Demographics:
- URM Male
- From a large state, underrepresented area tho
- known feeder school, famous on this site lol
- upper middle class, prob wont qual for aid
Academics:
- GPA (highkey my weakest point): i had mid 9th grades, so its a little below average for my class (i still have all As, some are low As tho), we have a diff scale but it’s equivalent to a 4.0 (not sure if this will work against me, but i am on strong upward trend)
- Coursework: Most rigorous curriculum available to me. (there are a lot of cracked aime/usamo qualifying kids here, so my path is prob ~avg track relative to here) calc bc, physics c, etc. we dont rly have APs but all classes here are AP equivalent if not harder. also havent taken any exams (most ppl here dont i feel like)
- Tests: 34 ACT, took once. i just retook, expect 35-36 (will have 35+ with superscore)
ECs:
- AI/ML Research:
- Research this summer at a highly competitive international research program. I was funded too
- Hoping to get published at top-tier AI conference high school tracks/workshops (e.g., NIPS HST, ICLR/EMNLP). But if that fails it’ll still be on arxiv. nowhere near as good but whatever
- Medical bias research:
- I’m doing a summer research internship with a professor focusing on bias & equity in medical AI.
- Some personal projectst:
- Designed, developed, and launched a functional + socially impactful app using ML and APIs, it’s on the app store, I only have like 30 users lol (made it for my friends initially) but I submitted it for CAC in my district (i dont think my district is that competitive, and the previous winners just made crud apps so it’d prob help a ton if i got it)
- Leadership:
- President of a major student affinity/cultural organization at school (~150 members). Increased active membership by 50%, raised like $250 for disaster relief lol. Nothing crazy like the stuff I see here
- dorm prefect
- Journalism/Media:
- Key role in my school’s newspaper, I make popular content (at our school) usually average like 7k views, got like 20k+ one time, but lots of clubs and our schools official page started copying my style so I could include that.
- Some other stuff
- Triple Varsity Athlete. Only mentioning cause we are nationally ranked in 2 of the sports I play. I could get recruited if i put in the work ig but not rly tryna be a college athlete
- Play 2 instruments, I’m chill about it tho, nothing too crazy like competition awards but I could add videos to a portfolio.
- I DJ too, started recently but I’m now usually participating in or taking over school events. Have done like 3-4 so far.
- I’m getting a job, I will connect it to one of my interests in supplementals. Also i heard it looks good
- Foreign languages: I can speak like 3.5, I want to be a polyglot and I plan on taking some linguistics classes in college (kind of banking on the interdisciplinary stuff if im gonna do all of this with math + cs)
LORs:
- I expect strong (8.5+/10) ones from teachers and counselor, they def all fw me and I’ve been with all 3 of them for my whole junior year, also given my school’s background they probably know how to write really good ones.
Intended Major(s): applied math + cs (generally speaking) i will apply to school specific interdisciplinary majors tho
will prob apply stanford rea + safety w/ rolling admissions, everything else rd
From the Stanford web site:
“if you apply to Stanford with a decision plan of Restrictive Early Action, you may not apply to any other private college/university under their Early Action, Restrictive Early Action, Early Decision, or Early Notification plan.”
So you can either apply to Stanford REA, or apply to MIT EA, but not both. Edit: I see that you changed this in your original post. Good catch.
Otherwise my first reaction is to be careful what you wish for, because you might get it. Specifically I think that your chances are relatively good. You should think carefully about which school is the best fit for you.
Both MIT and Stanford are of course quite good for both math and CS. MIT even has a major 18-C Mathematics with Computer Science. You could however take a very similar course load at Stanford whether they officially have a combined major or not. I also think that this is a very good and interesting combination. At least to me the more interesting CS jobs are ones that involve quite a bit of math.
I had some experience years ago when we were using off the shelf software programs to analyze results, and were occasionally getting weird results. Eventually I got to look carefully at the math that was used in the off the shelf software, and figure out what was going on. The math was solid, but was not the right math for the problem that we were solving. Then we had to figure out what to do instead. This all of course required both some knowledge of math and some knowledge of CS.
We are currently hearing about how people will be using AI to write software. My expectation is that there is likely to be similar results, when occasionally something just seems off. Someone who understands both math and CS (and maybe AI and/or ML) is going to be needed to figure out what is going wrong when (not if) something goes wrong.
And of course you need to make sure that you apply to safeties.
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Yea I agree with your jobs take. Stanford is def my top choice, just not sure how the gpa will look to them, especially given that im not even like definitively top half of my class.
Although I will say I estimate around 75% of my class technically has a 4.0 with our “gpa translation” so I will just hope my ecs and hooks can set me apart.
I might have missed this, or gotten confused by the “all A’s” part.
A typical incoming student at either MIT or Stanford was not all that far from being the #1 top student in their high school.
I do not understand the grading used in your high school so might not be interpreting this correctly. How large is your high school? Do you have some sense how you rank?
Are you an international student? Are you are a private high school?
If you do not qualify for aid, then another question is whether MIT or Stanford are worth being full pay compared to your in-state public options, or compared to a school that will offer some merit aid.
Edit: There are a LOT of universities in the US that are very good for both math and CS. Also graduate students at least at Stanford in my experience come from a huge range of undergraduate universities. You really do not need to attend a university at this level to have a very good career, and you do not need to get a bachelor’s degree at a top ranked university to have a chance to get accepted to a graduate program at a highly ranked university. Graduates from MIT and Stanford routinely work alongside graduates from a huge range of other universities in in the vast majority of cases no one cares where anyone got their degree.
The OP is welcome to repost under their original account, although TBH, the college counseling office at their feeder school could do a much better job since they know him.
However, Terms of Service prohibits multiple accounts, so closing this thread.
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