<p>I was wondering what it would take for me to get into MIT Graduate School for aerospace or mechanical engineering. I am currently a senior in high school and I will be attending Georgia Tech next year. In high school, I was 5 steps behind everybody else on applying to college, and I want to change things for graduate school, which is why I am asking these questions now. I would also like to go to any other graduate school such as Caltech, Stanford, University of California Berkeley, Cornell, or any equivalent college.</p>
<p>Do they ask for your high school transcripts/SATs? Do they look at college extracurricular activities? Do they look at college research projects? What kind of GPA would they look for from Georgia Tech? What graduate standardized test scores should I get? How important are teacher recommendations?</p>
<p>The only thing I really have going for me is math, (770 SAT), I am enrolled in AP Physics, AP Calculus, and AP Statistics. My reading/writing could be better (530 CR SAT and 560 Writing SAT), what are the best ways that I could improve this for the GRE?</p>
<p>Any advice helps- Thanks :)</p>
<p>Graduate school admissions are somewhat different from undergraduate admissions.</p>
<p>Graduate programs are completely uninterested in your high school grades and SAT scores, and will not ask for them. They will only be interested in extracurricular activities that are directly related to your field of study (for example, if you enter the AIAA DBF competition in college). General extracurriculars like sports or student government are not mentioned on grad school applications.</p>
<p>There’s no standard GPA to be admitted to aerospace graduate programs, although they will be looking for high grades – MIT’s aerospace master’s program is quite competitive. You should get a GRE math score at or very close to 800, as the GRE math is easier than SAT math, and about 10% of test-takers get a perfect score. They won’t really care about your writing and verbal GRE scores for an engineering program.</p>
<p>Great professor recommendations are crucial for graduate school admissions, as are research projects (either those done in conjunction with a professor or those done during an internship in industry). The single best thing you can do for yourself in terms of grad school admissions in engineering is to get involved in engineering work/research as early as possible.</p>
<p>Incidentally, you should be careful not to tie yourself to one graduate program before you know what you’re interested in. Different departments have quality research in different subfields, so you will want to know if you’re interested in dynamics, controls, etc. before you apply to graduate school, then apply to programs which have professors strong in these subfields.</p>