: lets not go into that</p>
<p>Essays: coming to the usa, taking chances stuff like that.</p>
<p>Rec: hopefully really good from my math teacher and decent from humanities teacher.</p>
<p>Applying to GT, MIT, COrnell, CMU, Stanford
Accepted to GT</p>
<p>thanks Chaoses
ECs: Math modeling two years, captain senior year
lincoln douglass debate 3 years 2nd place state tournament, 2nd speaking
Model UN outstanding delegate
battle of the brains TV team
4 years participation in Virginia Junior Academy of science (state science fair) junior year, 1st place Statistics, Outstanding best paper in statistics (used risk modeling and calculus to predict gasoline price, it got published)
Vice President Science Club
99th percentile chemistry olympiad
AMC participant
Over 300 community service hours with the Alzheimer's association, Retirement center, habitat for humanity etc.
some other awards, its not very much
Also, my major essay was about coming to the United States and how I am willing to take risks etc. I also wrote about math modeling, my volunteer work at an eye hospital for the underprivileged in India etc. Dude, LOL on the Jian li thing Ive lived in the US for six years now</p>
<p>
[quote]
no EC's? ur the next Jian Li. MIT might like you but not Stanford. UR grades are amazing tho
[/quote]
</p>
<p><em>buzzer</em> Wrooooooong. MIT values ECs and personal character far, far, more than grades. Grades get you considered, the former two get you in.</p>
<p>In fact, if I had to give a "rank" insofar as consideration by MIT, I would do so as follows:</p>
<p>[1] Essays
[2] Extra-curriculars
[3] How #1 and #2 relate, possibly also with #6.
[4] Grades/GPA/Class Rank (must be good* but not great)
[5] Test scores (must be good* but not great)
[6] Living environment</p>
<p>Awards are peppered throughout depending on their relevance to all of the above.</p>
<p>*must demonstrate that you can do the work and benefit from the education MIT has to offer.</p>
<p>Very important admission factors:
Character/Personal Qualities</p>
<p>Important admission factors:
Class Rank
Extracurricular Activities
Interview
Recommendations
Rigor of secondary school record
Standardized Test Scores
Talent/Ability
Academic GPA</p>
<p>Considered:
Alumni Relation
Application Essay
Geographical Residence
Racial/Ethnic Status
Volunteer Work
Work Experience
First generation college student
Level of Applicant's Interest</p>
<p>Everyone who applies has roughly a 13% chance of getting in. Much more than test scores and a list of ECs goes into the decision, as you can see above, and since no one here has read your essays, recommendations, or interviewer comments and no one here has seen the rest of your application, no one can give you anything better than the 1 in 8 from last year's applicant pool. If you've already applied, you'll find out in a couple more months. Good luck!</p>
<p>thanks deftech, its just that like all applicants I feel I have done a lot of great stuff and deserve to go. Its just that everyone who applies to MIT has done amazing ecs and mine won't really stand out. So that's why I wanted to get other people's opinions</p>
[quote]
Everyone who applies has roughly a 13% chance of getting in.
[/quote]
This demonstrates a deeply deficient interpretation of probability :-D.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>How about this - Everyone has either a 100% or 0% chance of getting in when they apply, they just have no way of finding out which they are. :-)</p>
<p>Oh, and there are roughly 6.69 times as many people with a 0% chance than a 100% chance.</p>
<p>Yeah, I know... Quantum uncertainty messes with my plan to get my admissions decision early by perfectly describing the state of the universe as it is now and then calculating what it'll be like in a month and a half. Grr.</p>
<p>You've got a good shot. Chances threads generally don't work though. Condensing 10 pages of information the Admissions officers look through into a bulleted list of achievements doesn't generally work.</p>
<p>MIT is a type of school that looks WAY more at passion, character, ECs, and those type of things than grades.</p>
<p>I'll give you an example.. I was deferred, EA. I spoke with a person who had
1. Lower test scores (SAT IIs in the 600s)
2. Fewer and less developed ECs
3. No real awards (I had some)</p>
<p>But guess what? That person was accepted, and I don't fault the admissions office at all. The essays, recommendations, etc. all matter a whole lot more than your specs.</p>
<p>Secondly, stop worrying. Your applications are all in. Do something fun 'till March, and don't waste your time worrying. If you get in, you get in. If not, then you should go to your second choice school and make MIT regret not taking you. Then you can go to MIT for graduate school if you like, or try for transfer admissions if you are ambitious.</p>
<p>MIT gives the biggest weight to what you wrote in 20 lines that could easily have been written by someone else instead of focusing on a lifetime's of work which led to the culmination of good grades/scores? I think that's just the PR BS that they feed us to try to get more people to apply. Don't always think the admissions officers are angels. Besides, if they really weigh the essays the most, then it just further means that serious math/science students like me are either not wanted, or the admissions officers are out of touch with the character and purpose of MIT.</p>
<p>Exactly. While I agree that the essay is important for adding the personal touch to the application, academic achievement and rigor is not something to be taken lightly. Basically every grade I got in high school (none of them below a 97 unweighted), I worked for so that I could do well enough to get into MIT. People will say "oh, you should just enjoy your high school experience and then go wherever you get in, you'll do fine." My question is: what is so terrible about setting a high goal and then doing all the work necessary to meet it? On top of all of this, I was deferred EA, for reasons that my dad, my teachers, my guidance counselor, and my EC have yet to fathom. And then I hear from people who had already been accepted to another school ED, and still got into MIT EA "just to see if they could." It's kind of disappointing that these people, who were obviously not invested too much in their admission to MIT, get in over people like me who had worked for it for four years.</p>
<p>I'm pretty confident that MIT also values grades and such, but I think that a school with the motto "Mind and Hand" will value applied knowledge much more. What do grades indicate? That you can understand subject matter, answer questions about it and persevere. Great, as Olo mentioned, good grades mean you'll probably survive MIT. So now that admissions has cleared up that you'll make it through MIT, as will about 80% of the applicant pool, what special reason do they have to admit you over the 8000 other qualified applicants? Also don't be too quick to denounce EC's as just a small thing. For many people, including me, EC's take priority over even school sometimes (although I try to keep it balanced). Also, if you are a good math/science student you still need to be able to write well. Look more than 2 years into the future; no matter what profession you go into, whether academia, industry, etc, you have to be able to write well and sell yourself.</p>
<p>As differential points out, a way to look at what Olo said is that there are way too many people with essentially perfect high school grades, so the most important factor to distinguish among those actually in the running for admission is the essay. Of course grades are "more important" in an absolute sense -- because without good grades and scores you don't even get in the running. But if you know your grades are great, then that doesn't really matter -- the deciding factor will be the rest of the application.</p>
<p>It does make sense to be leery of a process that puts a great deal of emphasis on essays (for example). An essay can be faked or ghostwritten. Admissions people often say that they can detect faked essays, but that's only if the fakery is incompetent. Still, we have to make do with something, so each school has an imperfect process of its own.</p>
<p>Grad schol admissions is, in some ways, much better. Often the people reading the recs will know your recommenders personally and will be able to get an honest, no-nonsense evaluation of your abilities from someone they trust. That removes some variance from the process.</p>
<p>My SATs were perfect in reading and writing. Last year, I wrote a 2300-word paper in two hours for my English final exam and aced it. Of course any scientist needs to be able to write well, but I'm not sure the essay can give more than a cursory reflection of writing ability. Writing analytically is very different from writing a personal reflection, which is what the essay asks for.</p>
<p>And I didn't mean to denounce ECs; I think they're certainly very important and I've dedicated a lot of time to mine. I would think that would be where the primary aspect of applying knowledge is shown.</p>