Er… apps, maybe. Open Source would be a good thing, but a website? Making a website is an entirely different beast from programming. This isn’t an art portfolio.
OP, once you start typing in caps, you’ve blown a lot of sympathy here. If it’s any solace, I’m impressed by a school where grading is calculated to three significant digits.
I was asked by a department chair to get my doctorate at MIT. I can take that fact and fondle myself and post it to boards (this is the first time, actually). But not at the same time, which is the anticipatory lust I sense dripping from your fingers.
Well, just as long as it helps you score hot chicks. 
Um, it does, doesn’t it?
No, this just isn’t true. There are about a dozen schools that are interchangeable in their “first impression” status, and they all take turns as the Top Rated School in the country each year. (One year it’ll be Princeton; the next, Caltech; then MIT…) Anyone from these dozen or so schools has as much “foot in the door” clout as anyone else from these schools. The math, science, and engineering curricula really are basically the same, and we on the hiring end of things know this.
Regarding graduate school: if you really do want to go to MIT for graduate school (which I think you implied somewhere up-thread), note that it is probably best not to go to MIT as an undergraduate. Most places have a general bias against keeping their own undergraduate students around for graduate school. It does happen, but it is generally actively discouraged (for good reasons).
I was going to mention this but wasn’t sure on the particulars. Keep an eye on this thread for specifics on it (“intellectual inbreeding”).
One more thing, OP. My best friend is an electronics engineer who is an MIT graduate. Brilliant guy. He had a stroke and now wears a diaper and thinks like a ten year old.
Keep that in mind, if you can.
It means something to you, and perhaps your family, but the admissions people at MIT are not obligated to see it the way you do.
You know who James Watson is, right? He got his PhD at Indiana University, a public state school. In the Midwest, even. I got a degree from the same school, and an MS from an even less prestigious school. Where do I work now? In one of a handful of NIH-funded high complexity labs that are hard to get into. How did I get there? I didn’t join any clubs in HS; the school was only 4 years old at the time (do the math) and there were less than 40 in my graduating class. I played a wind instrument for 6 years. I nearly failed out of undergrad before getting my act together. I got in on a combination of luck and ambition. What kind of job do you you want to be working at in 10 years? How are you going to get to that job when you have so much going on in your life now?
You have posted some worthy achievements, but there are so many of them that they don’t mean much. They make you look more like an overachiever who can’t commit than someone who has a goal and is making committed steps to reach that goal. Your list of achievements may make you unique in your eyes, but they also make you unique like hundreds of others who have done the exact same things you have. What personal growth can occur when most of the 86,400 seconds of your day appears to be scheduled with some kind of enriching activity? Don’t make the mistake that breadth is more significant than depth.
I never said creating a website was the same as programming, although it can include that.
Admittedly, I know more college students and just-outs than high school students, and more about engineering than math, but for engineering students looking for internships and jobs, having a website about your hobbies and projects is considered a plus. I don’t see why admission to college should be different.
Actually, the Achievements were much older than that. According to the College Board web site they were introduced in 1937. The SAT – SAT Suite | College Board
Well I am most focused on violin. That’s my number 2 activity (after academics and mathematics).
And grammar on the message board is not THAT important. This isn’t English class (besides I don’t really care for English all that much. I’m a mathematics person. As long as I at least get a 93 in English I’m fine, and so is MIT because MIT doesn’t really care about English as well. They want mathematics and science, not someone writing 75 pages on a persuasive topic).
Also, my guidance counselors said that these colleges want well-roundedness AND lopsidedness. Meaning they want you to have many activities in your schedule with lots of Honors/AP classes with an A+ average with near perfect SATs, but they also want you to take one or two things and be very focused on them. So wouldn’t my violin and mathematics be those two things to focus on extremely.
