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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
I don't know if there's a deeper meaning to hating the Institvte than I realize, but I can speak to hating Caltech being a common phenomenon. I left at the beginning of my junior year because I really, really hated it. I was doing well academically, but I really should have paid more attention to happiness than prestige. I'll admit now that I largely went there to validate my own intelligence, and also in the hopes that I would never have to prove myself again: I could just drop the name of the college I went to and no further discussion would be necessary, right?! The trouble is, you'd be amazed at how many people have never even heard of Caltech. These aren't the kind of people who would employ you, but it's irritating nonetheless to put in such a tremendous amount of effort (towards an admittedly silly goal) only to find that it didn't even yield a fraction of the expected reward.
I don't want to trash the school entirely. Caltech was a good fit for many of my friends. I do have to qualify that, however. Many of them admitted to me that they were unhappy, but they felt they wouldn't be happier anywhere else. I believe they were telling the truth, and it makes me sad.
Anyway, after a couple of years at a startup, I finished my undergrad at CU Boulder, and I really wish I'd started there as a freshman. It was still fun, but it's kind of cliquey, and many students made their friends freshman year in the dorms and didn't seem to feel a need to expand their circle after that. However, I probably would have had an easier time if I'd scaled back my pride. It's hard to make friends when you're convinced you're superior to everyone else! That can be a downside to the big-fish-in-small-pond supposed advantage of less highly ranked schools. Of course, the problem really has nothing to do with the school...
To the original poster: go where you really want to go. Try your hardest to separate your pride and insecurity from your honest desires. Don't make a decision this big to please or impress anyone else, or just to prove something to yourself. Don't let my experience be a discouragement, either. If you really think you can be happy at MIT or Caltech, go for it! I learned a lot there, perhaps things I wouldn't have learned at a less stressful school. Most importantly, I learned how to learn quickly: how to skim unfamiliar technical content in search of something that will help me solve an actual problem. I learned that I can't possibly know or remember everything (in high school I actually believed I could) so I learned how to find what I need to solve a problem. I stopped memorizing what I learned and started remembering where to find it. But the most important thing I learned is that I like many things besides work and academics, and if I don't have enough time to do them, I get very unhappy. Unfortunately, I had to learn that lesson more than once!
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.
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.
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.