<p>I'm Asian, I want to be a doctor, I want a math/science degree, and I want to get into a top college like MIT or Columbia. I would say... I would begin to be disappointed if I did not get into any school better than WashU in St. Louis.</p>
<p>My math grades are always A+. My science grades are A-/A.</p>
<p>My math/science SAT II scores are:
Math II: 800
Biology - M: 760</p>
<p>My math/science AP scores are:
Biology: 4
Chemistry: 5
Statistics: 5</p>
<p>Some of my ECs are volunteering at a hospital, taking care of a handicapped child, and participating/doing well in various math competitions.</p>
<p>Should I avoid mentioning biology/biomedical engineering as my major because of the 4 I scored on the AP Biology exam?</p>
<p>How much does my major influence my admittance chances?</p>
<p>Is it best if my major corresponds with my ECs?</p>
<p>Also, the Common App includes a place to put my "interests", like Biology/Engineering/Chemistry, but then there is also a supplement for most schools that asks me my interests again. Why is it asked twice?</p>
<p>“Should I avoid mentioning biology/biomedical engineering as my major because of the 4 I scored on the AP Biology exam?”</p>
<p>a 4 on the AP is a very respectable score. put down the major that you’re most interested in, the one that you have the activities/experiences to prove a continuous, long term interest.</p>
<p>“How much does my major influence my admittance chances?”</p>
<p>depends on which schools you have in mind.
it’ll matter more for the colleges that have separate institutions within the large college for specific departments, or the ones in which students begin a track for a specific technical field very early on.
liberal arts school, not so much. for the latter, it’ll just be another piece of the puzzle used to figure out who you are, what your interests are.</p>
<p>For somewhere such as MIT, they only care that you show interest in math/science and you are admitted to MIT, not any particular major. (However, it may matter if they’re picking students off the waitlist, but there is no one major that they prefer for admitting waitlisted kids; it fluctuates year by year.)</p>
<p>adding to what’s already said, most people’s intended major change once they come to college, which is one of the reasons declared major don’t carry much weight for schools like MIT and Columbia.</p>
<p>“Also, the Common App includes a place to put my “interests”, like Biology/Engineering/Chemistry, but then there is also a supplement for most schools that asks me my interests again. Why is it asked twice?”</p>
<p>you can have multiple academic interests that may or may not fall neatly into one major.
“interest” also doesn’t refer to academic interest only. it’s the other interests, all sorts of interests, that help the adcom create a picture of who you are as a person.
the idea is to get an idea of what you like to do in your free time, your personality, what new views you can bring to campus, what you’ll be like as a roommate, teammate, and a part of the freshman class.</p>
<p>Thanks for the replies guys. To clarify about my question about “interests,” both the supplement and the common app section essentially ask me what I want to major in. I assume that I should put the exact same thing for both sections in this case, right?</p>