My Chances: MIT, Harvard, Tufts,...

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

<p>Hey, I'm a white male junior at a public high school that I'm sure no one has ever heard of.</p>

<p>Just wondering what chance I would have at the following schools:
MIT
Tufts
Harvard
Cornell
Princeton</p>

<p>In that order.</p>

<p>ME:</p>

<p>Rank: 3 of ~450
SAT: 1540 (780 M, 760 V)
PSAT: 219
SAT IIs: Bio - 720<br>
USH - 710 <---------------- took these morning after prom, yuck
Math II - 690 (Retaking to get >700)</p>

<p>APs: Euro Hist - 4 Calc - next year
USH - did not take test English - next year
Java - next year</p>

<p>(My school does not believe in AP science :()</p>

<p>ECs:
NOSB - First in nation. Captain next year.
Science Olympiad - 2nd in state. Maybe captain next year.
NSB - Probably captain next year.
Math Team - Top scoring junior, 4th in state (2nd last year). Captain next year.
FPS - First in state twice. (Could not make competition date this year)
Swim Team</p>

<p>Additional:
BSA - Eagle Scout
Summer @ Brown
Brown book award
Research at proteomics lab
Took AME
Community service at food bank and soup kitchen
Entering Siemens Westinghouse competition
Going to try to get Biology Olympiad for school next year</p>

<p>Intended Major: Biology, possibly biotech.</p>

<p>Thanks in advance for your input and please don't hold back.</p>

2

<p>Everything looks good for a shot at all. I'll admit, before getting to "summer at Brown", I was picturing someone from a lower middle class background and a school that sends few to top colleges. Brown suggested a more middle or upper middle class background, makaing the bar higher....</p>

3

<p>Actually I'm not upper middle class at all.</p>

<p>The Summer @ Brown I only took a 1 week class and I had to have my parents drive me there and back every day. So it cost me very little. $500 of my own and $500 from my parents, which is cheap for a summer program. Well...not for 1 week but ah well.</p>

4

<p>Ahh...your school definitely seems lower middle class. No AP science? In that case, I hope you've taken every AP at your school. What's your GPA anyways? Btw, a 3/450 doesn't mean much if you go to some second-rate school.</p>

5

<p>Haha...I know it doesn't mean much that im 3/450. There's about 20 competitive students at my school.</p>

<p>Yes, I take every AP class except for like 2 history ones since thats all we have for AP (in addition to the ones I'm taking).</p>

<p>My GPA is a 4.8 but its out of a weighted scale that I haven't seen used anywhere else. I guess it would be equivalent to a 93/100. Around there.</p>

6

<p>hey, i go to an anonymous middle class school too with much the same situation as u described, so im basing my estimates on ad offs comments on my own chances, so here goes:
MIT:40-50%
Tufts: idk
Harvey: huge reach
Cornell: shoo in (maybe)
Princeton:huge reach</p>

7

<p>I think you have a decent chance, especially with the Math stuff. btw, what is NOSB?</p>

8

<p>Its National Ocean Sciences Bowl.</p>

<p>It's like National Science Bowl except only for oceanography and with a slightly different format.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.nosb.org%5B/url%5D"&gt;www.nosb.org&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

9

<p>hoplesshobo: How can Harvard be a "huge reach" when he has a 40-50% chance at MIT? I'm sure it differs with each person, but MIT isn't more than 2 or 3 spots behind Harvard, and one can easily argue that it is ahead of Cornell.</p>

10

<p>Oh wait scratch that last part about it being ahead of Cornell. (I misread it thinking you said cornell was a huge reach rather than princeton)</p>

11

<p>You have a great chance at these schools - it really depends how well you represent your nationally ranked activities on your essays.</p>

<p>Also - why are your test scores so low? Especially the Biology exam - you should retake it.</p>

12

<p>Well they are so low first off because i had prom the night (and morning) before I took them, which was bad planning.</p>

<p>I haven't taken bio since freshman year so I was a little rusty and my school has a horribly slow math track. I got one question wrong on Math 2 because I had never been taught parametric equations.</p>

<p>Anyways, I'm retaking those two (frankly, I don't care about USH enough) and I'm sure I can bring them up.</p>

13

<p>MIt 40-50%? no way.</p>

<p>just apply to all of them , you
are you competetive</p>

14

<p>Well based on your stats alone, you are definitely in the running at all the schools you've mentioned. However, you never know.</p>

15

<p>Bump + a few other questions.</p>

<p>Oh and I meant the AIME not the AME, I took the one you had to qualify for. Not that I did well on it, lol.</p>

<p>Here's my revised list of colleges:
MIT
Tufts
Harvard
U. of Chicago
Cornell
WUSTL
URI (im from RI)</p>

<p>Right now I'm leaning towards paleontology/evolutionary biology and I am extremely interested in it but is this even a reasonable thing to go into as far as jobs are concerned? I'm not talking about digging up dinosaurs or Jurassic Park, but you know what I mean...there can't be many jobs in paleontology.</p>

<p>Also, how much does it hurt you for a number of other students at your school to apply to the same colleges as you? Because I have liked Tufts for awhile and I mentioned to one person how they should check it out and now I can think of about 8 other people applything there. And only one person applied there from my school last year.</p>

<p>Any new insight on my chances is also welcome. Thanks.</p>

16

<p>Here is the truth</p>

<p>You are great, so are the 20,000 applicants that those schools see.</p>

<p>Apply to all of them, also apply to some other safeties.</p>

<p>If you make it to any of them, you are great and should really really be happy since everybody applying to those schools is competitive</p>