<p>Thank you all for all your responses. I felt really good after reading it. I knew that we don’t need to go to a ‘Super College’ to become successful and now reading your posts I realise that I can even create this ‘Super College’ experience in whichever college I go. Be it challenging curriculum or research… I’ll ensure that my performance and enthusiasm enables me to get it. If i can’t go to MIT , I’ll take MIT with me, wherever i go. Because… at the end of the day, it was not the ‘Brand’ i wanted, but the skills it imparts. 
Thank you all !!!</p>
<p>PS: @bbccpp : Thank you… This question appeared good because it came as a concern, straight from the heart of a passionate student from India who despite of having very limited resources aimed something very big.</p>
<p>Deprived: suffering a severe and damaging lack of basic material and cultural benefits.</p>
<p>So, are you “deprived”? No. Going to MIT is not a “basic” benefit available to anyone.</p>
<p>I interviewed a candidate I thought well qualified. He wasn’t accepted but made it to the final rounds before being “cut.” He went to another university where he graduated early and began working on his PhD.</p>
<p>The university doesn’t make the student. Only provides more resources for them to develop their talent. If you possess enough talent to be an MIT caliber student, then you should succeed no matter where you go to college.</p>
<p>So great attitude @SparshSaxena. Well said!</p>
<p>@ExieMITAlum… Thank you !!</p>
<p>Yes, @QuantMech is right about the graduate program being selective as well – there might be some degree to which some disciplines are more “predictable” in graduate admissions, i.e. your letter writers may be able to tell you a very good estimate of where you’ll get in, assuming you have great letters and they know you well and are “plugged in” to everything that is going on.</p>
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<p>Pretty much if you take challenging classes at a good school for those disciplines, then you’re going to learn to think well. The baseline requirement at MIT and at some schools is higher than at others.</p>
<p>As to what you miss career-wise that depends on what you want to do, and it’s specific to where you choose to go. You’ll have to do your own specialized homework there, nothing general I can easily say. Certainly not every school is the same, but I think you should keep in mind this process is so unpredictable that good students end up various places, and all those places correspondingly offer a high level as fit for students of that caliber. Simple thing is you’d have more to worry if it were a rule that students of your caliber almost always get into X or Y school and you didn’t - that’s the only case you’d find it potentially hard to find a school that fits your needs. You seem to be the norm rather than the exception with respect to what happened here.</p>