<p>The commonapp asks whether a student has taken college courses or not.Can I list OCW courses that I self studied using online videos by MIT OCW</p>
<p>Please ADVICE</p>
<p>You can list them. But if they are not verifiable (as I guess they are not), they won’t add much. You could make the same argument that you learned cosmology by listening to Professor David Spergel on YouTube (it’s taught by a professor, so it must be a college course, right?) Is that an argument you would use?</p>
<p>To be true,I always wanted to study Mathematics college courses as I was bored of CBSE syllabus.Though it is very true that IIT questions are quite difficult but they donot include topics like multivariable calculus,number theory,etc.Also online courses povided by colleges are expensive and I cannot afford them.If you can tell me about cheap online college courses,I will be greatful</p>
<p>What do you want me to tell you? For the purpose of satisfying your own interest, MIT lectures on YouTube are FINE. They just won’t count for that much if you mention them on your college app. What you have to decide is why you’re spending your free time taking these courses. Is it because you want to mention them on the Common App, or is it because you are really interested. By the history of your posts, I am inclined to think the former. And proceeding from that, I should also tell you that it just isn’t worth it. Get good test scores, write a decent essay, and you’re in at places like UIUC, Purdue, Davis, and perhaps NYU. I’ll tell you right now that you’re not getting in to MIT. I’ll also tell you that you will be paying more than 60,000 dollars a year for CMU–you should consider whether CMU is worth that money. Also remember that if you do Cornell ED, you’re obligated to go. I know that they say you can get out of it by raising financial aid issues–but the chances of you getting into Cornell with financial aid as an Indian applicant is pretty low. Cornell is not need-blind for internationals. Their representatives will tell you this in a whisper, even though their website claims otherwise (trust me, I’ve met them). Stanford too will cost about 60,000 without finaid, and it is not need blind. Basically, unless you get that SAT score up, you can forget about just about all the colleges on that list. You are an Indian, you belong to a competitive pool, and a 1910 SAT is NOT going to cut it. I also don’t know how you can say your recommendations are great. You are NOT allowed to see them or handle them. These are the rules of the game.</p>
<p>So, here’s the final bit of advice. Get your grades up, and count on Purdue and UIUC. I don’t know what you want to major in, but if it’s engineering related, NYU is not a good option, nor is Davis, and the rest of them are reaches. Best of luck.</p>
<p>Thanks for a reply(though you sounded somewhat rude).One final question: My SAT SCORES are slightly up. superscore(780 M,750 W,630 CR) [ Last time: 750 M,750 W,410 CR, This time:780 M,630 CR,650 W)…But at Berkeley and UCLA,it would be considered 2060.Can u tell me what are my chances at berkeley and UCLA?</p>
<p>BTW,are you at imperial college london.Do they consider CBSE score???</p>
<p>Also,is it REALLY true that cornell is not need blind?</p>
<p>I’m not going to sugarcoat anything for you. I don’t know about your chances at Berkeley or UCLA with those scores. Those schools fall into a greyer region with respect to Indian applicants. Imperial does not consider CBSE boards, or any other Indian boards for that matter, as of this July.</p>
<p>You’re not going to get an honest answer on whether Cornell is need-blind or not by posting here. Most of the people here will readily say that Cornell isn’t need-blind, because that’s what it says in large print on their website. What they fail to read is the small print, which says, “financial aid is extremely competitive for international students”. So now, you ask yourself, how can a college be both need-blind and offer competitive financial aid to internationals? Then, when a college counselor comes along to your town, and says, “I don’t think college is need-blind for international students”, you know that there is something wrong with what the website says in big letters. You will never really know, you can only either trust other people’s experience, and their conclusions from it, or you can trust the website.</p>