Chance me for MIT or Columbia and other colleges (Junior) [3.9 UW, 1540 SAT, Biology/pre-med, TX student]

Chance Me / Match Me
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I am pretty sure that this has no impact on admissions.

First of all, your ECs do not need to have anything at all to do with your major.

Also, I see music (specifically violin) as one of your ECs, and it looks like you put in a lot of effort over a period of time and did very well. Music ability is something that often overlaps with math ability, and math is something that is very useful for a CS or Finance major.

MIT does not admit by major. ALL that they use your intended major for is to match you with a freshman year advisor (if you are admitted, and if you choose to go there). That is all that they use it for. In the unlikely chance that you are admitted and choose to go there, then you might as well have a freshman year advisor who is more knowledgeable in at least one of your intended majors. You are correct that MIT students then get to pick any major that they want starting sophomore year (I am pretty sure that I picked my major towards the end of freshman year, but it did not take effect until sophomore year). As an undergrad at MIT you can also change your major any time that you want to, but you need to complete the requirements for whatever major you end up with before you graduate.

MIT has a major 18C ā€œmathematics with computer scienceā€ which to me makes sense for someone who is undecided between CS and finance.

I think that some other highly ranked universities are the same as MIT in terms of not admitting by major, but you might need to check them individually. Regardless, having some ECs that do not match your major is fine and is perfectly normal. It is more important that your ECs show the ability to do something well with a commitment over time and the ability to get along with people.

This is very good. This is low for MIT or Stanford or Princeton.

Similarly your SAT is very good. However, as I expect that you know 740 in math is low for MIT.

Picking solid safeties may be the most important part of picking a list of schools to apply to. Depending upon how you feel about your safeties, picking targets might be the next most important part. However, I expect that many or perhaps most students have in-state public universities for their safeties.

I do not know whether TA&M is a safety for you. IF it is, then it is fine for the rest of your schools to be reaches although I usually prefer to see two safeties. Your guidance counselor should know better than I whether or not TA&M is a safety for you. UT Austin might be a match, but admissions to CS is uncertain. Otherwise I think that these are all reaches.

And this is very true. Do not pick a major that you donā€™t want in an effort to game the system. Instead, pick whatever major you expect is most likely to be the one that you intend to stick with. Being genuine is very important when applying to highly ranked schools, and is important in life in general.

I do not think that it is luck. Some of it may be factors that are beyond our control. Some of it is the schoolā€™s perception that you are likely to be a good fit for the school. As one example, if you pick an intended major that they are actually good for that might help your chances. Some of it is academic excellence. Some of it is excelling at something, even if this is not academic and not something you will pursue (if you for example excel at sailboat racing or chess or violin any of these might help even for a potential math or finance or CS major). Given that highly ranked schools end up having to choose a few students to accept from a very, very long list of very well qualified applicants, some of it may appear to be luck.

I was a math major at MIT. Quantitative finance is something that math majors sometimes go into. Basically you try to apply mathematical models to understanding finance, such as the potential movements of stocks. Mathematics actually gets applied to a lot of things (acoustics, aiming a beam of subatomic particles in a cyclotron, economics / econometrics, Internet security, finance, ā€¦). Understanding stock market movements is one of the many things that people can do, or try to do, with a degree in math.

I think that you are generally doing very well. Make sure that you apply to solid safeties, and I expect that you will do well wherever you end up (even if it is most likely to be TA&M, which is a very good university).

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Yeah honestly I have no idea what I want to do in life I just want a big salary after college. CS and finance are what I associate this with.

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Iā€™m only applying to bio for schools that donā€™t admit by major, such as MIT which lets you pick which major you want after you get in. For virtually every other school Iā€™m going to apply as math or finance depending on which field I see myself going into in two years

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I understand. So, it is important to know that CS is not the hot ticket it once was. At this point I wouldnā€™t recommend it unless itā€™s your passion (and there are many students who genuinely love it and canā€™t imagine doing anything else).

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I remember asking this in a previous post but would being ranked 30 or 40 after junior year be much better than 50?

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Without CS I think my other path could be finance, but finance is apparently super hard to break into without getting into a ā€œtarget schoolā€. I donā€™t really want to take out loans for graduate school either

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Hmmm - confused. If they donā€™t admit by major then how would they be easier.

