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Getting in to a Top Tier College?
IvyLeague Engineer asks: "I'm currently a senior at a top rated public school and I look forward to majoring in Electrical Engineering. I've already been accepted into Carnegie Mellon University, so I don't need to worry about any 'safety' schools. However, I still have my sights set on getting into a school such as MIT or Cal Tech. My grades are high (95.6 on a 100 scale), I have several leadership positions in clubs, however I'm pretty sure that's not enough. What else can I do to improve my chances of being accepted there? I've already been deferred from early action at both institutions and I'm afraid it's too late to do much at this point. I'm sure there are other people like me wondering just what it takes to get admitted to a prestigious college."
Life's too short to worry about getting into the "best" schools. Go somewhere you'll enjoy, socially and academically. There's incredible research being done by brilliant professors at public universities too. Do well as an undergrad, and you should have no problem getting accepted to a big name school for your master's, if you need resume candy.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
Try becoming the king of somewhere.
Can you become a minority in short order?
From what I have heard, it is what stands out in your application that gets you into an MIT or Caltech. They get a ton of applications... but how good are you relative to the rest of the applicant pool.. and how much can You contribute to the school. You seem to have good leadeship skills... good grades... and all you need is an absolute positive attitude. The last is essential as you have to really sell yourself all the time. Really. If you want to succeed in anything.. it's all about selling yourself right. However, I also agree that an MIT or a Caltech is not necessarily the best "education". Wherever you go, just work hard and spend time to get a broad education (as in... work hard...party harder :-D). You will learn amazing things I promise.
A few years ago, I was in a situation very similar to yours. I went to a very good public school, had excellent grades and an impressive palette of extracurriculars. I applied to the same schools that you mentioned. Ultimately, I was accepted at Carnegie Mellon and Caltech, and turned down by MIT. In the end, I chose to go to the University of Michigan, and I don't regret the choice at all.
To be quite honest, going to any high-end research university is going to provide you with great opportunities for learning and getting involved in research. Carnegie Mellon is a fantastic school, and although you might think MIT or Caltech are more "prestigious", people in the industry you're hoping to enter know that CMU has absolutely world-class programs in CS and EE. I might also add that CMU is more of a "general" school than a tech school which specializes in science and engineering. Chances are that you will have more of an opportunity to nurture your interests outside of EE by taking other classes if you choose to go to CMU.
Of course, I don't mean to slight MIT and Caltech at all. They definitely deserve their reputations, and they're two of my top choices for graduate school because of the excellent research that goes on there. While you're an undergrad, though, you'll want to be in a setting where you'll have good teaching, have an opportunity to get involved with research and major-related clubs, and hopefully have some fun. My advice to you is not to stress out about getting into MIT or Caltech, as you've already gotten in to a great place to be for undergrad (or for graduate school as well, seriously where did you get the impression that CMU is less than top tier?). If you are fortunate enough to get into either of the other schools, go on some campus tours, talk to some current students, try to meet some professors, decide whether you like Boston, Pittsburgh, or Pasadena better (all great places to live), and also think about what kind of lifestyle you want to have in college, and what you want to do outside of your major.
In any case, though, you're already into one of the best places you can be for college, so congratulate yourself and stop worrying! At this point, the main deciding factor in what you get out of your college education isn't which school you go to, but the initiative you take to take advantage of the resources available to you (in terms of faculty, ongoing research, etc.) once you get there.
Anonymous Luddite: "What do you think of the dehumanizing effects of the Internet?"
Andy Grove: "Not Much."
Statistically, this REALLY improves your chances.
Speaking out of personal experience, I attended one of the schools you mentioned for a year and then left because I couldn't stand being in a nerdfactory like that for four years of my life. I now attend the University of Washington and couldn't be happier -- the quality of the women is SO MUCH higher, the academics aren't terrible, and I'm not getting raped with student loans. If you really want to sit in your dorm for the next four years and spend your weekends drinking Mountain Dew and playing Xbox, then you'll probably fit right in at the one I mentioned (no names here), but if you want a legit, well-rounded college experience, I'd examine larger public options within your state.
It's essentially not about grades -- Don't focus on grades on your application or essay. It's not even about SAT scores. They assume that everyone will have good grades and SAT scores. Focus on what makes you unique and sell sell sell yourself.
It's all about what you do with your experience. You can go to less prestigious school - say a Purdue vs. a MIT. If you do realize the advantage is the size and diversity of the school. Make sure you do things that matter during your study. Participate in projects with some stature. Intern with innovative start ups. Most importantly, network with people - especially people who are going into your profession, business, finance and accounting. Network with faculty. Never waste an opportunity to tour a business or work on projects outside the school. *Have a social life.* Later on, the network of people you create will have greater value than your degree itself does anyway. And those networking skills will turn into leadership skills.
-- $G
This is apparently especially true in Canada. I have a nephew who is from the US, but is studying science at a university in Canada. Back at Christmas we were talking about what higher education is like there. He was saying that about 75% of the students in his graduating year are made up of "visible minorities". It's absurd to call such people "minorities" when they are clearly in the majority.
Beyond that, he finds that they get preferential treatment, even over Canadians. With many of the TAs being Indian, he says that they tend to treat Indian students better. Mind you, that may be because the Indian students are the only ones who can actually understand what the Indian TAs are saying.
He was even telling me of one situation where a group of Indian students were openly "collaborating" on a test that was to be individually written, in plain sight of the Indian TA. The TA apparently knew they were cheating, but wouldn't do anything about it. It was only after several other students writing the test actually yelled at the TA to take the cheaters' tests, fail them, and then kick them out that something was done. But my nephew was saying that apparently those Indian students went to the professor, outright denied the cheating, likely made threats of filing a racism complaint to the professor's higher-ups, and were allowed to rewrite the test. Of course, in any American school those fuckers would've likely been booted from that course, at the very least.
So if you are a minority, maybe Canada is where you should go. It sounds like you'll get preferential treatment, you'll have free reign there to do what you want, and they don't have the guts to stop you.
However, I still have my sights set on getting into a school such as MIT or Cal Tech. My grades are high (95.6 on a 100 scale), I have several leadership positions in clubs, however I'm pretty sure that's not enough.
Getting a great education and trying to be the best are noble pursuits. But if I may, I'd like to give you a perpective on another outlook on life: I too did good studies, I wasn't an impressive student as you seem to be, but I did more than okay considering I may not have you abilities. Then, fresh out of school, I became a software engineer, then I rose in the company and ended up getting a good position and a really good salary for my age.
Then at 30... realized I had a fat bank account no life at all outside work. That's when I quit my job to start "lowly" studies in the completely different field of gunsmithing. Where am I now? I work on guns, I get a low salary (at least compared to what I got before), but I have week-ends off, I don't work my butt off unless I want to, I can see my family at 5pm, and I get up everyday at the same time and eat a proper lunch and dinner with them at the same time everyday. I sleep well at night, I lowered my blood pressure and cholesterol, I have time to bike more, which made me thin out, etc etc...
So I'm not the super-hotshot I was striving to be. I'm a blue collar now, so many of my former "friends" consider I'm a failure and turned away from me, but I'm happier and I'll probably live longer as a result. Sure I'm not earning what I used to, but then I realized I don't need the latest PDA, a collector car or a big house.
My adice to you is, while you have a great career in front of you, try to remember the pursuit of happiness is more important than a good career. If I were you, I'd chill out and go to CMU, which is a great university you've already been accepted in, and I'd try to fret over more important things in life.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
While school is usefull, actually doing what you love to do, every day!, is much more important. At least for a software engineer. In my view, the main optimization criteria should be to allow yourself the most freedom to do your own projects, so the best school is the one that takes the least ammount of your time. You should however get a diploma from a recongizable enough place.
The only reason to seek out the best possible school, is that if you don't have enough passion to work on your own stuff, continuously, for years, but you still have ambitions. In that case you'll need someone's help to whip you into shape. But that kind of mindset is somewhat alien to me, so while I can see that a person like this may need the best school in order to get the best he/she can be in a particular subject, I'm not even sure if it makes sense to strive to be the best in something you are not passionate about enough to do it on your own.
By the way, even though I went to a decent engineering school, the most usefull subjects in the log term turned out to be philosophy, and advanced philosophy.
If I were picking a school for any criteria other than being easy, I would pick the one with the good reputation in regards to non-engineering subjects.
- someone who has been happily writing code for last 20 years on an almost daily basis.
Worked for Tom Cruise.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
I don't think he was talking about getting technical training at MIT or Caltech but
an education at Harvard and Yale. What gets you into these? If anything breed.
Best if your Papa already went there.
