Does this guy have a chance?

Colleges & Universities Massachusetts Institute of Technology
1

<p>I’ve been asked to chance my friend. I literally didn’t know what to say. Does he have a chance?</p>

<p>Male
White
not native
GPA UW 4.00
No APs in school
TOEFL 117/120
SAT I: none
SAT II: Math I(800)/Math II(800)/Physics(800)/Chemistry(780)
good recs</p>

<p>Chances?</p>

2

<p>I’m french and i see too many people who have 4 in GPA, it makes me guess, USA education is very easy…In french, it’s IMPOSSIBLE to get 20/20 as average…</p>

3

<p>

</p>

<p>Sure, he has a chance.</p>

<p>However, you typically need a lot more than grades and test scores (academic competitions, research project, and to a lesser extent leadership and non-academic extracurriculars.) You haven’t told us enough. </p>

<p>A lot of internationals who get into MIT have represented their country nationally in some kind of academic olympiad. If they haven’t, there is something else special about them.</p>

4

<p>I don’t know even myself. Those stats aren’t mine. (I only wish they would!)
I don’t know other info. Anyways, thanks everyone!</p>

5

<p>“I’m french and i see too many people who have 4 in GPA, it makes me guess, USA education is very easy…In french, it’s IMPOSSIBLE to get 20/20 as average…”
^I am french…goes on to ridicule USA. lol (this was just stereotypical)
Education in the USA varies. We don’t have a national standard as we aren’t a really socialist country, and we’re not a tiny country (having a national system would be incredibly expensive to administrate).
So, we have schools 3 times harder than schools in your country, and we also have schools 10 times easier than the schools in your country. The French have an incredibly socialistic system so the educational system can have a level standard (in comparison to the USA). In the USA, there are several poorer schools and school districts (governing bodies of school systems) and vice versa, making school a crap shoot in the USA.
Also, you should use your deductive reasoning skills to deduce that this student is international and not USA as he took the TOEFL.</p>

<p>To the OP, there is nothing that you have given us that would indicate a yes/no either way. Those scores are good, but MIT is a much more holistic process. It is really more about what didn’t happen at school and on tests than what did.</p>

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<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/massachusetts-institute-technology/939227-reminder-no-one-not-even-me-can-give-you-accurate-chance-mit.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/massachusetts-institute-technology/939227-reminder-no-one-not-even-me-can-give-you-accurate-chance-mit.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Not sure if I would call the French system of education socialist, but it is definitely more standardized and unified. The US lacks any sense of unity, because, as you said, it is so large.</p>

<p>The great inequity in American education arises from the fact that, for the most part, education is paid for by property taxes. So, obviously, low-end real-estate (i.e. impoverished neighborhoods) will lead to under-funded schools which leads to under-performing schools (this is actually much more complex, with many other socio-economic factors coming into play, but, for the purposes of this post, I will stand by the simplistic statement)</p>

8

<p>@MITCris
yeah I know that. thanks!</p>