<p>I'm about to start my last year of high school in the Dominican Republic and I wanted to know what my real chances of getting into one of those colleges are.</p>
<ul>
<li>I speak Spanish, French and English (as my third language)</li>
<li>My SAT scores were 1790. My SAT II scores for Spanish were 800 and for French 790</li>
<li>My cumulative GPA (UW) is 3.8 and my weighted GPA is 4.54</li>
<li>I am doing the International Baccalaureate program in addition to having taken numerous honors classes</li>
<li>I have done 200+ community service hours</li>
<li>I played soccer for the Dominican U-15 team for two years, I played softball for the JV team of my school</li>
<li>I was the president of my class for two years (2007-2009)</li>
<li>I volunteered in a project of humpback whale monitoring where I did two catalogues and if I am lucky after an interview in a week I will be volunteer in a college investigation with UM and a local public hospital.</li>
</ul>
<p>Do you think I am being to ambitious by thinking about applying to one of these top schools?</p>
<p>MIT’s admission is extremely competitive for international students. I agree with the other poster, you’ll definitely want to improve your SAT score for any of those schools.</p>
<p>I don’t have a very very good english too, and I am also thinking in apply for a U.S. University. I have no problems with the math section of the SAT but my score in the Writing and the C.Reading sections is not good enough… In order to solve this problem I’m studying by the Gruber’s Complete SAT Guide, a very nice book with a lot of tricks and excercises that will help you in order to help your entrance in a college. Hope see you there – in the U.S. – and good luck =)</p>
<p>First of all, ignore suqmadiq, he’s been trolling.</p>
<p>Your SAT score is the only thing that’s hurting your application. Try retaking, or try the ACT. Other than that, you’ve got a good application. I think you have a pretty strong chance of getting in, your classes are really rigorous and you have a good GPA despite the challenging classes.
Good luck! :D</p>
<p>What’s your class rank/percentile? top 1%? top 5%?</p>
<p>Everyone here seems to be solely focused on your SAT score. Yes, you need to get it to 2100+, and actually 2200+ would be preferable. Your SAT II scores are good, however MIT requires you to take a subject test in either Math I or Math II as well as one in either Physics, Chemistry, or Biology E/M.</p>
<p>Honestly, your biggest weakness are your ECs. They seem to be fairly sparse or unimpressive. Having 200 volunteer hours, being on a soccer or softball team, and then being class president is not quite enough for these highly competitive schools. Most other applicants have these kinds of things already plus some unique talents or impressive activities or major accomplishments/awards. </p>
<p>That humpback monitoring thing could be interesting as something to talk about in an essay, but I’m not so sure how that and your other future ‘volunteering’ would be viewed on your application. Volunteering in general is not given a ton of consideration for top tier schools. Nonetheless, this doesn’t mean that you still don’t have a good shot.</p>
<p>At this point, just try and secure a couple of excellent letters of recommendation from your teachers and write amazing essays. Good luck!</p>