Could you please chance me for Princeton early or other Ivies?
International student male (Europe) and in the most competitive school of the country well known in USA’s Universities (under scholarship)
SAT one and first sitting 2310 (800M 760W 750 CR)
SAT subjects Math2 800 Math 1 750 Physics 800 and I may take Chemistry in Oct.We don’t have AP classes.
GPA 4.0 (the equivalent)
School winner every year in AMC8, AMC10 (grade 9 and 10) AMC 12 grade 11 also AIME qualified
National competitions in Math and Physics
School team for lab science
Various conventions (literature also)
Summer school every year one was CTY-Game Theory
School orchestra 3 years (Violin many years)
Some tutoring
and EC in church charities
MENSA member (national and international)
Thank you and I appreciate any recommendations also.
BTW I’m sure the recommendation letters will be great.
You are obviously very qualified academically, though your main areas of focus are intensely competitive… I don’t have any sense of you as a person outside of school. It sounds like you spent your summer doing more school, which shows interest and motivation, but doesn’t make you very rounded. I would concentrate on bringing out that side of yourself.
@renaissancedad Thank you so much! I’m aware of this and there are other areas I was involved but since I’m asking about ivies I focused on my academics. What do you think also about MIT (but I can’t apply early because I’m international) or other ivy schools?
I think you are academically “competitive” anywhere, including MIT, Stanford and the top Ivies. I presume that the strength of your academic schedule (“curricular rigor”) is appropriately challenging. You have the grades, test scores, and some strong achievements. “Competitive” by itself only gets you past the initial screening to where you are competing with thousands of other qualified, competitive applicants. The odds are that you will probably get in to somewhere quite good base on that alone, but every year there are some competitive applicants who seem to get left out, so you want to improve the odds if at all possible. To do this, you want to figure out how to present yourself so that you get past the competitive label and into the “strong” category where you are perceived as having some kind of an edge and adding some value. I’m not sure how to do that with your background as you presented it in the OP. A good essay can do a lot to tie together your background and present you as a person rather than as a collection of achievements and stats. I’d start thinking about that.
BTW, I don’t think your international status affects your ability to apply EA at MIT. Their admissions site notes that “MIT Early Action is an option for all applicants, domestic and international.”
@renaissancedad you are so helpful and I’m grateful to you. I just looked at MIT’s site and the option for EA for international was added July/7 . Maybe is a God’s sign for me to apply. Till now I was told that my profile fits better to MIT. Also I don’t want to go to West Coast because even though I don’t have any close relatives anywhere we do have some family friends and my parents feel better if I go East. What do you think for EA? MIT, Princeton,Yale or something else? I do respect your opinion so much.
I don’t know why you would respect my opinion, as you don’t know me. But, since you ask …
What are you interested in, and what program of studies do you envision yourself pursuing? You mention a lot of background in math and science, which tends to scream MIT and Princeton more than Yale, though Yale is eager to attract top STEM students, so that could be a plus. If engineering is more your thing than pure math/science, then MIT and Princeton are even further ahead of Yale. Yale has terrific music and humanities, but those seems like lesser interests for you.
@renaissancedad You’re right. I don’t know you but everything you said is so logical and supplements what people told me so far like my school counselor etc and I think you know so much about these issues. I plan to go to engineering school or applied science and I also like Statistics a lot. You are also so right about Yale. That is exactly what I though, that it is an ivy school but ( what you also mention) I may have more possibilities to be accepted. Definitely I won’t apply early there.
For engineering / applied sciences / statistics, MIT and Stanford would be the best fits. Princeton, Penn, Columbia and Duke also have excellent engineering for Ivy or Ivy-caliber schools. Harvard is attempting to build a strong engineering program and has a big donation to endow it, but they aren’t there yet. Yale is weak in engineering, though reasonably strong in the biological sciences. Rice in Houston might be a good next tier alternative, if that’s not outside of your range.
I’d look into those options. Applying to EA to MIT or SCEA to Princeton sounds like the most logical choice based on what you’ve said.
Thank you so much for your help
I just realized i put wrong score for Math Subject 1 is 790 not 750 as I wrote. I also have my TOEFL score is 107.
I ill probably apply early for MIT. What do you think?
bump!