<p>What would a paranoid and ambitious applicant necessitate in order to be guaranteed admission into Caltech? By "guaranteed", I mean around a 90% or higher chance of admission, a percentile in which the given applicant would be fairly confident of getting in.</p>
<p>Full score on the SAT reasoning?
Full score on the AMC/AIME?
Decent scores on the USA(M/B/C/etc.)O's?
Publication of 3+ research papers?
Founder of a number of science/math clubs?</p>
<p>What else is feasible and necessary for guaranteed admission?</p>
<p>Also, what is the average population of freshman class income for Caltech? Its small population may be a deciding factor of whether to head to MIT or Caltech, if I am accepted to both (I prefer small schools).</p>
<p>2350+ SAT Reasoning score (800 on Math), two 800’s on Subject Tests, USAMO qualifier, good research, rigorous courseload, and a 4.0 unweighted GPA would probably yield about 90% chance if the ECs are strong and science-oriented.</p>
<p>You should never ask such questions. All top 10 schools are** reaches** for applicants. No matter how strong you are, be prepared for rejections from all top 10 schools.
applicants like silverturtle described may have a decent shot at elite schools, but 90%+ admission rate is grotesque, because the majority of applicants(of MIT&Caltech) have perfect scores and strong and science-oriented ECs.
I think, if you want to have guaranteed admission to an elite school like MIT or Caltech,
you probably should be like this:
1 IMO Gold Medal & iPHo Gold Medal &iCHo Gold Medal won these three at the same time
2 You are already a professor of science at a community college or schools of similar caliber
3 Chief editor of Scientific American/American Mathematical Monthly, or at least you have a bunch of papers published by similar Science magazines(Nature&Science&c)
4 Member of National Academies
5 Internship at Rand Corporation
6 You’ve got at least 10 patents (science related of course)
…
Besides, you must have:
</p>
<p>To have guaranteed admission, you have to make yourself sound like a super genius. Make admission officers see that they will regret for a lifetime if they don’t admit you. </p>
<p>There are so many awesome people applying to top schools that they’re basing admissions on personality and fit as well as on academics. In other words, if you’re awesome and would fit in at Caltech, you might get into Caltech. If you’re awesome and would fit in at Harvard, you might get into Harvard but you might not get into Caltech. Etc.</p>
<p>To be fair, Caltech is the most predictable of the top schools, because it cares more directly about objective factors of intelligence and academic achievement and less about wishy-washy leadership and well-roundedness, and it has a higher acceptance rate due to self-selection. 90% guarantee at Harvard would be tough (absent being a celebrity, donor or super-legacy), but it’s doable at Caltech, albeit for only a few people.</p>
<p>I’d agree that there exist different tiers of “competitive applicants.” You can be “competitive” in that you are in the range of what that school is known to accept, “competitive” in that you hit the medians for accepted kids in every way, or “competitive” in that your application is significantly better than the majority of accepteds in some meaningful way.</p>
<p>By the second definition, yeah, there are “competitive” applicants who get rejected from all of the Top 10 schools. I doubt that many of the final tier of “competitive” applicants get rejected from all of HYPSMC.</p>
<p>I agree with silverturtle’s reasoning, even if I cannot back up the precise claims. </p>
<p>I.e., Caltech knows what it wants, and it’s generally one of the most clear cut in terms of admissions. The reason many “competitive” applicants need not make it is that there isn’t enough on their application to explain the extent of their dedication to the Caltech values, which go beyond the scope of what standard coursework and standardized testing measure. Whereas some of these “competitive” applicants may be more likely if they made an effort to <em>show</em> what they’re really interested in more.</p>
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<p>I have a strong feeling a lot of Caltech students themselves would say you are overexaggerating. I know there are plenty of Caltech admits who are quite interested in math/science but aren’t all round perfect scorers and have good, but not necessarily insane EC involvement in math/science. They <em>are</em> likely very high scorers of extremely high intelligence who were perceived by their old high schools as exceptionally smart.</p>
<p>It’s very unlikely the profile silverturtle described is actually that widespread.</p>
<p>Actually, a patent might work similarly. My friend had perfect scores (I think), as well as a patent and several programming contest victories (that I know for sure). He was accepted at all ivies except for 1, plus MIT. Clearly, for some the admissions process is not a crapshoot. Some schools really aren’t reaches for everybody - they might be closer to “matches.”</p>
Perhaps I guessed wrongly. Anyway, the majority of Caltech&MIT&HYP applicants I know of have perfect scores(2350+ SAT Reasoning score (800 on Math), two 800’s on Subject Tests and all that) and outstanding ECs. Maybe international pools differ from domestic pools. I’m an int’l student. </p>
<p>We’ll see it out next year. See whether Luciferlied could get into MIT&Caltech with stats you suggested. I won’t be surprised if he/she gets in. Neither will I be surprised if he/she gets rejected by both MIT&Caltech. After all, we are not admission officers.</p>
<p>The above was a posting by the OP in another post in this forum. I am not sure what the OP is trying to get at.</p>
<p>I do not like tell people their chances as I really have no idea. As dawncoming says “we are not admission officers”.</p>
<p>I am not sure where the OP got this statement that 2380 is a bad score or 3.88 unweighted is a bad GPA. There are going to be some students that have SAT >2380 and GPA > 3.88 who were rejected at CalTech, and there are going to be many students who have SAT <2380 and GPA <3.88 who were accepted. So that little snippet of information indicates that the OP is in the competitive range, but none of us have any insight into the entire package. Hence the only advice to the OP is apply, do your best and go from there. Dawncoming stated it very well.</p>
<p>That said, every few years (or more often) there are students who get into CalTech at the age of 15 (or lower), students have not finished high school. In fact CalTech is one of those schools that does not require a student to have graduated from HS (or to be in their senior year) to apply. Obviously, if a 14 year old or 13 year old to apply to CalTech, the student must have something that made the admission committee take notice and guaranteed them admission. I would suppose that most 13 year old’s are not thinking of college admission, so is someone were, they would have strong record. </p>
<p>So yes, some people are guaranteed admission to CalTech but then you need to have the track record of like say Chris Hirata.</p>
<p>Well, in fact that would be the reason we would be surprised - if certain achievements tend to correlate with positive results quite strongly, then one would be surprised precisely because, as non-admissions-officers, we don’t know exactly what happened, and indeed, whether we would support or reject their reasoning.</p>