<p>"What Mollie said. There AREN’T people like that. People like that cannot handle MIT without changing their attitudes, at least to some degree. "</p>
<p>Yes there are. In fact, I knew a guy who was a total perfectionist at MIT. He ended up getting an A+ in nearly every class in his major and then was recruited to be on the faculty. At one point he told me he thought he was not doing well because he wasn’t getting much research done freshman year. </p>
<p>Under today’s standards, maybe this guy doesn’t even get in MIT because people are paranoid about perfectionists. Not everybody is going to fail a test. </p>
<p>And i’ve said this before, trying to ascertain who can overcome failure is not an easy science. I was in danger in getting a “B” in a very difficult, advanced math class (sort of like 18.022) in high school. I treated it like it was a crisis, adjusted my studying, and got a 97% on the final and pulled out the “A”. In those days, it probably did mean something in admissions. I probably wouldn’t have gotten into MIT or Caltech with a “B” in that class. Anyway, I would have been reluctant to even discuss that on an application because there were a couple of MOSP people who got A’s who didn’t even do the homework. I wouldn’t want to advertise the fact that I had trouble with something. There were a lot of people who just gave up in that class and got B’s or worse, and they probably would have gotten points under today’s system for supposedly dealing with failure well. I wonder about those guys who qualified for MOSP; would they be up a creek because they never had trouble with anything?</p>
<p>There’s nothing wrong with feeling a good or even great performance is unacceptable. And I think a lot of guys who were perfectionists in high school would recognize that possibly things would change at MIT. I mean, high school is generally pretty easy compared to MIT and everyone knows that.</p>
<p>I don’t think retaking the SAT is a good thing; I never did it. It doesn’t look as good for one thing. Hopefully, you study hard enough during your regular classes and develop enough of an intuition for the subjects that getting 750+ is a piece of cake. I don’t know if cramming for the SATII would even work; probably it would be difficult to get a very high score. I agree with Mollie that it’s a pretty simplistic exam, but that’s all the more reason why you should ace it.</p>