You guys are underestimating how much violin can take you in college. I’m not just any other player like I have said. I’m not trying to brag, but I have to say this kind of thing to clarify. Like I said, one time someone was held in consideration for admission into Harvard University. Then he realized that he forgot to sent in a recording of his violin playing. So he did, and THREE DAYS LATER HE RECEIVED AN ACCEPTANCE CALL FROM HARVARD. And many music teachers around here say it’s likely for me to be that kind of person. In fact they are saying, I’m one of the most likely to have that kind of thing happen to me. They were telling me I should use this for scholarship chances.
You guys are underestimating how far music talent can take you. Back in the 1900s, I understand that music wasn’t too big (well it probably still was, but music has gotten more competitive now), but if you think about it, how many applying are actually going to have real talent in violin. See that’s a change. If I send in my best, most advanced recording of me playing, this may be the deciding factor.
I sort of think of this as a Yu-Gi-Oh deck. I used to play Yu-Gi-Oh years ago, and what I remember the most is the pain in building a deck. There were so many good cards to choose from and so few to put in. This is kind of the situation MIT is in. I remember not accepting very good cards just because I can’t. But what I did accept were cards that had a very special ability that made them stand out. So this kind of analogy is good because now I can try to be that “card” that sticks out, and I have a feeling that my violin could be that “special ability”.
Personally, I take pride in the quality of discourse on this message board. I know I am not the only one. I also appreciate that so many other people treat this forum with the same respect.
Very good reasons. It was important for me to go to grad school at a different place. I got a totally different perspective, which actually was a better fit for me. Unlike undergrad, grad school success depends strongly on your adviser. In many fields they do post docs, which are used also for a broader perspective.
I wouldn’t touch that line with a ten foot slide rule.
Lots of good advice in this thread. My own advice to the OP, for what it’s worth, is to shift your mindset drastically. Don’t think about what kind of student you’ll be at MIT, think about what kind of alumn you’ll be. Because to a large extent that’s what the admissions people are thinking about. Yeah, yeah, you’re great. You could graduate just fine. Assuming you don’t burn out, you’d probably get great grades and honors and whatever. The truth, though, is that people with much lower grades than you can also graduate from MIT just fine. If your entire life goal is just to get into MIT, what are you going to do after? Top schools want people who are going to go on to do big things. They want people who are going to be useful networking contacts for their other students, not people who are just going to coast on the school name without giving back. There’s a reason you hear so much about hugely successful partnerships being formed by classmates at prestigious universities, and it’s not just because the students are smart. It’s because they have purpose and work well with others.
Frankly, you should work on your interpersonal skills. If you’re a world class musician or an honest to god genius or just have so much money you can buy your way through life, then you can afford to be smug. But if you’re not one of those people, then learning how to get along well with and engage others will contribute vastly more to success than a few fractions of a point to your GPA. You come off as a bit smug and entitled, and admissions people will see that as a liability not just with regards to your time as a student but in your future endeavors as well.
I finished undergraduate at an ivy league school (the best one, if you ask me!) a few years back. If you want a specific reason why I got in, I’d be hard pressed to tell you. I was a very strong student, but not especially so (though I did have the advantage of going to a particularly difficult high school, which allowed me to distinguish myself even without being top of the class necessarily). My SATs were good, but not spectacular. I was in clubs but nothing hugely impressive. No musical or athletic talent to speak of. On paper, I met all the requirements to not get immediately tossed in the rejection bin but nothing to set me apart. What I did have, though, were outstanding recommendations, a very supportive admissions counselor, and the ability to be an engaging interviewee. My recommending teachers were willing to go to bat for me with extremely positive recommendations. My admissions counselor was willing to spend the time on my half to explain my situation and the peculiarities of my school to admissions officers. During my interview I was able to express genuine enthusiasm for what at the time I expected to be my field of study. All those things mattered a hell of a lot more than a single GPA number. Then again, maybe I simply got lucky and the admissions officer was in a good mood while looking at my application. Also, I didn’t put in all that many hours of community service, but I was able to articulate the aims of the organization I was working with and why I believed it was making a difference. Actually, the organization wanted me to stay in the Boston area enough to arrange a meeting for me with the Harvard dean of admissions. I didn’t end up applying there (and probably wouldn’t have gotten in, all things considered) but that would certainly have been a big leg up over other candidates.
