Hey guys. I am one of those (many) idiots who followed what a few hundred of thousands of students do each year and prepare for the JEE, even when I had other plans on mind. I used to dream about getting into MIT ever since I got to know about it in 6th grade. Sadly, I never really actively prepared anything for it, and when I got selected for a special batch in a coaching class in Delhi for JEE, I got into it without giving a second thought (partly because they told me that both SAT and JEE preparations could be managed together AND because they also told me they were hoping to put a lot of the students from that special batch in the top 100). I was never sincere towards my preparation, and ended up with a JEE Advanced AIR of 5.9k and scored enough to get Computer Science at BITS Pilani, Hyderabad Campus.
I must point out that I really loved coding and used to spend ample amount of time on CodeChef, Codeforces, TopCoder, SPOJ and Project Euler. I had started reading CLRS while I was in 11th and wanted to prepare for the IOI, but had to give up soon because I wasn’t really good at managing between coding and JEE prep. I have learned how to play the guitar, tabla and used to play table tennis, football and used to dabble with art as well. But the sad part is that I never really got too far enough to earn a medal, or participate in a tournament in any of the above mentioned activities. So basically I can just say that I know all of these but have nothing to substantiate my claims.
Another problem is that I never gave the SAT. Or ACT, for that matter. I will be joining college this year. So I have no research experience/work whatsoever. I am willing to do whatever it takes to make my chances increase, but would it even be possible? Has any student from BITS Pilani ever really transferred to MIT mid way?
(PS : Only one student of that sepcial batch that had 20 students actually managed to be in the top 100, and he was preparing for JEE practically since 7th. Others got ranks in hundreds or thousands.)
Thanks
First and foremost, why transfer?
I do not have all the data, but I heard of one student who transferred from BITS Pilani, Pilani to MIT and that was quite a few years ago.