What you do while you're in college matters more than which college you do it at. Let's say person A goes to Harvard and spends their time smoking up, drinking, and barely passing their classes, while person B goes to West Podunk State, where they graduate with high honors and had a leadership role among students. Which person would you expect to be accepted to a graduate program? Which person would you hire?
Secondly, the stats you quoted are just fine for getting into a good school. Don't listen to your parents on this one: They're view of what's average is probably developed by what they hear from their friends about their kids, which is typically exaggerated. Usually a combination of mostly A range high school grades, good SATs or ACTs, some extracurricular involvement, and a compelling essay (that shows them your personality, this is crucial) are all you really need.
Also, make sure you really like what you see about the schools in question. Spend some time at MIT or CalTech and don't go there unless you actually enjoy the environment. Yeah, it may look good on your resume, but it's probably not worth the 4 or 5 years of misery to get it.
I am officially gone from
Moreover, there is nothing more important when it comes to your future career opportunities than your networking abilities and ability to make friends and contacts who can help you decide where you want to take your life. Your most important contact might be someone from a nearby school who you met at a party once who has nothing to do with your major.
And there will be little nudges and profound unexpected events that affect your life in ways you could never have predicted.
It doesn't matter so much where you go, as what you do there. And even then, random chance will radically change what happens. My life and the lives of many people I've known over the past decade and a half would be both radically different and yet possibly much the same, had that one coin I flipped come up heads instead of tails, and had I gone to a different school.
Your life will incorporate a striking amount of /dev/random despite your best intentions otherwise.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
Link. While it'd be the last thing to use, it becomes useful to apply when selectivity interferes with admission to the point even state universities join in.
If it really didn't matter if you went to a selectivist run college or not, there would be no problem of the name, selectivity, and the prestige being removed. That means the education itself matters, nothing else.
Maybe it's time to consider selectivity a liability and not an asset in education - not the other way around.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Your right that it is too late for you to start beefing up your activities. Most schools require that you say how long you've been doing any activities and how many hours per week you do them. So if an admissions officer sees that within the last month you've started ten new activities/sports/jobs/whatever, they will realize that your scrambling to add to your application. If you do anything, make sure you have an awesome essay and make sure that your references are people who know you well and will say how great you are. When my best friend was applying to schools, he had a reference that was bad mouthing him.
Live Long and Prosper
75 percent of MIT students have at least a combined math/verbal SAT score of 1430. If you don't have that, chances are poor that you will get in unless you are "more equal than others", i.e. you are anything other than a White male.
.75 to get the number above the 25th percentile. (You might want to subtract international students, or just estimate.)
l
Here's a homework assignment for you:
SAT score is a good enough proxy for IQ that most high IQ societies will accept it in lieu of an official IQ test. You can find out the mapping between SAT (and other tests) here:
http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/GREIQ.aspx
1. Find out the 25th percentile SAT score of the top 5-10 schools. (They are very similar.)
2. Find out the freshman population of all these schools in total, times that by
3. Using US population pyramids and the IQ distribution (bell shaped curve), estimate the total number of US students who these schools can actually draw from to get such a student population.
4. From there, estimate the probability that they will accept you based on SAT score alone.
(Hint, it's pretty damn high).
As to your case, colleges stay pretty constant in their 25th or 75th SAT percentiles. I think the SAT may have been renormed recently, but it was still the same test around the early 2000 era.
http://www-tech.mit.edu/V122/N40/40usnews.40n.htm
http://www.cmu.edu/ira/CDS/c_9900.html
MIT was 1410 versus 1270 for CMU (25th percentile). That means if you take a random sample of the population who would just make it into the 25th percentile of CMU, there would only be 1/6 of them who would just make it into the 25th percentile of MIT.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
Works better if you combine a legacy and membership in a well-maligned fraternity. To have such going for you, having a pulse and a GED would get you in.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
If you were applying to grad school instead of college, I would highly recommend "crashing" a conference in the subject that interests you. This recently worked at my own university for someone who otherwise might not have been a very attractive applicant. This same person also pulled weight with a connection he had to a post-doc already in the department. I suppose there are undergraduate analogues for this approach. If you don't have a personal connection, there's not much you can do. However, you can still crash a conference, colloquium, seminar, and meet the acceptance committee without too obviously being a schmoose. The people who select candidates are human beings, and if they find you attractive as a person, they'll find you more attractive as a potential student.
Suppose it all depends on your temperment.
Your chances of everything are greatly enhanced if you know the right people. Getting into the right school enhances your chances of making the right friendships. (It's a form of positive feedback ... the rich get richer, etc.)
Given that you have your current situation, you may or may not get into the school of your choice. Don't worry too much. You don't have to stop after one degree. The undergrads don't get to do the interesting stuff anyway. Your best strategy now is to start working on where you will do your master's. If you get to know faculty at the schools you want to go to, you will be able to find someone to take you on for your next degree.
BTW. Don't limit yourself to American schools. You can save a pile of bucks by going to school in Canada. There was recently a list of the best schools in the world. Most of them were American but several were in Canada. Tuition is a lot less up there and their dollar is worth less, so you get more for your money. Do that and you may be able to afford to do your post grad degrees at MIT or CalTech.
Have you ever thought that there's a reason these places are selective and have their admissions standards set how they are for a reason? If, by the midpoint of your senior year of HS, the admissions board doesn't think you're cut out for them, maybe there's a chance they're right? 4 months away from graduation is a little too late to change your academic course significantly. The very fact that you've put this off as long as you have long might, in itself, be an argument for why you might not be cut out for a top-tier school.
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
I'm an undergrad at MIT (8 & 18 if you were wondering*), so I feel like I can answer your question pretty well.
First of all, don't worry about being deferred from early action. The people who get on early action are VERY good. Being deferred doesn't lessen your chances of getting overall. At this point, I think you just really need to play the waiting game. Don't pester admissions. They have enough people who think getting in here is a matter of life and death that they don't want to be bothered. That's not to say that you should contact them with questions or important information, but don't call them and ask them how to make sure you get in, or send them a package every week with your most recent high school chemistry test grade. I think you see what I'm saying.
As far as advice on how to get into college, I think the best counsel I can give is "don't do stuff specifically in order to get into college." Life is too short to screw around with trying to make yourself appear like a "perfect candidate" (whatever the hell that means). People, both students and parents, take college admissions much too seriously. During high school, I just had fun. Now I'm enough of a nerd that I thought some of the things like math competitions were fun, but the point is I didn't ever do anything grudgingly just to try to get into a school. Find something you enjoy and that you're passionate about and then just do that. You're much better spending your time on a project or activity you find interesting than specifically trying to get into school X. And what if you don't get in? Well, if you were doing something interesting, you probably had fun and learned stuff along the way. If you were trying to be Joe Perfect Candidate, you've got squat to show for your time.
For you the more relevant question advice I can give is probably how to choose between schools after you've gotten in. Don't be afraid to take the financial aspect into consideration. A degree from a slightly less prestigious school is probably worth 30k less in debt. I had the chance to choose between MIT, Caltech, and Harvard on essentially equal financial footing. Visiting Harvard made it pretty clear that it wasn't the place for me. Sometimes you'll just get those vibes. MIT vs Caltech is a pretty tough choice, and it's something you just have to make based on personal feelings. I think I could have been happy at either place, but I just felt a bit more at home at MIT, right from the start. Meet some students and profs, talk with them; just get a general idea of what's going on. Deep down, you have to like the place you're going to school, because you're going to spend about a 100 hours a week hating it**.
If you have any specific questions, you can reply to this and I'll give a shot at answering them.
* that's physics and mathematics, to the uninitiated
**a deep hatred of the Institvte is a longstanding tradition
You mean like DeVry? I went there :).
The biggest key to getting into a Top Tier School is to have your rich daddy make an extremely large donation, that'll get you in for sure. "Sleeping your way in" might also help.
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Seriously speaking, if they don't accept you, they don't deserve you! Go to the best school you get accepted to and work hard. Do the same as you are doing in high school: work hard, volunteer/lead some clubs and organizations, and most of all have some fun. Life is too short to worry about things like this.
It's not necessarily where you go for college, it's what you do there and afterwards. Some employers might even shy away from Top Tier school grads as they might be perceived as overpriced. Don't get me wrong, a reputable institution is a must but there are many good community colleges/universities that are well respected, too.
Good luck in your pursuits.
I just wanted to point out that while you may be limited in what you can do to improve your chances at this point, don't abandon all hope. I was deferred when I applied to MIT and Harvard for early admission to the class of 2006. While I didn't get admitted to Harvard, I did get into MIT, and in retrospect that was the best thing that could have happened to me (what was I thinking when I applied to Harvard to study engineering).
