I am a freshman in HS currently, taking honors English, honors Biology, and Honors Algebra 2. I am also taking only Spanish 1 but plan to take Spanish 2 over the summer. I plan to take the maximum AP classes over the years and ace every one of my classes. I just joined guitar club and conservative club (might want to leave that one off of the application) and plan to join Nation Honors Society and LEO in softmore year. I don’t have any extracurriculars, sadly, but I plan to get a job once I turn 16, and want to begin volunteering at the soup kitchen also do some other volunteering work. I didn’t make the basketball team this year, but I am working hard to make it next year. I am also half white and half Mexican. What are my chances of getting into MIT? If it does count at all, I have been playing the drums for two years, and guitar for one year.
Whether you will get into MIT is not something that you should concern yourself with at this point. You should strive to do well in your classes, keep ahead in the work, and participate in ECs that you find interesting.
Right now there are about 4,000,000 high school freshmen in the US, and about 1,000 spots in the MIT freshman class (slightly more, but some go to international students). I would therefore estimate you chances as slightly better than 1 in 4,000. If you keep ahead in classes and get good grades these odds will improve. However, when the time comes (2 or 3 years from now) you should be thinking about other schools also.
Agree with the above. It is way too early to think about specific colleges (especially the hyper-competitive ones). You just have one full year’s GPA and you have no standardized testing. You also need to recognize that HS should be an experience in and of itself – a time of learning and growth and not just a 4 year college application prep experience.
It is good to take school seriously and know that college will be on your horizon, but it is too early to start planning for specific colleges. I would highly recommend that you get off of CC until your junior year.
For now you should focus on:
–Working hard, learning, and doing as well as you can in the most challenging curriculum you can manage.
–When the time comes study for standardized tests.
–Continue your involvement in activities you care about and work towards making meaningful contributions to those activities.
–Enjoying spending time with your family and friends.
When the time comes asses your academic stats (including GPA, standardized tests, course rigor) as well as your financial needs and apply to a wide range of reach, match, and safety schools that appear affordable (you will have to run a net price calculator for each school you consider) and that you would be happy to attend. You need to expand your horizons and recognize that there are many wonderful schools out there where you can have a great 4 year experience and get where you want to go in life.
Thank you both for your answers. It’s just hard for me to not think about the future. The thought of putting in all this work, only for it to turn out that it wasn’t enough dawns on me everyday, and I am trying to do everything I can to prevent it.
“The thought of putting in all this work, only for it to turn out that it wasn’t enough…”
Whether “all this work” will be good enough for MIT none of us can know. However, “all this work” WILL get you ahead in one way or another. There are a lot of good schools and a lot of possible paths going forward. If you do well in school it is going to help open up a wide range of possibilities. Good luck! Hopefully we will see you again on CC in about two years.
You are very right. Thank you!
@FunnyMau5:
See this post from MITChris. It may be a few years old, but its relevancy has not changed.
Thank you so much! Now I can “breathe.” To be honest, would it be ok if my “passion” would be to just work all the time? I’m predicting that I am going to be a workaholic.
Being a workaholic is not a good thing. Universities are catching on that students are arriving on campus already burnt out.