<li>Apply</li>
<li>Get rejected by MIT</li>
<li>Attend match school at lower cost</li>
<li>Take open courseware of desired courses while skipping humanitites stuff, working at my own pace, and emailing the professors</li>
<li>Get bachelors degree</li>
<li>Try for MIT graduate school with improved GPA, money from job, and whatever else in extracurriculars</li>
<li>Future me shows MIT that they should’ve accepted me 4 years ago</li>
<li>Change the World with ma mitten educashun</li>
</ol>
<p>I know I should aim for getting in
What are the flaws? Should I try to get into a school near MIT so I can still talk to the teachers? Is open courseware really no substitute for the real deal? Do the humanities matter?</p>
<p>This is all just a hypothetical situation. I don’t think I’d actually have the time to do it, or the 4.0 unless it were at a community college.</p>
<p>If I let anyone answer I’d be a ■■■■■, this is just for fun, not for a serious discussion. I don’t really think that my chances would rise that much with a 4.0 GPA, or that I’d need to go to MIT to change the world (in my vision <strong>laughs evily</strong>)</p>
<p>^ Are you sure? I had the same exact vision, actually But in another dimension, MIT defers me EA, and then accepts me RD. Just because it happens in another dimension, doesn’t mean it can’t happen in this one :'(</p>
Just FYI, most grad programs at MIT are funded (so money is irrelevant), and grad school admissions committees don’t give a hoot about extracurriculars unless they’re related to your field of interest. Research/internship experience and letters of recommendation are the most crucial pieces of a grad school application in the sciences or engineering.</p>
<p>I’m not being discouraging, I’m just selectively answering the questions I have the information to answer. :)</p>
<p>I know this was in jest, but I think it’s important to remember that you don’t need to be thinking about where you want to go to graduate school when you haven’t gotten into college yet. You don’t even need to be thinking about whether or not you will go to graduate school. The decision to go to graduate school is a big one, and it’s best to think about these things after you have at least a year or two of college under your belt.</p>
<p>And even if you’re sure you want to attend grad school*, even if it’s in something MIT’s really good at, you shouldn’t be setting your sights on MIT for grad school at this juncture. You should pick a graduate program, when you’re ready, based on factors like the faculty members with whom you’re interested in doing research and not based on factors like the school’s name. Your graduate school will never be as big a part of your life as your undergraduate school, because you’re picking it based on purely academic reasons rather than life and fit reasons.</p>
<p>Again, I know this was just in jest. But there are a large number of people on CC who really do think this way, so I want to put this information out there.</p>
<p>*Hey, I decided I was going to get a PhD in biology when I was 16 years old. And I never deviated from that plan even for one moment during high school and college, and here I am getting my PhD at 24. Not everybody has my laserlike focus (slash obsessive need to plan), and that’s probably better for their sanity.</p>
<p>I’d also just like to throw out there that going to MIT is certainly not a prerequisite for saving the world.</p>
<p>I mean, obviously try to come here if that’s what you really want…but don’t put blinders on yourself. Going to MIT, or any college, should be the logical step towards accomplishing what you want to, not an ends in and of itself. MIT is one of many possible paths.</p>
<p>Also, I’m a senior right now and I STILL don’t know if I’m going to grad school- I’m applying to a couple of programs along with a couple of jobs in the real world, and we’ll see what happens when I hear back from them all in a few months. I am like the anti-Mollie. =)</p>