As a side note, one of my best friends from high school, considered the local math genius, did not get into MIT that year. Its generally accepted that College admissions is a form of black magic, and even those directly involved in the process seem unable to shed much light on its inner workings. Oh, and in case you were worried, he ended up going to Yale, so no harm done.
"Si vis pacem para bellum" -Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus
correct, none of the schools he mentioned where in the IVY league. anyhow the IVY league is just a bunch of uptight snobs anyhow.
Unless you mean Stuyvesant, this doesn't matter. It's actually better to go to a lower-ranked public high school than to many higher-ranked schools, public or private. The marginal bump you get for going to a "good" high school doesn't mean much to admissions officials, because grading standards are arbitrary and, frankly, because high school is such a poor indicator of future success (the only exceptions to these are at the extraordinary high end -- Stuy, Andover, Exeter, Bronx Bcience -- or where an admissions official knows the school's tough on grading so your 3.9 or whatever it works out to be looks a lot better). On the other hand, you can get geographic and socioeconomic status diversity points if you raised hogs in North Dakota and educational diversity points if that meant going to the same eight-person one-room schoolhouse for K-12.
Well, IvyLeage Engineer, you know that none of these schools are in fact in the Ivy League? That's not to say that they're not prestigious, and certainly not to say that they're not good schools. Honestly, though, I'm surprised you didn't apply to Princeton.
Congrats on the GPA. I'm almost certain that it won't mean much. The fact that it's on a 100 scale in high school is part of my point -- scales and policies are nowhere near uniform across high schools (they aren't in college, either, but they're closer). The leadership positions in clubs can be meaningless, but they can be great, too. It kind of depends on what you get out of it, and how well you communicate that to the admissions office. I'll assume that you had to submit a personal statement or something. If so, and you feel you did a good job conveying the meaningful life lessons you learned (it doesn't matter if you actually did or not, especially at these schools), then you should be golden. Honestly, though, as I hinted at earlier, your personal life is sometimes more important. The real world is something we all have in common, it's the best objective measure of the challenges you've faced, and it's more likely to resonate with real people (admissions officers are people too). I'd say the only things more valuable on an application are meaningful major academic achievements, standardized test scores, and maybe a really stellar recommendation letter by a faculty member who both knows you well personally and has worked with you extensively.
Unfortunately, I think you were right in that there's not a lot you can do now. If you submitted the applications before you got last semester's grades, you could send them an update. But random extra statements or recommendations at this point just look overly anxious, unless the school has an explicit invitation in its application instructions.
That said, chill out. CMU is a great school. There are people who would, literally, kill to get in there. And if you do get accepted to MIT or CalTech, you might be able to finagle more financial aid out of them by asking them to match what CMU offered. A tactful "Well, I really do love your school. It's just that financing school is important to me, and Carnegie Mellon offered me $10,000 more in grant money per year, so it's a tough choice..." usually does the trick.
Good luck.
Good.
How can you be accepted into CMU already but still be considering other schools? Did they send your decision early, or did you do Early Decision?
What's wrong with CMU? I'm going there. (Well, that's reason enough not to go for many people.) Seriously, how much better is the EE at MIT or Caltech than at CMU?
Good.
Don't get me started on this. Did you have any free time to just participate in things and have fun?
No, because MIT rejects 9 out of 10 of their *fully qualified* candidates, after rejecting the students whose credentials weren't good enough. It's part luck, and part showing that you're not "all about academics". (MIT has an essay on this on the application, probably because they've had a lot of mental health problems when students push themselves too hard.)
/me loses all hope for humanity...
Stop obsessing over this. Go to the best college that accepts you, learn a lot, and go from there.
Carnegie Mellon and MIT both have great engineering schools. Caltech does not. It is probably the best school in the country for science, but it is terrible for engineering. For example, every undergraduate is required to learn special relativity and quantum mechanics, but there wasn't even a computer science major until 2 or 3 years ago.
I can speak only from the IT industry, but from what I've seen experience is vastly more important than education. Why are you going to college? Is it to learn and do interesting things there? If it's mostly for the resume candy then personally, I wouldn't bother.
I only went to a tech school and ended up with an Associate degree. While I did learn useful things there, I probably could've jumped right into the industry instead. Don't go to college just because it's the "next" thing you're suppose to do. I'm fairly positive that I taught myself vastly more than I ever learned in school.
I'm a software engineer who's well on his way to the top tiers of the IT pay scale. I honestly believe my education has relatively little to do with that. Either way, good luck to you.
Yes, I am a smart ass; it's better than the alternative.
Actually I was accepted w/ a 35 ACT and was eligible for a full scholarship at Case Western. Didn't do it though -- that place is way too close to the ghetto for my tastes.
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First off, isn't this a bit late? Most undergrad applications are due by Jan 1st, a rare few by Feb 1st. For this part of the year you should be smooth sailing -- most high school teachers will cut you more slack than any other student, so rest a bit. But, DO NOT take this to mean do no work. This means take a day or two off and go do something you like, if you can. If not, see if you can get involved in a senior project. At my "top rated public high school," seniors who had a majority of AP/IB classes could focus the last two months of their senior year (essentially after APs, IBs, etc) on any project that interested them. You wanna go for an EE? Do you have an interest in art? Try a mural somewhere at you school. If you've any experience in photography, see if you can do a portfolio on the last stretch -- senior year. A student typically had an advisor/sponsor on the project. That's something that can add to your resume for college: "Currently planning a project at my high school to blah blah blah."
What is an Ivy? From Wikipedia: "The Ivy League is an athletic conference comprising eight private institutions of higher education located in the Northeastern United States." Yes, an athletic conference. So, MIT, CMU, and CalTech are not Ivys. So, if you're looking for an Ivy League school, how much research have you really done? Have you contacted professors at any of these schools. I know where I'm studying for my BSCS right now, email is the most common form of communication: you usually get a response within 6 hours. So, email some professors in the EE depts at the schools. Tell them you applied, say you'd like to ask them a few questions, and pick their brains.
Here's a hint: most "Ivys" have great graduate programs and average undergraduate programs. Find one that emphasizes its undergrad program. It's also not necessarily too late to go scramble to find a school (which may be the point of this thread)...Or study abroad for a year and apply next year. But in any case, pick something that has a good undergraduate program.
Oh, and one last thing: before you accept, visit every campus possible. Get a job now, and work your ass off to buy plane tickets if you have to. I wasn't even considering my current school until my mom convinced me to visit. It became my top choice, I applied, and two years later I can't stand the thought being anywhere else. Make sure there's a social life. You don't want to be stuck in your dorm or a study lounge on the 19th floor because not only do you not have time to do anything, but neither do your friends.
And now for some qualification: So, how did I learn this? I'm a 2nd year CS major at Rice University. I applied to Rice, CMU, Columbia, Brown, and American (in preferential order). I got into all but Columbia and Brown. I did a senior project, I even studied abroad last semester too and met a lot of people who were putting their first year of college off. I declined CMU because I felt that it was too restrictive (i.e. you can't move freely from one college to another), they were in some financial straits (but I'm not sure if they still are) compared to Rice, and in my opinion had a greater focus on grads instead of undergrads in CS. This may have all changed in the past two years, so make sure you check it all out again. I wasn't considering Rice until my mom (who never shut up about Texas schools) persuaded me to visit the Rice campus. I absolutely loved it. I met with a CS prof and spoke to him for half an hour or so. I met a dean of another department. Any questions? Just drop me an email.
--<Mike>--
Go find one and get into it. Preferably at a big firm or a small one with a big reputation, but anything will help. This shows huge initiative and you'll get some valuable experience in the work environment that other students won't have.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Apply! Most people don't even try applying to top schools because they immediately assume they'll get shot down. You have a better chance of getting in than you think you do.
I'm a EECS sophomore at MIT. The impression I've gotten from the admissions office is that grades, leadership positions and all that are pretty much there to weed out the people who couldn't handle the school, and what's really important is the personality they glean from your application and whether they feel like you're a 'good fit' for the school. This is actually quite important, at least at MIT. A common saying around here is "Getting and education from MIT is like taking a drink from a firehose." If this isn't the place for you, if you don't absolutely love it here, you're going to end up bitter and hating it. I'm heard people joke more than once about how the "M" in MIT stands for "Masochist". At the same time, if this is the place for you, it doesn't matter how huge your workload is...you'll still be happy. Don't worry about trying to do extra things at this point to get you into college; grades and extracurriculars and SATs only get you so far. Concentrate on finding the place that you think you'll be happiest at...even if that's not a top-tier school. That's what really matters.
