GPA: This doesn’t exist in my country, however I got in the top 1% in the national exams, so I guess whatever that translates to? I get straight A’s in my in school tests.
Dual enrollment: This also pretty much doesn’t exist in my country but I got super lucky and got to take 2 college classes in engineering, 2 A’s
Awards: Plenty of in school, IMO Bronze, IMO Silver, IOI National Finalist, 1sts and 2nds in national programming olympiads, 2 or 3 regional awards for projects in math and CS, national community service award, some debating and essay awards (national and regional).
EC’s (these could be weak): I’m active in my school’s mental health club and science club, and I’m a member of the Student Council. I also do theatre outside of school, along with a lot of volunteering for a political party. I write regularly for a political blog and I’ve worked for a year for a politician. I also was a member of the local Youth Council (basically an advisory committee from youth for the local government).
Essays:
Pretty great, imo.
letters of rec:
Also pretty great.
My country is very underrepresented in these universities, so hopefully they don’t judge me too harshly for my EC’s. I’m planning on majoring in Math and Political Science.
What sort of country are we talking about? No need for too many details, but something similar to “small European” or “Latin American” would be helpful.
Difficult to say how prestigious these awards are without knowing the context - being a finalist in the IOI in San Marino is very different from the same accomplishment in France or Germany - but, assuming reasonable competition, you could have a 10-20% shot at both schools.
It would be pretty easy to identify me if I gave even the continent tbh. It’s a reasonably strong country, so it was hard to make the final. And the IMO is an international thing so it doesn’t matter which country I come from in that.
@aberc3333332 Those international Olympiad medals are extremely impressive, I couldn’t even make it past the second round in the UK. I think your ECs are reasonable, your SAT scores are great but have you taken any advanced courses or are they not offered at your school/country.
Overall, you should definitely give it a shot, your chances are better than most students and If your from an underrepresented country then that could be the major hook Harvard/MIT would be looking for.Those Olympiad medals definitely put you among the top 10% of applicants. Make sure you apply to other top schools possibly Caltech or Stanford too?
if they accept any from your country, you are most likely to be among the first selected, since qualifying for the international team usually means excellence in that field and medals are usually static throughout the team