Help Predicting Elite-Level CS School Acceptance

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

Hi everyone,
I’m a rising senior at an American high school, meaning I will be taking part in the ever-so-stressful college admissions process soon. For a while, I’ve had a giant crush on MIT, mostly due to the practicality of its curriculum, its campus, its learning environment, etc. For those of you more familiar with the school and/or the elite-level college admissions process in general, would you be able to estimate my likelihood of being able to get in? Just for reference, I hope to major in Computer Science (CS). Here is everything that I’m considering including in my application:

Academics & School-Related ECs:

  • IB Diploma Candidate
  • 4.2 GPA (4.0 weighted)
  • Class rank: 6/342
  • 1410 PSAT (Looking to get this up to 1470+ on the real SAT, which I haven’t taken yet)
  • National Honor Society member
  • Served as a Tutor
  • Misc. community service work
  • 2-Time Varsity Men’s Swim and Dive Team Captain
  • All-State Competitive Swimmer

Non-School-Related ECs:

  • I have been working with Mojang, the makers of “Minecraft,” for 3 years, serving as a bug tracker for “Minecraft Java Edition” and a content creator for the Minecraft Realms platform.
  • I have been working directly with Mojang and roughly 100 other creators from around the globe. My work has reached 10m+ individuals.
  • I have work featured in a book published by Taiwan’s biggest publisher, Cite Media Holding Group.
  • I have created content that is being used by Mojang for employee training purposes.
  • I have been commissioned to make projects for various YouTube personalities.
  • Have experience programming in Java, JavaScript (React and TypeScript, too), HTML, CSS, and C#.
  • Have created a pathfinding algorithm visualizer using vanilla JS (featured here: https://pathvis.bendatsko.com/#about).
  • Have created various mobile and web apps that aim to up the convenience factor for relatively egregious tasks. Some of my work can be found here: https://bendatsko.com/portfolio.html
  • Junior National-caliber swimmer for USA Club Swimming.

Many students I’ve encountered that are admitted to schools like MIT are very passionate about the things they do. The majority take their hobbies onto a national-level stage, some of which yield highly-acclaimed accolades that look brilliant on college applications. This isn’t necessarily good for me though since I’ve only been nationally recognized in the sport of swimming and not in anything inherently academic. I was planning to try to tie programming in with my community through Hackathons, etc., but due to COVID, I don’t know how I’ll demonstrate a sense of selflessness anymore. I figured the best thing I can do now is to continue my work for Mojang’s services, work on various other side projects, and also work toward increasing my SAT score. Is there anything that you recommend I do to increase my chances of being admitted to an elite-level school like MIT? In your eyes, would it even be worth applying to these types of schools given my qualifications?

Any guidance/comments would be greatly appreciated :slight_smile:

2

Forgot to add that I’m a white male from a public, semi-competitive high school in the northern Midwest. If you have any additional recommendations for schools that cater to software engineering and/or other related technical fields, please let me know! Thanks for the help!

3

Have you contacted the MIT swimming coach? If they show enough interest, they can add you to their recruiting list. The list doesn’t hold as much weight as other colleges with athletic recruiting, but sometimes it can help.