Go to CMU. If you don't love it, then try to transfer to MIT or another school you like the name of better. For some schools it's easier to transfer in. Besides, you'll have recommendations form professors with recognized names at the University level, since they'll be CMU faculty.
Those recommendations and projects you work on at CMU will get you in many doors.
Then you'll have CMU AND another top-tier University on your resume.
Really, it makes very little difference. So just to go where you can get in and afford, work hard and then go to a top university for grad school. People care where you got your Masters not where you got your Bachelors.
MIT rejects a whole bunch of prospective students who have perfect SAT's, because that is all they do. They look for something unique about you. I'm sure I got in because I started my own programming business and sold my services to professors at NYU (near where I lived)...this was almost 30 years ago, so that was quite novel at the time. They've also been emphasizing sports lately (especially unconventional sports). I believe they recently admitted the female junior rodeo champion from one of the western states. They have a strong gymnastics team, etc....
Are you following your dream or one that has been suggested/pushed.
What is important to you? Lots of money , to what end?
Do you want to be able to walk to work?
how about the beach? mountains?
Want to live in a house or apartment, small town or large.
Where you would rather live Madison WI or Plano Tx?
It's a great school, with incredible opportunities and a good support system, I loved it there.
Besides, in the long run it doesn't matter... once I got my first job, not a single person (other than CMU grads) has cared that I'm an alum. Some of my smartest colleagues have degrees from 'lesser' institutions, and some of the dumbest people I've ever met have degrees from 'better' institutions. It's just a name on a piece of paper once you're gone.
College is what you make of it. You can go to the best school in the country and get nothing out of it if you put nothing into it. Likewise, you can go to anywhere on earth and get a great education if you're willing to work for it.
you're going to die anyways, unless you plan to become a cyborg in the near future
I like the subliminal messaging ;-)
I was accepted early action at Caltech, and since it was my first choice that's where I ended up going. After one term at Tech, I realized that it wasn't for me, so I transferred to my state university. At least three of my friends there also transferred after the first or second year. I think it's difficult to imagine how stressful and insane a place like Caltech is until you're actually there. It's small, about the size of my high school (~900 undergrads), and everyone there is brilliant. People there say they aren't competitive, but that's a lie. It's just that they aren't cutthroat like they apparently are at MIT. Students at Tech basically waste four years solving unreasonably difficult problem sets until 4:00 AM every night and getting mostly crap GPA's since there is way less grade inflation than at other schools (Ivy's). A lot of the prof's don't seem to give a damn about the undergrads and don't know how to teach. A few of them are alright, though. Another thing that bothered me was being around nerds 24/7-- it seems cool at first, but I got tired of it quickly. Oh yeah, and if you want to start a relationship in college? Forget about it at Caltech. There's not enough time, and even if there was, I didn't find any of the girls interesting. If you're a girl, well-- let me just tell you a saying the girls at Tech have-- "The odds are good, but the goods are odd." Another thing-- Caltech is in a great town, and the weather is nice and everything, but you'll hardly ever have time to see it. Most students seem to never leave campus because they are always so busy with work. When I was in high school, I thought college was all about academics and learning shit. After a few years in college, though, I realize that it's more about becoming a person who is well-adjusted and prepared to get along in the world. If you go to Caltech, I can almost guarantee that you will be the opposite of well-adjusted (unless you transfer :P So yeah, I would say give CMU a fair chance. I have a couple of friends who are very happy there, and it seems like an awesome school.
Well I thought about MIT for a while when I was a senior, however the process early or late is very difficult. Top rated high schools do not matter so much as your individual scores in test like SAT, SAT2, and ACT. Have you taken all of those? I'm not sure about the late process but i know for the early, there was also interviews that had to be setup. If you have not done the SAT or SAT2 (in my state we only are only required to take the ACT) then it might be too late. However like others have said, even though MIT is "the Best," the amount of research being done there is not greater then at other institutions. You do not go to college just to get your degree in EE, you go there to do research because not only will that open your job choice but it will also be great qualification for your masters. If you ever watch the discovery channel or science channel when they have specials on engineering (shows like 2057) MIT sometimes is not even mentioned.
As someone who went to one of these "prestigious universities," my advice would be to pick a university that is a good fit for you, not what U.S. News and World Report rates as the "top college" or what people think is the most prestigious. I went to Harvard for my undergrad, and I did not do well there. None of the faculty or my advisors took an interest in me, and, despite what you hear, the classes (at least the ones I took) are very hard and the students are incredibly smart. It led to me essentially giving up by my junior year and trying to coast through. And this wasn't an uncommon experience among my circle of friends. My roommate nearly failed his senior year, and another two of my friends had to take time off because of their poor grades.
I will say that I went back to Harvard for my master's, and as a graduate program I enjoyed it much more. You have closer interaction with the professors in your field, and the classes are appropriately challenging for a graduate student. I was much happier as a grad student there.
Going to a top tier school for undergrad is not that important. Go somewhere where you will be happy, and focus on getting into a good grad school.
I have a few things to say, both about your choice of major and choice of school.
Choice of major Electrical Engineering is a practical field of study, so it trains you to become a tinkerer, as opposed to theory majors like Math, Physics and Computer Science that train you to become a thinker. If you've always been a tinkerer, you should consider being trained as a thinker, so go for a theoretical science major.
Choice of school You should decide your school by merit, not by reputation. CMU is a great school for Computer Science. For example, Chronicle's Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index 2005 is a helpful guide (the link shows ranking for Computer Science, but you can find ranking for other disciplines). As faculties are productive with the help of their graduate students, that means you get better education from both professors and teaching assistants (who are typically graduate students).
What you may have considered as "safety" school might, ironically, rank higher in that index. Remember that any ranking (especially well-known ones) will be subject to political maneuvering, so you should not take these seriously. When you turn on the radio, do you think their "weekly top 100 chart" reflects listener interest, or record labels PR interest?
A better way to rank the school is by visiting the school, attending a few classes if you have the time. This way, its environment and facilities make it a more personal appeal to you, and you are more likely going to be a happier college student that way. As always, you should only consider a school an option if you're accepted.
I once had a signature.
It's been said:
"There's a time and a place for everything...and that's college."
Seriously, keep in mind that there's a lot more to college than academics. This will most likely be your first experience out of your parents home, where you will be free to make all your decisions for yourself. You will surprise yourself with how you choose your priorities differently than you do now, when subconciously much of your choices reflect your parents' ambitions for your future. In a year from now, you will almost certainly be a completely different person.
I had similar grades and qualifications. I was accepted to a range of schools for undergrad study. In the end, I went to the public university and scholarships covered everything.
BUT...I found the state school offered things those prestigious schools didn't have. First was diversity---it's a worthwhile experience to interact with those less academically inclined, and an elite school just doesn't allow for that. Partying is another. Make no mistake about it, you need to get it out of your system sometime in your life. There were also more aspects of dating and socializing to explore, and explore them you should. You should join lots of extracurriculars that you never considered before, the more random the better. Lots of those will not appeal to you, some will, and those will open you to becoming a more complete person. That will help you understand what situations you are most comfortable in and design your future personal life. If all the school offers is intellectual snobs, you're only going to have a chance to explore socialization around the AD&D board.
The academics at the state school weren't too shabby either. Look for one with an honors division and get into it. The quality of education in such a program is at least as good as at any elite private school.
After undergrad, I earned a PhD from one of the two target schools you mentioned, and saw firsthand that my undergrad education was just as good as anyone else's. Then I went to the other for a postdoc. If you are really interested in academics, save these elite schools for graduate study, and enjoy your undergrad years.
The undergrads at those schools are not well-rounded. Unless you already know that your only idea of a relaxing evening is AD&D or building a rocket (activities still available elsewhere), and are sure that wild parties have nothing to offer (they're severely under-rated), don't go to the places you mentioned. Hey, there's nothing wrong if you're the first type (I could have gone that route), but be sure that's who you really are.
Carnegie Mellon is not that great a school for EE/CE. Try the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as they consistently rank in the top 5 schools for EE/CE/CSE/CS.
Going to UIUC is around $22,144 per year ($598 ~ $681 per credit hour) so expect to pay...
at least $81,920 for a BSEE.
at least $86,400 for a MSEE.
at least $120,960 for a DEE.
If I were you... I'd go to my local community college for an AS in physics then transfer to UIUC. Doing this substantially reduces the costs...
$42,000 for a BSEE.
$52,000 for a MSEE.
$86,000 for a DEE.
If you go this route, and keep your grades up, you can get into any school of your desire.
