Cornell ED vs MIT EA?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Cornell University
1

<p>Hey CC community - I've lurked around before, but I decided to make a new account today, as my january SAT's are coming up, and I thought that now would be a better time to get advice than any other.
I'm a junior from canada, and I'm looking to apply to cornell, but I can't really decide between
ED'ing to cornell, for a much better chance of acceptance, or risking rejection during the RD period for cornell, and trying MIT EA. Please give me a bit of your input - though I've got time this choice is really messing with me</p>

<p>o SAT I (breakdown): CR-720 M-800 W-740 (total-2260) - taking another one in January, for 2300+
o SAT II: Math II - 790, Chemistry - 800, Physics 800
o Unweighted GPA (out of 4.0): 4.0 (4.55 weighted)
o Rank (percentile if rank is unavailable): top 5%
o IB (place score in parenthesis): AP not offered, so I took the full IB diploma - HL math, chem physics, SL french, literature, econ
o Senior Year Course Load: IB HL math, chemistry, physics, SL econ, french, literature
o Major Awards (USAMO, Intel etc.): depends on what counts as a major award I guess, a lot of national level math/chemistry honour rolls, Canadian Chemistry olympiad training camp invitee, competitor at VEX robotics world championship, ICDC finalist
o Minor awards: Math contests, some poetry awards, school department awards
• Subjective:
o Extracurriculars (place leadership in parenthesis):
3 years varsity rowing, lead coxie, quite a few medals
3 years VEX robotics team captain, won a few tournaments
2 years Engineering society, now club head
3 years of DECA (similar to FBLA), invited to international deca conference, made it to the final rounds of my event
2 years of poetry publication, club head
2 years of Chemistry society, club head and founder
3 years of model parliament, 1 out of 4 directors serving under the chairperson
2 years of peer tutoring, head tutor
o Job/Work Experience: summer internship at university of toronto, private math/science tutoring
o Volunteer/Community service: peer tutoring within school, old age home volunteering
o Summer Activities: Rowing, research at university of toronto in a graduate Chemical Engineering lab, hoping to do the same, or apply to SSP this summer
• State: intl - Ontario
• School Type: private - 140 students in graduating class
• Ethnicity: African indian
• Gender: male
• Income Bracket: lower class
• Intended major: chemical engineering, minor in MatEng or environmental eng</p>

<p>Thanks for taking the time for looking at this, as I said, I'd really appreciate any input you could give me</p>

2

<p>Do not apply to Cornell ED. There are two main reasons, each of which are good enough reasons by themself:

  1. If you get accepted to Cornell and would rather to go MIT, you will go 4 years knowing that you MAYBE COULD HAVE gotten into MIT. *A small note here is that the two colleges are completely different and I would look more into what makes each unique, especially when it comes to post graduate decisions, location, size, school culture, etc. These all vary drastically between these two schools.
  2. Cornell does not guarantee full aid met for internationals. Every year, you hear of internationals who really want to go to Cornell, but can’t because Cornell gave them less than sufficient aid. (Maybe getting in ED could make them be more generous? I don’t know)</p>

<p>Your activities look more than scattered by the way. You don’t need to include all that stuff on your college application and it would almost even look better if you only included half of it so that colleges can better understand the “package” they are evaluating. </p>

<p>Rowing, model parliament, robotics team, poetry? I couldn’t imagine an admission officer being confident about WHO they are actually admitting.</p>

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<p>It’s not like you can apply MIT EA as an int’l student. So if you don’t mind any, you can give Cornell ED a shot. If you don’t get in or don’t get enough aid, you still have roughly 2.5 weeks to turn in your MIT RD application.
If you aren’t sure just do RD for both, you actually don’t want to think ooh I could have made it into MIT.
But doing that reduces your chances of getting into Cornell and MIT has always had a ridiculous international acceptance rate. As they say you can’t have your cake and eat it too.</p>