Long story short, make an effort to be likable. Be the person the admissions office wants to find a reason to accept, not the other way around.
You may be in an advanced math class for your school, but most of the incoming class at MIT will have had two years of calculus in high school, and a good chunk will have gone beyond that. Doesn’t look like you’re going to stand out much there. And of course the next few courses after single-variable calc aren’t what you’ll be focusing on in the real classes anyway. I’d start looking into discrete, real analysis, combinatorics, etc. to make sure you aren’t going to suck it once you get out of the advanced arithmetic that is calc, linear, diff Qs, etc. If your school won’t support your academic needs, go above and beyond to find instruction elsewhere. I ended up taking two math classes over the internet, although I recommend a classroom setting if possible (any local colleges?).
Kicking ass at the violin *can *help, but as mentioned, a lot of people kick ass at the violin. Best in CT? Meh, it’s a small state. I sent a tape in too (after asking if anyone would bother listening to it). No idea if it helped. See if you can kick ass so much that people will pay you to play it. Remember that after a point it’s not just about technical ability. That will get you into all-state, but it doesn’t mean people want to hear a soulless music box.
While where you go doesn’t matter as much as you might want it to, I have to disagree with anyone who says the name on the diploma doesn’t matter. It does for some jobs; I’ve had at least one employer that tends to jizz itself over big names (we call this “starfucking”.)
Pardon if you’ve mentioned this already, but how do you plan to spend your summers?
Think about why you want to study mathematics and why you want to go to MIT (or wherever). “I’m good at it” and “Ruken told me some employers will jizz themselves” are clues that you should think more.
I’ll echo the call for stats and programming. Again, it doesn’t have to be at your school if it can’t meet your needs.
The admissions process often comes down to a dart board. There are plenty of people who got into MIT and not elsewhere, and people who got into those other schools but didn’t get into MIT.
And read the post before mine. It’s good.
The day you graduate, there’s a job waiting for you, writing computer application program end-user manuals!
Just curious - you’re asking for advice on how to get in, then thoroughly rejecting a major component of it. Why are you asking for advice when you appear to already know the answer, or at least what you think the answer is?
I’d swear the OP was "Lindsaybluth"s younger sibling.
This is not the kind of reasoning that good colleges look for. In fact, it’s the type of reasoning they hope to disabuse you of: it is obvious that the decision to admit this one student was made before the violin recording. Your expectation that some admissions professional heard the recording, dropped everything, and made out an emergency admissions letter is just… fantasy. It doesn’t work like that.
I hope you get into your dream school. But it is really a profound mistake to be focused on one college. It is probably a bigger mistake than getting obsessed with your high school crush and thinking that THAT GIRL is the key to the whole rest of your life. In both cases, the thinking that your future is going to be determined by what you do before the age of 22. That just isn’t the case, and it is a really bad way to think about things.
Maybe MIT doesn’t accept your application for some reason: it can happen to any well-qualified candidate. There is nothing you can do to guarantee you will go to MIT, all you can do is make yourself a competitive candidate, and the rest is out of your hands. If you don’t get into MIT, but you do get into some other great school (who knows, maybe Berkeley, Stanford, Chicago or whatever) there is no way that you should consider that a failure. From the way you’re talking about MIT, you seem like you’d be very disappointed if you had to go to one of those schools. That’s just a really bad mindset for you to have at this point.
So, since you clearly feel that you know more about how this all works that we do, despite the fact that we’ve gone through it and you haven’t, why are you asking us for advice? You apparently know what’s best - go do it.
And you still haven’t explained why you’re not having this discussion with the people at MIT.