How is This College List for My Daughter?

OP back again. Didn’t expect to see new responses after some eight month break! Well my daughter got into MIT in EA round. She also got into everywhere else except for Stanford (which she decided to apply over the Christmas break lol). She will be attending MIT in the fall.

@EESSLL the UMich camp she attended is called SEA SCEEP. Sorry I don’t remember exactly what it stands for, something engineering exposure program. I suggested DD to do it to get a taste of what engineering is about and decide if it may fit her. It was quite helpful to her.

@yikesyikesyikes I don’t quite understand your question. She made AIME three times but was far from qualifying for USAMO. Her AIME score would put her in the top quartile of all AIME takers.

It’s almost college application season again. Good luck to all the kids applying this year!

Have you considered Georgia Tech? I’ve heard a lot of great CS and Engineering schools but somehow not Georgia Tech. I haven’t seen UC Berkeley mentioned either.

@carbmom, congrats to your amazing daughter! Too bad we couldn’t get her to come to A2, but hey, who could turn away MiT?! The fact that Stanford did not accept her just shows you how insanely hard it is to get in there. Frankly, I don’t even know why so many kids bother applying, but it’s their choice…I’m sure she’s going to love MiT as well as Boston–my favorite East Coast city. Cheers and Go Blue!

@Max147 yes both GT and UCB are excellent engineering schools, but they are OOS for us, and as large publics they are just marginally better than our own instate UIUC and hence not worth the extra costs. We are lazy people and didn’t want to apply to schools we won’t be going even if accepted.

@USCWolverine thank for your kind words. Yeah we liked Michigan a lot but she wasn’t offered any merit money. With a price tag comparable to MIT, the choice is easy. And Stanford really was a waste of time and application fee. I think she applied last minute out of peer pressure, all her friends with similar or slightly lower stats were applying to 8+ super elite schools and she only applied to one. We knew her chance at Stanford is super slim because her profile didn’t quite match. I didn’t encourage her to apply, but didn’t want her to have any regrets and later wonder “what if” either.

It’s funny MIT was the very first decision she received. After that I had to really push her to finish all her RD apps and scholarship apps as we were aiming for merit money. In the end everything fell through, all acceptances but no money, and she comMITted. No complaints, just wonder if we could’ve chosen to spare ourselves all those trouble.

Thanks!