Nonetheless, it is true that engineering and CS and business have higher salaries up front than a bio major on average, itā€™s not that black and white.

There will be highly paid bio majors and lowly paid of the other.

And right now kids from top CS programs canā€™t find jobs.

So things change.

I think choosing a major to make more - I donā€™t think any majors pay a lot but some jobs do - but I think you should choose a major of interest. Thereā€™s no assurance you get the job.

I did (chose the major) and bombed but then I pivoted in life.

I didnā€™t love my kidā€™s major but she did and is doing fine.

If she forced herself into something she didnā€™t like, she would have flunked out.

Btw - for money, also major over school. Texas Tech engineers or CS will crush UT Sociology, as an example in income.

Good luck - add schools and pursue a passion. That will be more meaningful to you while at school and in life.

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Free adviceā€¦.do what you love and love what you do. Sometimes making the biggest salary isnā€™t what brings a person the greatest joy.

Going to work every single day only because it earns you a lot of moneyā€¦might not be a great goal.

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If you donā€™t know what you want to do, thatā€™s fine, and perfectly normal! You can figure it out in college, as long as you go somewhere with some academic flexibility.

If you like math, that is a great starting place, because it is the foundation of so many things.

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You are not talking about finance but investment finance. Itā€™s hard from target and non target schools and kids from both get in.

But general finance - you can go anywhere and be fine.

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@WayOutWestMom can you explain what this is?

What is Quantitative Finance?

Quantitative finance is a branch of investment management that employs mathematical and statistical methods to analyze investment opportunities across a range of asset classes. Practitioners in quantitative finance (ā€œquantsā€) work in equities, fixed income and structured products, commodities, foreign exchange, and all varieties of derivatives. Areas of sub-specialization include derivatives pricing, trading and hedging, portfolio analysis and optimization, risk management, and regulatory compliance. In addition, quants are entering the world of artificial intelligence and machine learning these days, where the demand for data scientists in the financial industry is growing dramatically.

Or what PhD physicists do if they donā€™t go into academia.

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Yeah sorry I meant high finance, not like regular finance. I donā€™t see myself being an accountant or something in the future

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Oh that actually sounds really interesting! Does getting a job in quant depend heavily on where you went to undergrad? I donā€™t think Iā€™ll have the financial resources to go for a PhD especially with the financial aid cuts and stuff

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So is Chinese a non-native language for you? How did you previously learn Chinese?

I note I ask in part because colleges sometimes want to see you actually take the classes in high school, not just reach a certain proficiency level.

For example, Columbia says the following about recommended courses:

Columbia College strongly recommends the following secondary school preparation:

  • Four years of English literature and composition

  • Four years of mathematicsā€”unless you have already completed what is available at your school

  • Three to four years of history and/or social studies

  • Three to four years of laboratory science

  • Three to four years of one world language (ancient or modern) taken during high school

Note the emphasis on ā€œtaken during high schoolā€ specifically for languages. Of course Columbia also says this is only a recommendation and that it can be varied in some individual cases. But you would want an apparent reason, as otherwise they may interpret your choice as a lack of interest in learning non-native languages and studying other cultures.

So behind the scenes, highly selective holistic review colleges are not flipping coins. It is a deliberative process.

They may do some initial quick review to get down to just the more competitive applicants, the ones that meet all their normal standards. But that typically is still many more applicants than they can admit.

Then they carefully read applications, and discuss them in committees. In this process, they are looking at everything in context, your personal context, your school context, and in fact the context of the other applicants in the pool that year. Their ultimate goal is not to select all just one type of student, but to put together a mix of different types of students who will contribute academically and non-academically to their college community in different ways. This can involve balancing a variety of competing institutional priorities, addressing the needs of different school officials and stakeholders.

To be blunt, the default for unhooked applicants to the most selective colleges is you will be politely rejected. This is a hard thing for many kids and parents to understand sometimes, but there are just so, so many great kids applying to college each year, with all sorts of different ways of being compelling applicants. And you are in fact all great kids, but there are so many!

In that sense, something about you needs to stand out to make them think they really want you in particular as part of their class, as in they see you as a particularly good bet to help them satisfy one or more of those competiting priorities. If you donā€™t quite make that happen, they can still think you are a great kid, just not one of the ones they are going to accept that year.

