<p>To Hriundeli, or any one else though,</p>
<p>Is MIT more number driven or than Caltech?</p>
<p>I am just making a hypothesis that maybe Hriundeli was rejected EA because he got a C in psychology…</p>
<p>I don’t know, just guessing…</p>
<p>I got rejected from MIT because I forgot to change “Caltech” to “MIT” in one of the essays.</p>
<p>I think the consensus is that Caltech’s admissions process is far more numerically driven than MIT’s.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>hmm… Does having written down the wrong name make that big of a difference?</p>
<p>So, about the cheating/copying homework thing…</p>
<p>As a senior, I was a student member of the COD (that’s MIT’s Committee on Discipline, for all you prefrosh). I saw what can happen to people who cheat and get caught (and believe me, the course staff is likely to notice). It is not a habit that you want to get into now.</p>
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</p>
<p>I doubt this greatly (having hung around and worked for MIT Admissions for half my undergrad career). You may have just been a better fit at Caltech, y’know?</p>
<p>I am not a MIT students or anything, but I don’t think MIT appreciates students who are too lazy to do the work.
It’s just not an attitude that you should be having.
If you know the stuff, then tell you self" oh this stuff is easy! let me finish it fast" when you are doing your hw. It’s like at work place you don’t get to pick what do you, and you can’t simply refuse to do work because its “easy”.
I know some geniuses at my school. Knowing the material does not stop them from doing it hw.
this year we had a 3.4 UW student get into MIT EA, but HE DOES HIS HW EVERY DAY!! (except he loses them all the time >.<) But he was at USAPhO camp and MOP twice, and was on Black MOP for a week. GENIUS!!
You CAN get in with a low GPA, but you have to show why you are worthy.
Finding excuses like" I know the stuff but didn’t feel like doing hw" isn’t really a legitimate excuse, nor make you anymore worthy.</p>
<p>
That’s what I tried to say in the post. Because I wanted to attend Caltech more than any other school, I did not pay too much attention to other applications - hence the result. I am sure people on the admission committees can feel the difference between an applicant who really wants to attend and an applicant who applies just for the heck of it.</p>
<p>i have a question for anyone who knows how the mit admissions works.</p>
<p>do they recalculate your gpa on a scale different from your own high school?
like my school doesn’t take into account A-'s and B+'s so how would my gpa come out?</p>
<p>I think it’s holistic so they’ll look at everything, rather than try and recalculate your GPA.</p>
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</p>
<p>No, you’re confused about what “holistic” means. The fact that they look at everything in your app doesn’t mean that they won’t recalculate your GPA according to their own scale. Honestly, GPA is utterly useless as an indicator of anything without recalculation, because there’s no way to usefully compare everyone’s grades. Schools use all kinds of wacky scales for GPA (stuff like 1-9 instead of 0-4, for instance, or giving students a bonus GPA point for an honors class and another bonus point if it’s AP).</p>
<p>That said, prime235, I don’t think they care about +/- modifiers. My high school didn’t use them either.</p>
<p>I think every institution’s admissions dept. recalculates the GPA. At the university where I teach, applications come from public high schools that never weight grades beyond the 4.0 scale and never give plus or minus grades. They also come from private schools that have created their own 5.0 or 6.0 scales. Without recalculation, some schools would have an unfair advantage in that system. Despite the rhetoric of high-powered private schools, sometimes the work a student has done for a 4.0 in a public-school honors physics class is just as rigorous as the work a private-school student has done for a 5.0.</p>
<p>Thinking you can get into MIT without doing your homework in high school is like thinking you can become an Olympic athlete without working out. If you want to achieve goals, you have to do the unpleasant preparatory tasks necessary for those goals, even if you don’t like them.</p>
<p>Honestly OP, you sound just above whiny and lazy. Usually I am not this blunt, but saying you shouldnt do your homework because you have better things to do is a horrible attitude for anybody wanting to go to MIT. If you were to get in, there would be times when you have homework, lots of it, that you might consider pointless and stuff you already know. Not every class will be the thought-expanding class you expect it to be.</p>
<p>Perhaps you need to reconsider your academic aptitude if trivial homework even holds you back from doing the things you do. It should be somewhat trivial and stuff you can do on the side of things, or perhaps while if you do not want it to slow you down. I have done the following things while also doing homework:</p>
<p>lead a World of Warcraft raid
tutor other kids in different subjects
watch TV
watch movies
have sex (yes its possible, and with enough coordination makes you last longer =P)</p>
<p>And I dont even consider myself that smart. </p>
<p>So if you arent doing your high school homework, then perhaps you dont deserve a spot at MIT. It shows you are too lazy and/or have the wrong work ethic. Plus I get the feeling you only think you want to go there because its the most prestigious tech school in the world, not because you think you would enjoy going there (its a lot of work). Change your attitude or change your college aspiration.</p>
<p>Just a couple quick points on things I’ve read in this thread:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>When the OP’s mom told them to just copy, that was wrong, in my opinion. Entirely and completely and utterly wrong. That was bad advice. That said, I also think we humble people on CC forums have no right to take digs at someone’s mother saying they “have no moral center” based on one bad piece of advice.
