I am finishing my junior year, desperately need college list, MIT is my dream school, I spent too many time on Video game and did not study much, below are my stat, what are my reach and match schools? I only have UT Austin on my list, are CMU, Duke or Cornell too far to reach?
Asian male, middle class, TEXAS residents
Interest in computer science or engineering, ok with finance, definately not in social study
SAT 1570 Math II 800 Physics will take in August
GPA 4.29 weighted
Class Rank Top4% in very large and academic strong public school
13 AP courses taken
Some volunteering works
Summer intern oversea
Co founder of a startup company
A few club members
Play 5 years of orchestra and 8 years piano for fun
Playing 8 tennis for fun
What’s your unweighted GPA?
What are your school size and location preferences?
The school only provides weighted GPA, I recalculated as 3.8/4.0. I can go out of state top 25 schools.
You should be fairly competitive everywhere.
I think MIT would be an awesome fit for your stats… for engineering, I recommend GeorgiaTech or IllinoisU (medal went to gtech and highly highly recommends)! Honestly your stats are really good, so you should do well anywhere best wishes xx
MIT is a reach for everyone. It could happen, but more applicants with your stats are rejected than accepted, so give it your best shot but focus on identifying other good options.
You seem like you would be happiest at a tech-focused school, perhaps one with a bit of a “gamer” culture. I agree that RPI sounds right on target. Georgia Tech too.
If you can get into the Turing Scholars program at UT, that could be an option you’d be foolish to turn down. Rice accepts about 50% Texas applicants and would be a great choice. Computer science at Carnegie Mellon is extremely competitive, but if you can get in it is a hard option to beat. Also if you can get Direct Admit to CS at UW-Seattle, it’s a top program, but OOS students are at a disadvantage there, and it’s not better than Turing if you can get that. At UC Berkeley, on the other hand, you’d have a slight advantage as an OOS applicant, if you don’t mind paying the hefty OOS COA. If you’re interested in co-op programs, look at Northeastern and RIT. Cornell is definitely worth a look too. (Duke seems like the “one of these things is not like the others” school on your list - why Duke? I’d be thinking Johns Hopkins or UPenn, in that tier, before Duke.) Purdue CS is also excellent and continuing to rise in reputation.
OP, Duke is investing heavily in quantitative science. They’ve recently recruited some great faculty members from places like Harvard and the University of Chicago.
https://trinity.duke.edu/initiatives/quantitative-initiative
Sure, the grades would probably reduce your chances to MIT from maybe 4% to 2%. That’s going to be lousy no matter how how you look at it. You would be an auto-admit for both UT and Texas A&M and both have top engineering programs.