I go to a tiny school in the middle of nowhere, Texas and am in lots of online AP classes and virtually every extracurricular activity offered, not for my application, but because they interest me and I want to try everything out. I have a 4.0 and have scored high on all of my PSATs, yet I don’t have a “Spike.” How can I better my chances of being accepted into MIT?
When stats get to a certain point, all of them start looking completely identical. Everyone has a 4.0. Everyone took AP classes. Everyone has a high SAT score, everyone writes great essays. Basically, it’s so hyper competitive, it’s impossible to stand out. With an acceptance rate of around 3.5%, it’s ALL luck.
I disagree; go look up “prepscholar how to get into Harvard” on google and throughly read that article. Maybe then your opinion will change 
@chanoo2003
I agree that is a great article. And it does help to confirm that the more skilled and knowledgeable you are about the college application process, the more you can help your chances (not to mention being privileged or financially well off).
At MIT, that help may only be incremental, at most. coolguy40’s response in #1 above still needs to be respected.
I didn’t mean it that way . By all means, I respect coolguy40’s response. I just got bothered by the “all luck” part so I decided to tell the OP about the prepscholar article.
People usually assume (if they can’t understand what happens behind the scenes) that “it’s like magic” or “just purely based on luck” (not saying exactly what coolguy40 said).
If there’s one concept for all universities, it’s fit. Every school has a different fit. Some of that fit is a bit vague/nebulous.
For some colleges, part of the fit is academic. If we’re talking say Duke, the Ivies, UChicago, MIT, Caltech, Stanford, superlative academics are required, evidenced in grades [transcript], high school report, recommendations. standardized test scores. Some of these schools publish this information on their Common Data Set. Some of these schools will emphasize “being great at multiple subjects” or “being great in STEM subjects.” Some of them will say something like 95% of admits were in the top 10% of their graduating class or 90% of admits were in the top 5% of their graduating class.
If you don’t make the academic cut for many colleges, your chances aren’t 3.5% or 8% or 7%. Your chances are exactly zero. Unfortunately “academic cut” does not reduce down to a cutoff for GPA because of many complicating factors. Some schools have grade inflation. Some schools have different weightings for honors and AP classes. Some schools have different distributions for different grades.
Some of the fit depends on that specific college, e.g., “you want a program specializing in backstage drama productions” or “you know you want to specialize in whatever engineering” or “you already know X ancient and modern languages so you want to specialize in medieval literature.”
Some of it is based on the culture and values of that school. Many public schools don’t bother with extracurriculars. Private colleges do – so what does that say about what they value? Some colleges are need blind in admissions and some are need aware. Many of the top colleges may want to see that you challenged yourself (given your context), you are a self-starter, you have taught yourself various subjects / topics, you’ve demonstrated leadership in your extracurriculars, etc
There is a bit of a ‘luck component’ in the sense that outside of all the things you can control or have more control over (e.g., essays, scores, grades, whom one selected for recommendations, making sure to engage one’s interviewer), there are a lot of factors outside of one’s control – like how calibrated one’s recommendations are and what they have to say about an applicant’s strengths and weaknesses, high school counselor report, interview notes, who else is applying and their abilities, how previous students from an applicant’s school have fared and their grades, etc.
For instance, let’s hypothesize. In our hypothetical world, every school district’s top scholar-athlete (has to be both) in whatever sport [soccer, track and field, volleyball, basketball, swimming, American football, etc.] decides to apply to Harvard.
So we get 13000+ applicants who are the top scholar-athlete of the school district (as per https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d12/tables/dt12_098.asp ). Yet Harvard can only have a freshman class of about 1600 (and they admit a bit shy of 2000).
Too many basketball applicants this year? They have to pick. It’s not reasonable to have a basketball team of 100.
Too many baseball applicants this year?
Too many volleyball applicants this year?
Sure. The list goes on.
It would also be boring to fill up the freshman class with all scholar-athletes (or all valedictorians).
It is wrong to assume that everyone has same profile. In general, for national universities, competition is national and so you have to compete in national competitions. For example, AMC provide top 1000 math students (AIME qualifiers), Scholastic awards pick top writers, Siemens, Davidson and Regeneron STS pick top researchers, USACO picks top 100 programmers (in Platinum division), USAMO picks top 100 national math kids. In addition, top summer programs like RSI, HSHSP, Simons, Ross, TASP, TASS, Promys, Canada/USA Mathcamp, HCSSIM, Garcia have their own pick. I assume drama, dance etc would have their own set of qualification.
So that’s how it works in world of 4.0 gpa and sat scores. If nothing else, PSAT picks up top 15,000 kids only based on SAT like test. College Board AP schoalrs awards and National AP Scholar by Junior Year would be nice to have,.
And I can tell that don’t listen to anyone. Just do your own thing whatever you like and hopefully it will work out.