I’m just saying, you can say your opinion (as I did) without personal insults directed towards someone’s mother who isn’t even here in this forum.</p></li>
<li><p>The others seem to be right here, no matter how you look at it:
Morally: Do the work given to you. You just should.
Academically: I don’t care what school it is, schools hate cheating and laziness.
Practically: Life can be really un-fun. But even when life requires you to do things you don’t always want to do, you have to do them. I think of all my parents have done for me. I bet it all wasn’t easy or fun or what they wanted to do; but they did it for me and my family.
Professionally: I can’t think of any boss in the world that would be OK with the idea that you’ll do your job, so long as the assignment is something <em>you</em> deem to be necessary.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I urge you to reconsider, if there is still time. Learning that sometimes you must do things you don’t want is a huge lesson that, in a perfect world, everyone would learn before going off to college or, heaven forbid, the real world.</p>
<p>You won’t survive MIT if you can’t manage to wade through homework. The admissions folks know that everyone, even the most brilliant, will hit the wall at some point in a class and that the only way to get through the class is to muddle through the problem sets. Lack of a work ethic is deadly.</p>
<p>As to copying HW, that is appalling. I agree with Beatlesguy – a 3.2 is the LEAST of your problems. And don’t think you’ll get into CMU with a 3.2 and a poor work ethic, either. There are plenty of folks out here who find classwork easy and still manage to do their HW. It’s part of being a responsible person. They don’t do it because of “college admissions.” You are a student – doing your best in school is your job. </p>
<p>Don’t think for a minute that you’d be able to pull this kind of stuff in a real-world job. People who earn paychecks (even large ones) have to put up with plenty of piddling assignments and work that is sometimes “beneath” them, too. Even engineers. Even doctors. Even investment bankers.</p>
<p>I agree with the advice above ^^. You’re young; you have some time to raise that GPA. In think that most students admitted to MIT have taken the most rigorous courses available at their high schools, and they have excelled in them. Could you be admitted to MIT with a 3.2 GPA? I can imagine some unusual scenarios in which this could occur: 1) You got cancer in high school or experienced some tragedy that derailed you for a year or more; 2) You completely blew it your freshman year but have been a stellar student ever since (for reasons you can explain). Perhaps there are others. Still, all of the students I’ve known in my area who have gone on to MIT were the strongest math and science students in their schools, and they had other gifts and talents as well. If you are serious about going to a school that will challenge you, show those around you that you can do excellent work, even when you think it’s boring.</p>
<p>
[QUOTE=CalAlum]
you have some time to raise that GPA.
[/quote]
In theory, the highest GPA possible if I get 100 on every thing is 3.5.
[QUOTE=Seiken]
I have done the following things while also doing homework
[/quote]
That sounds like bad work ethic… doing 2 things at the same time ;P</p>
<p>
[QUOTE=Seiken]
Plus I get the feeling you only think you want to go there because its the most prestigious tech school in the world, not because you think you would enjoy going there (its a lot of work).
[/quote]
I enjoy prestigious tech schools.</p>
<p>
[QUOTE=Hunt]
If you want to achieve goals, you have to do the unpleasant preparatory tasks necessary for those goals, even if you don’t like them.
[/quote]
I know. Will Olympic athlete have the time to do their high school hw if they are training for the Olympics?
It’s the education system’s fault to prepare math person with US history.
But, since MIT require some good work ethics… I have to do the homework from now on.
The goal to get into a good college just come to me around a few months ago.
If I was thinking about getting into MIT at my freshman year, I would be 3.9 to 4.0 GPA. But my freshman year, I just want to go to state colleges, so I use my spare time to work on other stuff interests me.
Back then, I can’t find a reason to work so hard on everything, because my goal was different, I do w/e possible to complete my goal and that’s it.</p>
<p>Now, I can still try my best. Wish I can get in.</p>
<p>That sounds like bad work ethic… doing 2 things at the same time 
</p>
<p>I call it time management. Its not like it was particularly important work I was doing.
*
I enjoy prestigious tech schools.*</p>
<p>Problem is: it doesnt seem like you could handle them. Whether you are overestimating yourself or underestimating the tech schools: dont.
*
It’s the education system’s fault to prepare math person with US history.*</p>
<p>texture-less math grind anyone?</p>
<p>Economically efficiency depend on people do what they specially good at.
How did Paul Erdös do in his histroy class, I wonder…
I never see schools just reject English grind people because they seem to be better than math grind.
but math, puff, just unimportant thing, no one cares… since “Asian people are suppose to be good with math and there are so many Asian people out there.”
Talking about sterotype…
“It’s possible that Henry Park looked like a thousand other Koreans kids… yet another textureless math grind,” said Marilee Jones.
People who only loves math will be doomed to darwinism, because the sociality and colleges put math as the most unimportant subject in the world. No body cares about math, no one in my school have real passion for math.</p>
<p>In my life, there were never anything I think I can do and failed, I think I know enough to know what college are good enough for me.</p>
<p>Even mathematicians need to know about the world around them. And if you think places like MIT and Mudd don’t care about you as a well-rounded human being who is also capable of scientific inquiry at the highest levels, well, my friend, you are deluding yourself.</p>