Another smart thing to look into is a postgraduate degree from the Air Force Institute of Technology, as a commissioned officer... If you did this you'd get to work with really cool shit (stuff you'd never get to play with in the civilian world) and get paid for going to school!!!
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I graduated from Caltech in 1998. Since them I have founded an internet start-up, closed it down, worked for myself, worked for others, done low-level coding and high-level meetings, found myself and lost myself again. Right now I'm about three months from graduating law school and heading off to a high-paying job in Boston, but I'm miserably single and praying there's someone out there for me. You have to find a balance between work and personal life, eventually. I'm lucky, because my firm is pretty strict about kicking people out at 5 pm. And I've got a bunch of friends in Boston who know people, and maybe I'll find someone who's right for me. The best advice I have is know what you want, and go for it. It may be a long road, but you will eventually get there.
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
If I ran an engineering program, It wouldn't be a matter of selecting the people with the best grades, or even the best test scores. Plenty of people will work hard or have raw intelligence, and if I have a good program, they will queue for it. I'd focus on what people can show me they can do already, with what they have. I'd want to see applicants building their own robots, remote controlled craft of all sorts, a solar greenhouse, a water filtration system perhaps, because these indicate to me an active mind interested in creative problem solving, and the initiative to get things done.
Remember, engineering used to be a term synonymous with "professional genius." Have you done much on your own initiative? And if not, why not? Do you not have questions you want answered? Engineering may be something you get bored with, if you don't have that drive, and that drive should be obvious by now. I'll take a grimy Edison or a von Braun over a valedictorian with a complete modern science and math education, but no fire.
An Edison can learn the prerequisites on demand. A feckless valedictorian can't learn to be an Edison. Which are you? That's how you get in. And if you somehow slip through anyway, you'll shine at whatever school you go to, and you won't care, as long as you have toys to play with, problems to solve.
I'm a thirtysomething Ph.D. candidate in computer science. I travel a lot for conferences and meet a lot of undergraduates, both from top-tier schools and from small places nobody's ever heard of. I have yet to see any substantial difference in the undergraduate programs.
Let me repeat that: I have yet to see any substantial difference. On the other hand, I've seen tons of difference in undergraduates themselves.
When I was a high school senior I wanted to get into MIT. When I didn't get into MIT, I was crushed. After all, MIT was the place to be, right? It was a dynamic environment, it was the world leader in everything I wanted, it had luminaries like Ron Rivest, it was... etcetera. But I didn't understand the reason why MIT was all those things. MIT is what it is primarily because they do an excellent job of recruiting dynamic students, hard chargers who will self-organize, who will aggressively pursue excellence, who will do their own outside research, who don't settle for just getting good grades, who are willing to put in the hard work required to make all of this a reality.
And guess what? There are hundreds of thousands of highly dynamic students in undergraduate programs across the nation. All that you have to do is (a) be highly dynamic, and (b) seek out other highly dynamic students. Then you'll form the nerdcore of your department, and as long as you keep that nerdcore alive, great things can happen.
I started off at the University of Houston before transferring to a small liberal-arts college in the Midwest (Cornell, which is older than Cornell University). From there I got into the graduate program at the University of Iowa. None of these sound like top-tier schools, right?
And yet I've spoken at Black Hat, at CodeCon, at OSCON. I've been recognized by international organizations as a first-class expert in my field. My cell phone speed dial reads like a Who's Who of computer security. Not once has anyone, anyone, given a damn where I did my studies. All they've ever cared about is whether I'm dynamic, whether I've done my research, and whether I've got integrity.
You say you got into CMU? Congratulations. It's a good school. Here's what you should do to begin a path to success. First, figure out who your advisor is going to be. Send him or her an email as soon as you find out and ask for a meeting. At this meeting, talk to your advisor about your interests, about what you'd like to do, about things you know you don't like, about the whole nine yards. Your advisor will probably smile and nod and give you some good, if generic, advice.
Then come back two weeks later and do it again. This time, show your advisor something you've done in the last couple of weeks, something that wasn't assigned to you for class. Repeat this process every couple of weeks. Sooner or later your advisor will say "you know... you seem to really be interested in this. There's a research project I'm working on which could use some help. Would you be interested?"
And once that happens, brother, you are in. Throw yourself into the research. Ninety-five percent of the time it'll be boring crap, but five percent of the time it can be truly excellent. Plus, the lab will give you the chance to get practical, hands-on experience with the stuff that your classmates will only know from books. By the time you're a senior, you'll have your name on a couple of academic papers. You'll have traveled to a few conferences. You'll have met a lot of interesting people and you'll have some good contacts.
And then one day at a conference you'll bump into this little gnome of a man with an impish grin and a very quiet, friendly demeanor, and you'll talk shop for twenty minutes. He'll smile--he never stops smiling, really--and during small talk over lunch you'll mention something about your undergraduate days at Slippery Rock U
Just as an addendum... One of the best high schools (if not the best) is the Bronx High School of Science:
v antages_of_community_colleges
"Almost 100% of Bronx Science graduates go on to four-year colleges; many attend Ivy League and other highly selective schools. Bronx Science counts 125 finalists in the prestigious Intel (formerly Westinghouse) Science Talent Search, the largest number of any high school. Seven Nobel Prize-winning scientists, also highest among all secondary education institutions, and five Pulitzer Prize-winning authors are also among the many notable Bronx Science graduates."
And about going to community college and then transferring, I contend that this by far the best option:
1) You get to stay in your community and close to your family.
2) Tuition is substantially lower than traditional four-year institutions.
3) Four-year institutions often give priority to students transferring from community colleges
4) Research indicates that students who begin their higher education career at a community college are more likely to transfer to a higher quality four-year institution than if they had started at a four-year college.
5) Most professors at community colleges have at least a master's degrees, many hold doctoral degrees.
6) Community college professors are solely dedicated to teaching, and classes are generally small.
7) Holders of a two-year associates degree have more immediate earning potential than junior and senior four-year students without a degree.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_college#Ad
...and if so, are you willing to change that?
MIT and Stanford rejected me, and CMU waitlisted me with a 1590 (out of 1600) SAT and reasonably respectable grades (just below top 10% in my high school). My roommate was valedictorian of his high school and was also rejected by MIT. I still ended up at a highly ranked school, but not the very top. Unfortunately for us extremely good test takers, the best schools want, and can get, everything. That said, it sounds like you might have close to everything, so don't let me scare you off.
I know some people who work in admissions at a big university. If you really want to get into a top school these days, and have no morals, there are a few tricks.
The easiest one is to overcome a drug addiction and write about that in your essay. Otherwise you have to have a child (while underage), be a minority with an actual disadvantaged background, be the child of a celebrity or politician, be a published author or win a well known science compitition.
The caveat here is that if someone can proove you lied on an application, that college will share that information with others and it will follow you around. But... overcoming a drug addition is hard, if not impossible to disproove and at some schools is worth more than perfect grades or test scores.
The other thing you can do is find a job in an admissions department. They are typical bureaucracies, and prone to corruption just like any other. Faculty like to be involved with admissions, but at large institutions, there are a few "pinch points" which do not have faculty oversight (if you can get a faculty member to fight for you, that works too). Get to know the head of the admissions office (not the upper management, but the middle manager who runs the office and handles the final details of who makes the cut at the bottom of the list). Get to know the programmers who write the admissions software.
Many of these people are disgusted by admissions policies at their school. Some of them want more quotas for minorities and find their existing system racist. Others disapprove of the benefits given to people who have bad histories (drugs, pregnancies...), others dislike the legacy admissions. Whatever the case, admissions offices at elite universitites around the country routinely admit a few students every year who shouldn't get in.
The top schools have the resources to feed the of the ultra-motivated, but if you're just getting around to thinking about it now, odds are you're not one of those people. Grades and clubs are not by themselves enough to get you admitted into one of the most prestigious schools, but what they will get you are scholarships and grants.
My suggestion to you would be to find a school, even a public university, with an emphasis on undergrad research and enough of a pocketbook to offer you a significant chunk of tuition. While you're there, if you're serious about your field, network with professors, do undergrad research, attend undergrad conferences, and get into summer research programs and semester-long study programs. Everyone that's competent will come out of a four-year undergrad knowing the basics of their field -- what sets people apart is the research that they've done and the contacts that they've made.
If money is not an issue then sure, go for it. Personally, I was accepted into Carnegie Mellon and the financial aid package they gave me would've had me up to my ears in the typical undergrad debt for years. Instead I took a full ride to a less prestigious liberal arts school that still had a great faculty for what I wanted to do, and I augmented their shortcomings with summer REUs and semesters abroad. I can say without a doubt it was the better decision, and also that when it comes down to grad schools the research experience and the people I met mattered far more than the undergraduate institution. In industry from what I've heard the degree can matter more initially, but if you're going for the kind of job that wants ivy credentials, generally you're gonna want a masters at least.
