did i screw up my chances?

<p>Hello all, </p>

<p>I am planning on applying to MIT in the coming years and was wondering if i totally screwed up my chances at getting in or not..</p>

<p>As a freshman i got a 3.1 GPA in my core classes (aroubd a 3.3 if theology class is not taken into consideration) and am in the top half of my class. i didnt take any honors classes last year so everything is unweighted. my school is college prep and i am in the JROTC program, do community service, etc. ( more info @ <a href="http://www.marmion.org/academy.hmtl%5B/url%5D"&gt;www.marmion.org/academy.hmtl&lt;/a> ) this should help a bit i would guess. another thing that may help (although this led to the not so spectacular grades) is that i learned a lot of web programming and web design, and have started my own open source bulletin board app called rorBB ( <a href="http://www.rorbb.com%5B/url%5D"&gt;www.rorbb.com&lt;/a> ) with a group of people. from what i hear MIT likes people who are collaborative etc. and work well with teams.</p>

<p>sophomore year i am taking the following classes:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.stephenausman.com/school/schedule.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;www.stephenausman.com/school/schedule.html&lt;/a> </p>

<p>i am hoping to kick it into gear as i am planning to focus more on my studies in school, rather than my studies of other things. what would i probably have to do in order to greaten my chances of getting into MIT. i plan on taking AP physics, AP american history, and an AP math class of some sort since this is one of my strong points. mostly looking for some insight on my situation.</p>

<p>thanks</p>

<p>I'm not sure whether you're freshman year is even considered at all. If you could do really great in your other years and get good recs and SAT scores, I think you could have shot at MIT.</p>

<p>I don't know very much about MIT's admissions policies, but I just wanted to wish you the best of luck. </p>

<p>Work hard next year and the years after that, and you'll end up at a good school. Its good that you're worried about your GPA now, instead of later. I have a lot of friends that are freaking out now because its senior year and there's not much time to improve it. If you get a 4.0 this year (work super hard), you'd already have bumped your GPA up from a 3.3 to about a 3.65. Keep up a very good work ethic and you very well could be up to 3.7 or 3.8 by the end of junior year. </p>

<p>I had somebody point this out to me last year and it really helped me to stay motivated, to know that all hope was not lost.</p>

<p>Did you screw up? Yes. But honestly, just work really, really, hard, get straight A's your sophomore, junior years and you should be competitive. You gotta show MIT you're willing to do the work.</p>

<p>MIT does indeed look at your freshman grades, but being three years removed by the time you apply, they are obviously not as indicative of your ethic and ability as later grades are.</p>

<p>I wonder how many straight-A high school students actually did well starting right off in preschool! I "woke up" and started caring about school in 7th grade, which is plenty of time because middle school doesn't count in college admissions. Most of the smart kids I know had those kinds of "aha!" moments too, and it seems like you've had yours, only a year late. Just realize that you've got a LOT of hard work ahead of you to change that GPA. A 3.1 won't doom you to flipping burgers or anything, but it's not up to par at MIT.</p>

<p>Some of us had those moments in junior year, so uh, be happy you have so much time to fix it. :)</p>

<p>Are you kidding? Junior year is about when I came down with senioritis, and I haven't really recovered since. (P/NR didn't really help me get my ambition back...) =P</p>