<p>Good stats are necessary but hardly sufficient at MIT. The thread with the stats on rejected people was staggering. MIT could look exclusively at GPA and SAT and fill itself with extremely high-numbers people.</p>
<p>But having high numbers doesn't necessarily make you "interesting" and therefore IMO particularly attractive to MIT. In fact, if you get your high numbers by mindlessly taking in and uncreatively spitting out what your teachers say, then you will eliminate your chances at MIT, no matter how hard you work and no matter how high your stats are.</p>
<p>It is hard to say what "interesting" is, but it is not simply having a lot of ECs, or about having unusual or hard-to-get ECs. It is more about depth, originality and significance of thinking, and about passion and intensity of interests. Have or develop something special along these lines and IMO you will greatly improve your chances.</p>
<p>But, of course, you will think seriously about other colleges as well.</p>
<p>That's a tough one because there are strong arguments for both places. At the end of the day, you must choose according to your personal priorities (not choose for a future college application). Are there things that you can do whereby you wouldn't have to choose? Such as staying where you are for the MUN and your friendships, but taking college classes in math and CS? Be creative with your options - work to create options when they are not readily available to you, and you'll be in good shape. And don't worry abou tnot knowing what you want yet - that's not a bad thing. :-)</p>
<p>But seriously. Some of the physics questions seem insane! I mean, how do you people pull this stuff off! It took me like an hour to get one, and I don't even know if it is right. </p>
<p>I decided to go to NCSSM. This is because I realized today that some of my classes are just sit and do a worksheet or copy vocab from the book. I feel that for me, the worst torture is boredom. I mean, I always need to be thinking of something. Like when I was little, I was unconsciously raytracing invisible "laser beams" around the room, to see how many of my classmates it would eventually tag. Thats why I like to do Model UN. I think of it like a realtime RPG, where you gotta manipulate people to get what you want. Also, everyone at my current HS has labeled me NERD just because I took Calc this year, and stats last year, and I don't have a gf. Why would I want to be with some girl, when all she cares about is superficial things? Also, if I left, then the whole relationship would be pointless, and I don't want to waste anyones time. There are tons of kids I would say are 10 baizillion times smarter, they just don't want to do anything. I mean, I am not one of those dorks who just sits in a corner and studies all day. I play tennis, I do model un, I do math club, I do lots of programming(fun, doing it right now!), and I think I will fit more in with kids at NCSSM. Plus it is like a little MIT, with this awesome atmosphere for going beyond. Everyone is highly motivated, and there is no rank, which means that people aren't just sitting there crying over grades.</p>
<p>if you're getting psets off ocw, some classes include solutions with the psets, but apparently not all. <em>notes that the only version of 18.02 on ocw is the version with extra theory >_<</em> if you're grabbing them off the course website, solutions are posted usually within hours of the pset due date, but will disappear after the term, for obvious reasons. they may want you to be enrolled in the class or at least have MIT certificates, if you go poking around class websites.</p>
<p>as for how we solve those, well, that's a <em>HUGE SECRET</em> and i'm totally not going to tell you. it's got nothing to do with sitting a bunch of your friends down in a lounge with a textbook (if you're the decadent sort who actually buys books) and class notes and whacking at the problems on the nearby chalkboard til the wee hours of the morning. or, say, going to recitation and watching your TA go through a 2D version of a similar problem. not a damn thing, i tell you.</p>
<p>on app to MIT can u put down a class as independant study? My school is all cheap now and didn't make AP bio a class this year so all we did was have to show up to a certain block and "work" at the same time a freshman bio class was going on. I'm pretty confindent i got a 5 on the ap bio and frickin had to work harder cause i didn't have the luxury of being taught by a teacher.</p>