This isn't answering your question though. If your heart is set on one of those schools, to improve your chances of admittance the best thing you could do is to get in contact with them. Having a letter of recommendation from a professor on their faculty is huge, especially if they have a grant and they're willing to kick in partial tuition or something. Unfortunately, unless you've done some killer research, any last-minute attempt to suck up to a professor will come off as what it is, a last-ditch effort to shmooze your way into the school.
I was a postdoc at MIT. Compared to other schools, they did not appear to value undergraduate education. They are THE research university, not THE engineering educator. I had friends that went to MIT for undergrad, you meet the best and brightest and people that will be running things down the line, but you probably could get a similar or better education at a large research active state school. MIT does not need great / dedicated instructors, since the undergrads will do great things no matter what.
For that matter, I agree with previous posts on public vs private. For engineering, why go to a private school? In many cases, the benefit is not there. I considered CMU too, since I wanted to double major in engineering and music, but I changed my mind later. The cost difference is significant.
I went out-of-state to Georgia Tech for undergrad. At the time, they did not do much hand-holding either, following the MIT mold but at least it did not cost me 35k per year.
Reputation is probably more important for graduate work, not your undergrad degree. Most any place will make you a competent engineer. Only a few places will make you a great researcher. To get into a good grad school, keep a 3.7 GPA, do some research with a faculty member while in undergrad, and do something in the summer (work for industry, do a REU). And remember, they pay engineers to go to grad school. Tuition is paid and you get a stipend of 20-30k or so.
No matter what, be sincere. Don't pretend to be something you are not for the benefit of the admissions committee. That will be a very quick turn off, if they think you are doing stuff only for the sake of being attractive on paper.
(1) CMU is an excellent school, and Pittsburgh is a cool place (or so I've heard), so you need not worry.
(2) I was deferred by MIT on early action, but they accepted me anyway, so I wouldn't fret too much yet.
(3) It's too late to do anything that might affect your admission chances, short of winning a Nobel Prize or curing cancer, or the like.
(4) To get into a school like MIT you need practically straight A's, graduating in the top 1% of your class, lots of honors classes, evidence that you may someday be a world-class mathematical, engineering, or scientific thinker, above 700 on all your SAT scores, recommendations that all say you are god-like, an interview that goes extremely well, lots of extracurricular activities, preferably with some involving charity work, the right combination of certifiable geek credentials and well-roundedness, and an inspired application essay. And even then it's a crap shoot.
(5) Although an MIT education will certainly help maximize your intellectual potential, it might also subject you to a lifetime of prost-traumatic stress syndrome. You might very well find that CMU is more to your liking.
|>oug
Coincidentally, I did my undergrad at Carnegie Mellon, where I studied computer science and cognitive science. I'm now pursuing my PhD at Caltech doing computational-neuro-stuff.
IMHO, Carnegie Mellon, Caltech, and MIT are all fine schools. If I were to choose all over again though, I probably still would've wanted to go to Carnegie Mellon for my undergrad, as it's a more well-rounded school. I'm not too familiar with MIT, but Caltech is very much focused on science and technology. This is great for grad school, but I think you should have a more well-rounded education as an undergrad, with exposure to many different fields. Not just exposure to different fields, but people in those fields. Some of my best memories from college were late-night discussions about life, the universe, and everything with art and philosophy majors. Plus, Carnegie Mellon has women. It sounds like a flippant remark, but consider that -many- people meet their future spouse in college.
Also, if you're interested in CS or electrical engineering, Carnegie Mellon is on the same level as MIT/Caltech, and better in some specific areas. If you want to do robotics, the power of Christ compels you to go to Carnegie Mellon.
That said though, Caltech's undergrad populace also has this unique "frenzied" quality to it which I only found in a small sub-population at Carnegie Mellon. I like the frenzy, but some people don't. If you get a chance to visit Caltech, I definitely recommend interacting as much as possible with the undergrads to see if you jive well with them.
On a random note though, I don't know if you're into this, but Caltech and MIT both have active ballroom dance teams, which are pretty much non-existent at Carnegie Mellon. Of course, I didn't do dancing at all while I was an undergrad, but it's something I'm pretty into now.
If he's willing to relocate it's certainly possible to become a minority in short order just by changing your surroundings. For example: Non-hispanic whites are a minority in several U.S. Cities. - If that happens to be his situation.
Unlike you, of course. You're the very picture of relaxed humility.
From my experience of the US education system (TA, Grad student) the class sizes seem to be very big. In fact, the class I was a TA for had over 1100 students in it, one professor, and an army of grad student TAs who taught the class sections and labs (it was intro physics). As an undergrad in the UK (Oxford), I had three or four hour long 2/3 on one meetings with professors each week (different ones for different areas), along with the big lectures. The cost involved to a US student is actually comparable with going to a private institution here.
.... in the book" "Yes that is a little vague, hang on I'll call him" (2 mins of phone call later) "OK, he describes it as ..... but if you're confused he can meet you tomorrow at 10:00". This was something that the students I TA for could only dream of - they barely get chance to come close to a professor in most of their courses. Friends who studied engineering had a similar experience - lots of direct contact. Yes, they expect you to work like crazy, and the transition from high school to university is tough, but I feel like the attention and guidance I got was much more than my colleagues, all of whom were at high ranked US institutions.
There are a few differences though - I had picked my "major" before I went (maths -note the S because I was in the UK), in fact it was the only subject I studied, which gave me a bit of a jump on all my fellow grad students here. The social life was a lot of fun, the academic staff were very willing to help - a literal conversation with one of my tutors about quantum mechanics - "I don't understand what means by
Now, for research, on the other hand, it's a different matter, but as an undergrad, think about it.
ObDisclaimer: I work for San Jose State University and never got around to finishing my Bachelor's (though I'm working on that, and am currently a SJSU President's Scholar). I do have 10 or so years experience as both software developer and sysadmin. The opinions to follow are mine and not my employer's/school's, yada yada.
Despite years of attempts to quantify "education" in terms of standardized tests, class sizes, and other metrics, the one thing I've learned over the years is that learning defies quantification. This is true especially among the highly motivated like you. I've worked with everyone from high-school grads to folks with doctorates from MIT, Stanford (fairly common in the bay area where I live), and the advantages I've been able to note are that:
I've seen little evidence that high-end institutions have inherently better teachers than those who work for (say) the average State University or even Community Colleges in many cases. Their research might be unbelievably cool, but that says little (if anything) about their instruction. The best instructor I've ever known teaches at a CC...
I would love for a high-end grad to rebut me on the following point, but I see most of the real advantages evaporate once you have a few years of work experience under your belt--and they evaporate a lot faster than the resultant debt does. Mind you, my point isn't that these schools aren't better in whatever metric you want to pick--it's that what you go through to get there isn't worth it in the long run. In the long run, the work is what matters, not what name is on your diploma. If you're smart, motivated, hard-working, communicative, and do neat stuff, you're just as well off at any school in the longer term.
You're obviously exceptional or you wouldn't be making this kind of decision. I encourage you to question your assumptions (and those of your parents, teachers, and whomever else is pushing you to the high-end) and do a long-term cost/benefit analysis of your own. Maybe your conclusions will point to me being full of crap, or maybe you'll be surprised.
"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana." --Groucho Marx
As a Junior in college, I can honestly reply that your best bet is to get lucky. I had credentials that equal or better everything you put up, and I got into 0 first-rate schools. Got into Carnegie Mellon, Reed College and Pomona College. Going to a "second rate" liberal arts school was the best thing that ever happened to me, although I'm more interested in pure math than engineering.
P.S. Either that, or write a good essay.
Academics want to propagate academia, but only with new thinking. Find something really, really interesting to you. Read all the papers about it. Read all the papers of the last couple years. Think about it a lot. Ask questions. When no one and no paper can answer your question, you've got your research interest. Describe that in your application, and the top schools will give you money. I wouldn't believe it if it didn't work for me.
The only catch, of course, is that reading a hundred papers, and stopping to fill in all the gaps in your knowledge so you understand them completely, takes a lot of time.
If you're the first one to think of the idea, by default you are the world's expert on it. If you're not the first to think of it, you can still be the best by caring about it enough to research it more than anyone else. The top admissions committees want you to be the best in the world at something new, and you will be rewarded.
My advice: Learn to spell the name right. It's 'Caltech', not 'Cal Tech', 'CalTech', 'Cal Poly', or 'PCC'.
