<p>I am a student at a community college right now going for a degree in mechanical engineering. Things are going very well for me now and transferring to the state university (UW) should be easy. But I want to aim higher than that; I want to challenge myself to do the best that I can(yes I know it sounds tacky). I have a couple of questions, but first my credentials:</p>
<p>Highschool: 2.87 GPA
AP Credits in Calculus AB(4), English Lit(3), Physics B(3) and Statistics(4)
SAT:1310
4 yrs. French :)
Honors English 3 yrs. (and then AP senior year)
Had a job consecutively from the day I turned sixteen (at least
20 hrs./wk, never fired :) )</p>
<p>***Like a lot of people, I didn't realize the oppurtunities highschool had for me. I thought it was childish and put forth minimal effort. If only I could go back and start all over...</p>
<p>College: 3.58 GPA 1st qtr.(17.5 credits)
4.0 GPA 2nd qtr.(20.5 credits)
Engineering Club(building a submarine for an international
competition, will be president next year)
Spending summer quarter in France studying French(15 credits)
In the process of joining student government
19 credits scheduled for spring qtr.; 20 credits also planned for each
quarter next year</p>
<pre><code>Question 1: Do I stand any chance of getting accepted to MIT at the end of my sophmore year? If it's close, any suggestions?
</code></pre>
<p>Question 2: Everything I've heard up to this point leads me to believe that going to a school of high prestige leads to better job oppurtunities later on. Is this necessarily true? What benefits will there be going to, say MIT, over UW?</p>
<p>Question 3:What schools would I be competitive for admissions to(given a 3.9-4.0 GPA the rest of my time at the CC)?</p>
<p>Question 4:Would being a tutor at my school be a good extra-curricular activity? I want to do it, but only if it would be beneficial to me.</p>
<p>Thanks for any input. I have a lot more to say but I wanted to keep it somewhat short for the forum's sake. If anyone has any questions I will be more than happy to respond in detail.</p>
<p>1) Do you have a chance at MIT? Yes. Are your chances good? No.</p>
<p>2) No, prestige is not THAT important (but it matters)...but quality is very important. The quality of a program is what attracts employers and adcoms...not prestige. You are better off at a school like MIT than you are at a school like UDub because MIT is better in Engineering. In fact, prestige is not always important. As an Engineering major, you are probably better off at Purdue than at Harvard...though few people would claim that Purdue is more prestigious than Harvard.</p>
<p>3) I recommend you look into the following schools, provided finances are not a problem:</p>
<p>Cornell University
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (unlikely) *
Northwestern University
Purdue University-West Lafayette
Stanford University (unlikely) *
University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign *
University of California-Berkeley *
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor *
University of Washington (Backup)</p>
<p>All of them are excellent in Engineering...and with the exception of UDub, all of them are among the top 10 in Mechanical Engineering. </p>
<ul>
<li>Denotes top 5 Mechanical Engineering program.</li>
</ul>
<p>Any suggestions regarding extra-curricular activities? Also I am thinking that I am going to take java II this quarter, for a total of 25 credits. Does a course load like this reflect favorably on me? Thanks for any input.</p>
<p>I guess what I am primarily asking is do I have a chance at MIT and why or why not. Also how many transfer students do they accept on average (I heard it was as low as five per year :( ). The main reason I posted this was because I was having difficulty getting answers regarding MIT transfers and when I email their admissions department I only get a generic "check our website" email. BTW from what I've seen their website doesn't do too good of a job explaining their transfer process. It says a competitive GPA to transfer is 3.5... if only.</p>
<p>So if anyone wants to lay it out on the table for me I'd really appreciate it. For the sake of this post let's just narrow it down to MIT's school of engineering. Any advice? Thanks. I hope.</p>
<p>Yevtushenko, MIT is very difficult to transfer into. I do not have exact figures, but MIT does not accept many transfers. Schools like Cal, Cornell, Michigan, Northwestern and Illinois enroll hundreds of transfers annually. So by all means apply to MIT, but also be realistic and apply to other top programs. </p>
<p>Also, you will have to do your SAT IIs if you want to apply to MIT.</p>