From your perspective as an applicant, there is lot you simply donā€™t know. You donā€™t actually know some basic things, like what exactly is in your recommendations. You also donā€™t know exactly what they will think of things like your essays. You donā€™t know exactly how they will apply your personal and school context. You donā€™t know what institutional priorities they may see you as potentially addressing. You definitely donā€™t know exactly what the rest of the applicant pool looks like, which can affect whether or not you are one of their top few picks for any such possible role.

And in fact, if you do get admitted and enroll at a college, you have a right to see your admissions file. When people who were admitted to the colleges do that, they are often surprised about why they were admitted. Things they thought would be strengths were not seen as particularly important. Things they thought were minor things might have stood out instead.

So I think the better word for this is ā€œunpredictableā€. It isnā€™t really random, but it is such a complex process with so many different factors involved, many of which you canā€™t even see, that you canā€™t predict what is going to happen.

And neither can we.

OK, so about the best you can do is make sure you are fulfilling any stated requirements, and also recommendations, unless you have a very good and obvious reason for not following a recommendation. Also check if you seem to meet their basic standards for competitiveness.

Then read what they make available about what they are looking for in a student. Really assess whether you are in fact what they seem to be looking for. And of course also assess whether THEY are what YOU are really looking for. This is sometimes called a good two-way fit.

And then if you think you seem qualified and it is a good two-way fit, go ahead and apply! Write your best possible application, which includes being reflective and honest and generally authentic. But also make your best case for why you think you are a good fit for them, and they are a good fit for you.

And then you have done what you can, and you will see what happens.

Meanwhile, though, you should also be applying to great two-way fits where people with your sorts of qualifications get admitted more often than not, possibly with merit. And also at least a couple great two-way fits where people with your sorts of qualifications are extremely likely to get admitted. If you can include one with early rolling admissions or auto-admissions, even better.

That way when you get your offers to consider, you will be extremely likely to have multiple great offers. Maybe some will be from the most selective colleges. Maybe not. But youā€™ll have great options either way with a well-considered list.

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I am a native speaker of chinese and my family speaks chinese at home! Honestly the biggest reason I have wanted to go to columbia is the alumni network (one of my family friends who graduated from there now works in investment finance) and the urban setting. I havenā€™t really considered any other factors than that

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Not undergrad so much as where you get your grad degree(s) and in what fields.

Itā€™s heavily mathematical and requires very high level math & computer skills, as well as an understanding of sociological and market models.

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So with respect to languages, one of the reasons why some colleges prefer to see a demonstrated interest in non-native languages is that they see themselves as providing what is known sometimes as a liberal arts tradition education. In this tradition, people are going to learn different specialized things, but they also think every working professional and indeed good citizen of the world benefits from a range of different academic studies. And studying languages in this tradition is not just about proficiency, it is about learning about the nature of language itself, studying another culture in its own language, and so on.

The good news is there are a lot of great colleges that do not necessarily care about more than just proficiency (if even that). Only some do, and even then it is a sliding scale. But for any college of potential interest, you should look at what they say about this and make sure you think you are doing what they typically like to seeā€“unless again you have an obvious reason to vary that they will see as a good reason. But for these particular colleges, a lack of interest in this area is not a good reason to vary from their recommendations.

In general, you have plenty of time to keep exploring different college options. If some one college like Columbia ends up not looking like the best fit, that typically doesnā€™t matter. There are many more to choose from.

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For MIT, I do not think so.

I remember as a freshman at MIT meeting one student who had only been 7th in their high school class. This was however at a high school that is famous for being very rigorous and very good for math and science, and that has about 500 graduates each year. Thus he was not in the top 1%, but was in the top 2%. I knew another freshman who had been 4th in a class of about 200, which again is just top 2%.

For you, ā€œAā€™s in everythingā€ for math is good, and is typical of what you would see for a student headed to MIT. However, I also see two semester Bā€™s in science classes. This again suggests that you are doing very well, but not quite at the level that makes me think that MIT would be likely for admissions.

MIT is also a very tough school once you get there. Classes go fast. There is tons of homework. Exams are tough. This is a school where you really need to want to work very hard to enjoy (or even survive) your 4 years there.

I am sorry to be a bit discouraging. I think that you are doing very well. I am not convinced that MIT would be the best fit for you. That is okay. There are a lot of other universities that are very good and that would be a good fit for you.