I've done some work as an alum-rep for the admission dept of Caltech for the last few years, and as Editor of the school newspaper we did a series on admissions I can tell you getting perfect SATs really don't do much for you over having very good SAT scores. SAT scores are such poor predictors fo student performance that other than bragging rights they don't mean much after a certain level (meaning perhaps above 1850/2400).
More important is what classes you took (e.g., did you duck the advance calculus class for the regular calculus class, or did you take all the offered AP classes and some at the local community college), and what you teachers think of you relative to your peers. If you can get a teacher say that you walk on water, or you are smarter than the last student they know that went to MIT or Caltech, you are probably golden. If on the other hand, you can't get a very good recommendiation from a teacher (meaning they say way more than yeah he's nice, quiet and got A's), don't even bother to apply.
Caltech used to do interviews, but gave up quite a while ago. They studied it and like the SAT, the correlation seemed to be pretty low and it was pretty time-consuming for little payback. Different interviewers were looking at different things and all had biases that were almost impossible to normalize out.
But to second the parent poster's comment. Stand OUT. You don't have to join 20 clubs, just one or two where you stuck with it for say 4 years (maybe it's too late for you, but perhaps people will be reading this). Any admissions person will see through the fact that when you list that you play piano/keyboard or program your computer in your spare time, and are part of NHS and honor role, that you probably haven't done much in your highschool career and will probably not bring very much to the school (because if you are part of a band that's gone viral, wrote part of the linux kernel, or was the only Sophmore president of the NHS you probably would have said so in your application, right?). Leadership isn't just about being "president", or "treasurer" of the club. Most admissions folks know that many HS clubs have 2-3 folks that "do", but most of the organizing and motivation is done by the faculty sponsors. If you are one of the "do-ers", you have to figure out how to make this shine through your application.
On the money side, there's something to be said about going to a less wallet challenging school, but at least Caltech is pretty good on the financial aid front. Although all debt is something serious, but at least college debt is something that can be considered an investment. Of course you wouldn't invest $100,000 in something that would only pay back $1,000/year in increased salary, if you think it will pay back more, it's not a bad investment. Life isn't about getting the best ROI, but using the resources available to you have effectively. If the resources are available to you (e.g, loans, rich uncles, lottery tickets, whatever), and you can use those resources effectively (e.g., make a positive ROI, don't go into life crippling debt), then I don't see any good reason to maximize ROI...
Lastly, of course, be introspective. Most people who go to MIT, Caltech, Stanford, Princton, Yale, Harvard, etc, are in the top 5% of their HS classes. If 95.6/100 is where you stand, that's realistic, but what do you have that the other folks don't? Everyone has got something they are which is unique and important, but most HS students often haven't found it yet (this is something ususally discovered in college or even later in life), but if you can figure it out and make it show through your application (e.g., on the caltech application, they usually have a box that you can fill with anything you want, don't be creative in this box, be assertive and introspective).
Remember, the admissions committee doesn't know you and they get a bazillion applications that look the same. Students that apply to college often forget there are people with IQ's greater than 100 r
About "top-tier schools" "Top-tier schools" offer you networking opportunities you simply won't find at most public schools or less well-known schools. They also can offer you resources far beyond anything you'll find at lesser establishments. Want to study in X country? The best schools can easily set this up for you and finance it too. The absolute best schools also offer financial aid beyond what's available at lesser schools and publics. THAT SAID: They are totally overrated as far as the impact they'll have on your future. If you're not a networker/schmoozer, then all the posters on here are right in saying you should chill out and take the best option you get admitted to. Second tier and near-first tier schools have more than enough resources and great faculty who can give you all the experiences you want to take advantage of academically. I spent two years meeting with kids who were willing to sell their souls to attend school where I worked and graduated from. The kids that impressed us the most were the kids who clearly didn't need us or who clearly has specific reasons for wanting to study with us. Trophy hunters are pretty easy to sniff out on an application and don't impress anyone. Also, yeah, if you're graduating in 4 months, you really don't have much a chance to improve your application in any deep way that would bump you into contention for a higher tier school. Realize this. Accept that this is the result of choices you made long ago, and then go to Carnegie and kick ass in all their programs. I went to an Ivy for college. On the good side I got to rub elbows with famous and brilliant people, befriend future leaders of the free world, and live like a pampered king for 4 years. I also was exposed to all kinds of great ideas and am confident I can talk to anyone about any subject persuasively. On the bad side, I met a lot of jerks who I will spend the rest of my life watching ascend to power and killing the "are you living up to your peers?" voice in my head is a daily ritual necessary to preserving my sanity. Skip school for a day. go someplace completely quiet. meditate, pray. do whatever you do. And ask yourself what's important to you. What you want to learn and get out of college. I guarantee you can accomplish it at 80% of the four year schools in this country. It's just a matter of overcoming your pride. I wish someone had said these things to me when I was in high school...
else, fuck 'em !
when the so called elite decides of something, there no reasoning.
you'll be better off somewhere you're wanted !
With that aggravating beauty, Lulu Walls.
It's probably too late to be worrying about it now, but do some research on the people already working/studying there and see if you can get yourself involved or make yourself useful to them somehow. Get a foot in the door.
The axiom, "it's not what you know but who you know" is often used negatively but there's no reason you can't turn it to your own ends.
I've met probably 5 graduates of the University of Michigan for every MIT or CalTech grad in Silicon Valley. They must be on to something, or maybe the have a secret cabal. If I had gone to UM, I'd probably be in on it.
If you're not smart enough to ask someone besides /. for advice, there's no hope for you :-)
Now, if you want to pursue a career that requires a top-tier degree, that's different. For example:
For other cases, I can't see spending the money. Once you're out of school for a few years, no one cares where you went to school anymore.
Hello, thanks for the interesting post. I had a couple of followup questions for you.
1st. If you had 1 year before you started college. What can be done to make yourself stand out? Do you have any examples of things that impressed you? (I'm thinking of applying to Grad school/Business school.)
2nd. I have 2 young children now, both under 4 years old. I know they are too young now. But time flys by without noticing. I hear all about soccer mom's that have the kids in 5 different activities and I wonder if that is what matters? I always believed that 1 or 2 focused activities were better. What would you do to prepare your children for the admissions process?
Thanks!
You can always transfer.
I was a weak student in high school; I was waitlisted at then rejected from Harvey Mudd so I attended Rensselaer for a year. During that year I stayed in touch with the Mudd admissions department; I took classes to make transferring work smoothly, made sure I did very well in all my classes, and even did a bit of research. When I reapplied to Mudd the following year, I was accepted. I attended and got the exceptional undergraduate education and eccentric hard-working brilliant community that Mudd is known for.
As I understand it, schools have some sort of agreement not to actively recruit transfer students, so you would have to pursue this yourself. At least with a small school like Mudd, the admissions department was happy to help me prove myself. The transfer process seemed much more sane than the rat race that is undergraduate admissions; I was later told by the decision-makers in admissions that they were just hoping my grades were good enough so they could let me in.
There are no guarantees, but this worked for me.
While I'm sure you can appreciate other people's comments about 'not needing to get into a top tier school', I'm inclined to think that they did not attend MIT, Cal Tech, or another equivalent school. I do agree with one thing - the quality of teaching is not significantly different between MIT and, say, another school, but the rigor of the courses and the extracurricular activities is what sets MIT apart from other universities. I chose to come to MIT over CMU and CalTech because of the people I met here, who, for the most part, share your academic interests and support your endeavors far more than at other schools.
You aren't necessarily paying for a better education, but for the resources the school has to offer. MIT has a department for the sole purpose of facilitating academic internships - the UROP department (Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program). Through this, several of my friends have been hired to work on projects featured on SlashDot, as well as many other projects that have less media acclaim. Also, in my numerous job interviews, I've noticed that interviewers certainly favor names they know over names that need explaining (Harvard is definitely guilty of this - once an interviewee says they went to Harvard, the interviewers have a habit of focusing on that one interviewee. MIT does something similar, but only when an Ivy League isn't around).
That was my rebuttal to people's unfavorable reply to top tier schools. Of course you should try your best to get in. If not, it won't be the end of the world, but if you never strive for your limits, you'll never be successful (which, as other respondents have noted, is based on you and not your school). For MIT, it takes something special - something abnormal and out of the ordinary. Starting a club, getting published, dedication to research in high school; these are things other MIT students have done to gain admission. Participation in math and science competitions is also helpful. And, unfortunately, it depends on your public school. Schools with a large number of applicants generally only get a few of the applicants in, unless you go to Thomas Jefferson School for Science and Mathematics, TAMS, OSSM, etc.