A studentā€™s major has a significant impact on what they end up doing with their career. This does indeed have an impact on how much money they make. However, it also has a big impact on what you end up doing on a day to day basis for much of your life. I really think that you need to do something that you like.

Having no idea what you want to do with your life at this point is very normal. One daughter when she was in high school came to me quite concerned that she similarly had no idea what she wanted to do with her life, while her friends all did know what they wanted to do. I pointed out that yes her friends did know what they wanted to do, but in six months they will want to do something else, then in the end they will probably end up doing something different again. This particular daughter did not know what she wanted to do until she ended up in multiple lab courses in university. She discovered that she loves lab work and is very good at it. She is currently getting a PhD in a biomedical field. She had no idea that this might be the right path for her until sophomore year of university, and did not fully decide to take this path until after graduating university and doing a research job for a while. Getting quite a bit of lab experience in university helped her a lot to pick the right path, but this is something that you can get after arriving at any one of a huge number of very good universities. Of course internships can also help, and will also be available after you get to university. Sometimes some of these opportunities are good to help you identify something that you do NOT want to do, which again is part of finding the right path.

At the point that I graduated university, with a bachelorā€™s degree in mathematics, I still had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I tried a bit of this and a bit of that and eventually figured it out. This is pretty common. We might decide to do different things, but trying a few things before settling on a career is normal.

All of this however is probably more likely to come out well if you select a major that you like an are good at, and that has at least some practical application.

Having a ā€œbig salaryā€ is a mixed blessing. No one is going to give you a high salary out of the goodness of their heart. They will expect something in return. Stress and long work hours are sometimes associated with big salaries. High expectations to put a lot of effort into things and succeed at something that is hard is often associated with a high salary. This of course is easier to pull off if you are doing something that you like and something that you are good at.

Whether to go for a PhD is something that you can decide way in the future. It is typical for admissions to PhD programs to be insanely competitive, but for a PhD to be fully funded. What this typically means is that the university pays for your tuition and fees, pays for your health insurance, and gives you a stipend that is just enough to live on and cover required books or other incidentals. The good news, if you can get accepted at all, is that it is a very good free education. The bad news is that it takes multiple years (6 or 7 years is not unusual) and represents a big postponement of all of (i) getting a high salary; (ii) saving for things like buying a home; and (iii) saving for retirement. Some modest financial help from parents can make this marathon less onerous, but is not really needed. Having significant financial resources to back up your PhD studies might be one of the few things that is not really needed. This is however something to either think about way in the future, or to just not think about at all (a PhD is definitely not for everyone, and not for most people).

I got a masterā€™s degree in a subfield of applied math at Stanford. The other students in the same program had come from a HUGE range of different undergraduate schools. There was only one case that I knew of where more than 1 student had come from the same undergraduate university, it was probably a coincidence, and it was NOT ranked in the top 50 in the US. This wide variety in terms of where graduate students come from is of course typical for most highly ranked graduate programs across a wide range of fields.

Getting a bachelorā€™s degree from TA&M, or UT Austin, or any one of a wide range of other universities, would not stop a student from getting into a highly ranked graduate program. Doing very well as an undergraduate student, getting good internships and/or research experience, and optionally getting some work experience after getting a bachelorā€™s before applying to graduate programs, can also help a studentā€™s chances to attend a very good graduate program whether in a subfield of math or in something else.

And @supernova61 you are asking good questions, thinking about the right things, and getting some good advice. This is just part of figuring out what you want to do. This will take some time and thought, and will probably involve some missteps or changes in direction, but that is okay. You are doing well and I expect that you will figure this out over time.

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Thank you so much for the advice! For the science classes, I literally had like 89s in each semester because my homework habits were disastrous in sophomore year and I would get As on the tests easily while missing dozens of homework assignments. Iā€™d like to think my study habits have gotten better this year though because Iā€™ve been doing really well in AP Biology and AP Chemistry so far!

Also I think your point about the pros and cons of a big salary is really helpful because my family friend was pulling off 100 hour weeks in investment banking to get to where he is now. I donā€™t really want that kind of stress in my career

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That was my point as well.

Both of our kids work a lot. But one has a higher stress job, and significantly higher income. That kid happens to really like their job. The second kid also loves their job, but earns far less money.

But both are happy with their choices, and neither entered their profession because of anticipated incomes.

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