I wish you luck and hope to see you at our institute next year.
-Blitz
A lot of people here are telling you that top tier schools aren't worth the investment in terms of money, and they're largely correct. However, if you don't go to a school you're really proud to be a part of, then you won't get as much out of it as you could anyway. If you can get excited about going to a school that isn't the best of the best, then by all means, that is your best bet, but don't "settle" just because of some numbers in a RoI equation.
Hi there prospective first-year. I go to Columbia University, School of Engineering in NYC. As many other people have pointed out, you don't need a top name school to succeed in industry engineering. Actually, it is probably more important that you do well in whatever school you go to and in whatever concentration that you pick. That said, where you go to school is very important. The top tier schools have strong alumni programs which give you industry and government contacts and better opportunities. However at the _top_ schools, you'll be in league with a large number of people who received >95% in their classes as well. You may find it much more difficult to get the good grades there than in high school. Due to all that hard work, you want to make sure that the majority of the students there are going to be doing after graduation what you think you want to do. For example, most of the engineers at Columbia end up working at investment banks making obscene amounts of money their first year in industry. The reason why many people in engineering industry don't see the benefits of a top school in engineering is because the people in top engineering schools are making gobs of money in other industries. You also want to make sure that you like the student life at these schools before you kill yourself trying to get into them. Just because you're a top student doesn't mean that you'll get along in their student culture. I'd suggest you participate in one of the sleep over programs at one of their upperclassmen dorms. Do not sleep in the freshman dorms, they are poor representatives of what you'll be doing the other three years of your stay at your school.
Finally, you want to know how to get into these schools that have wait-listed you. The best thing that I've heard to do is to stay in contact with the schools. If you give the admissions at schools a call and tell them what cool things you've been up to since your application and that you would like them added to the application it shows continued interest in that school. Furthermore, if you happen to get in a conversation on the phone with an admission representative, tell them why the school specifically is made for you. I've heard they like that as well.
Last tip would be to spell check all you work.
Y'know, I've seen a lot of comments here about why it doesn't matter where you go, but not many posts actually *answering* the question of how to get into a prestigious school.
So. I got into Caltech about eleven years ago (ugh I feel old...). My vital stats were about the same: good GPA, one of the best public high schools in my state, club activity, high SATs, etc. But basically up until that point I was just another of the thousands of faceless young Asian males applying to college. Teacher rec letters were important, but in the final analysis I think it was the essays that got me in. See, I had *fun* with them. Caltech's app deadline (iirc) was a bit later than most, so by the time I got around to filling it in I was kinda tired of the whole thing and just stopped caring. So I sat back and let my sheer love of my field (biology, with a heavy dose of CS and physics) shine through. I kinda liked the "fill this space with something interesting" part of the app... I wonder if it's still there...
And I totally had a blast at Caltech. For the first time im my life the courses were actually challenging, and oh my god I learned so much from them. Actually the teaching, especially in the biology department, was very much hit-or-miss, depending on how much the prof cared or didn't. But most the CS and physics and applied math courses I took totally rocked. Plus I got to take organic from a future Nobel laureate!
The thing that I haven't seen anyone mention is the research. So the bio dept's policy was that courses were there to build up your knowledge base so that you could get into a research lab and learn stuff while doing research. The low student-to-faculty ratio (3 undergrads to each faculty) meant that it was pretty easy to get into a lab. Basically I got to do cutting-edge neuroscience research the summer after my sophomore year because of it; that's actually pretty common at Caltech, and from what I've heard is pretty rare elsewhere. In addition, the prestige of the institute meant that the research seminars were always top-notch, so I got to hear about lots of other cutting-edge research too.
That said, the lack of women was a problem. Made for a pretty messed-up social atmosphere, and lots of women there get spoiled. And from what I've heard the EE department isn't actually all that great on hands-on stuff like building circuits. They're a lot more theoretical research-oriented. Lots of good work on information theory. So depending on where your interests lie I think CMU might actually be a better fit for EE/CS types. Certainly CMU is pretty famous for having a good engineering program.
Good luck in college! Remember to have fun!
I did well in high school but went to the local state university for undergrad. It is something like a 3rd tier school not even assigned a numerical rank for my field...
The state PAID me $800/year + tuition to attend for 4 years. I had good teachers, learned a lot, and did well. After that, I was interested in grad school and was accepted in a "top 10" university with a fellowship.
I think my experience is not all that unusual. If you are thinking you might ever get a Masters or PhD, I wouldn't spend much for undergrad. Go somewhere nice, where you will actually enjoy life. And the same if you aren't going to grad school. Everyone uses the same textbooks anyway. The only difference is what you decide to get out of it.
Your undergrad days will probably be some of the best days of your life. Grad school is stressful as hell. Full-time work can also be, unless you are lucky and enjoy what you do.
And after having attended many "career fairs" at both my undergrad and grad schools, I can say one thing about them: you will probably not get a job from them, no matter how well qualified you are. I am also an EE. When I went to a telecom company's booth, and told them that I was an EE and interested in communications, they thought I was double-majoring in the Humanities. Sheesh.
Get to know your professors while your in school. The student-teacher wall that we develop throughout elementary & high-school is really destructive. The active professors will have connections and can get you a job -- and a good one at that. Show them how motivated you are.
'Cause someone (you?) asked the exact, word-for-word question on yahoo answers about two months ago.
Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English.
Spend some time at MIT or CalTech and don't go there unless you actually enjoy the environment.
Carnegie Mellon == Pittsburgh == UGH.
MIT == Boston == YUCK.
Caltech == Pasadena == BLECCH.
The homeschooling movement needs to graduate to college - I think I might rather remain illiterate & innumerate than spend four years of my life in any of those hellholes.
And don't get me started on the insanity of spending $50,000+ per annum for the thrill of being miserable.
The answer is simple: You need to learn that life is not objective. There is no magic formula for you to follow so that you will get ahead and have a comfortable lifestyle.
Instead, realize this: Youth is irreplacable.
When I was in high school, I was told that good grades and extra-curriculars were required for college. While somewhat truthful; the real motivation of the statement is to keep impressionable highschool students under the control of the administration. Make sure that you take control of your life so that your youth isn't wasted as someone else's pawn.
No, I will not work for your startup
You are so right. What matters is the fit of the school for each student. CMU is a fine and well-regarded engineering school. Notice how many Fortune 500 companies recruit there! Hit my site if I can help you. www.marketing-u.com
I had never really heard much of Purdue, but my mom had gone there and hey, she was willing to pay for it, so why the hell not? I graduated many years later and found out, damn, most everyone did know about this school. It's really just "Northern Indiana University", but this rich guy died over 100 years ago, and left some land to the state of Indiana if they'd set up a school with his name on it. His name turned out to be more valuable than the land. I mean, some people know about IU (Indiana Univerisity) because of the bicycle movie, but people sometimes think Purdue is a private school because of the name.
For some reason, colleges downplay the importance of standardized tests, but in the admissions process they matter quite a bit it seems. I only had a 3.2 unweighted GPA in HS (105 out of a graduating class of 400), and one extracurricular activity (band :P), but thanks to my extremely high SAT score, I got accepted to every school I applied to, including CMU and one of the two you want to get into (I didn't apply for the other).
Eventually I wound up going to school at the one closest to home, found out I was a lazy bastard with no motivation to do anything (gee, needed college to figure that one out), went to work starting at the bottom at a shitty company, and now I just sit around posting on Slashdot and wasting another company's time while making entirely too much money.
The only reason I mention that is because I would have rather my acceptances and scholarships had gone to some bright, motivated guy who really wants a college education. It shouldn't take a rocket scientist to look at my track record compared to my test scores and realize that I'm an underachiever. In any reasonably intelligent system I would have been weeded out immediately.
(Of course, in any reasonably intelligent world I would be unemployed, yet head hunters call me every day and there has only been one company smart enough to turn me down. Took them 4 interviews and a trip halfway across the country to do it. To give you a hint which one it is, well, pretty much all of you would jump at the chance to work there. Only reason I didn't get a job, I suspect, is because I completely blew the interview with the hiring manager after he caught me making a fundamental mistake in a problem I was working out and I was too stubborn to back down when I knew I was wrong.)
I'm not bragging, hence my anon posting. I'm just saying, things are pretty fucked up when someone like me can be successful, but my dad -- who is the hardest working man I have ever known bar none, and certainly not an idiot -- has been stuck in the same back breaking job for 30 years, with no end in sight, making less than half as much as I did in my very first job.
The world is one fucked up place. Survival of the fittest my ass.