If CS is your dream major you should be focusing on other schools on your list besides UPenn, like CMU, Berkeley and Stanford. If also interested in business, CMU and Berkeley have top undergraduate programs.
CMU has a gender equity policy for STEM majors (50% of incoming classes are women), which works to your favor.
What are your SAT scores for math and language?
This might depend upon the split between math versus English score. If you have 790 or 800 on the math part of the SAT (or maybe even 780), then I think that you SAT is okay for MIT. I got into MIT many decades ago as a Canadian with an overall SAT score significantly lower than yours, but a solid 800 in math (and the math, chemistry, and physics subject tests also).
I do not think that you should ED anywhere unless it is your dream school. If your dream is MIT, then go for it (edit: presumably EA, since as noted below MIT does not have ED). Do note that studying at MIT is a LOT of work, the pressure does not let up until you graduate, and the desire to work this hard should come from inside yourself. You need to want to do it.
HoweverâŠ
You should not expect to be able to stay in the US after graduating from university in the US.
You should not expect employers in Canada to prefer a graduate from MIT, or Cornell, or U.Penn, compared to a graduate from Toronto, Waterloo, McGill, or UBC (or McMaster, SFU, Alberta, âŠ). My experience is the exact other way around.
Pretty much whatever you do moving to the USA is a long shot. However, my guess is that your best chances might be to get a degree from one of the very good universities in Canada, get a job with the Canadian branch of a US employer, and then see if they will support your transfer to a US site. However, my experience is in high tech, and not finance.
Weâve done this in automotive - Canadian expats.
From this bit, it sounds like youâre suggesting that if MIT it the top school, the student should ED there. Except MIT is EA only which I know you know but from your post it was unclear.
If MIT is the top school, then yes it would be good for the student to EA there. The benefit of EA is that it does not preclude the student from applying anywhere else EA. I think itâs the only private school on this studentâs list that is EA and not either ED or a restricted type of EA that schools such as Stanford or Princeton have. I do think the restrictions are only against other privates so the student would be able to apply to any school like U MIchigan EA and another private such as Stanford. However, with EA a student can apply to both MIT and U Chicago EA early which is not the case with Stanfordâs restricted version of EA.
I have a 780 in math, would that maybe be high enough to be competitive for mit? less girls apply so iâm wondering if the standard might be a bit lower
thank you for all the other advice as well!
When I was there MIT had a lot of male students and very few female students. I am pretty sure that now they are very, very close to being 50/50. In my opinion this makes for a healthier and more âclose to realityâ environment and is a good thing. Anyone who is remotely competitive for MIT is going to be accepted to many other very good universities (assuming that they apply) so I do not feel bad about anyone who is not accepted to MIT and goes elsewhere. This does however mean that it is just a tiny, tiny bit easier for a woman to get accepted (but definitely still not easy).
I think that 780 is high enough to be competitive. Your application would need to otherwise be quite strong, and it would still be a reach.
I am however still worried about the potential 4 year outcome of: âSpend four or five times as much to get a degree in the US, find that you canât get a job in the US, return to Canada and discover that you would have been better off with a degree from Torontoâ. To me this seems likely for a Canadian attending university in the US.
Graduate schools in the US do know how strong the Canadian university system is. I have known quite a few people who got their bachelorâs in Canada and then did some graduate work in the US. One daughter got her bachelorâs in Canada and is currently getting her PhD in the US (at a very good university). We just saw her today and she does feel like the education that she got at a university in Canada prepared her very well for her PhD program.
One difference between the US and Canadian universities did come up in our conversation today and might be worth mentioning: In the US universities typically have quite a few âgeneral educationâ requirements, which means that you take quite a few courses outside of your major. In Canada it is at least permitted to take a higher concentration of classes in your major. This for example meant that my daughter took more classes in her major than she would have if she had gotten her bachelorâs down here in the US. Quite a few of the âclassesâ that she took involved extensive lab work, but that is just because that is what she wanted to do. This lab work helped her get her first job here in the US.
She liked this difference. How you feel about it I guess is up to you.
So MIT has explained in the past that high SAT Math scores are not necessarily a strict requirement, but it just happens to be a fact that the Math outliers (my term) they are looking for usually have high SAT Math scores.
So I think that is really the question for MITânot whether that SAT Math score is high enough, but whether you are overall that sort of Math outlier. And you might be, but that is going to be a contextual thing for MIT, and I think it will be hard for us to predict what they will think.
I think that any top CS program will be tough. I know that CMU is also a grind. If you are up for the work, at a program like MIT, CMU, Stanford, etc. you will meet amazing, accomplished people (both students and professors), and you will be exposed to cutting edge research.
Cornell alum (from way back) and fellow Canuck here. CU and Penn have wildly different vibes: Ithaca is decidedly rural (albeit stunning) and about 4.5 hours away from NYC. Penn is obviously urban. I wouldnât worry about connections at the former: About a third of each entering class at CU is from New York state, and youâll meet so many people from NYC proper that if you move to Manhattan after graduation, youâll have a built-in network. Career services will also hook you up with externship and internship programs. As for immigration status, you will be eligible for a 12-month work permit known as F-1 practical training (OPT) after graduation. This might be enough to kick things off, but finance and tech are so hypercompetitive that it might be hard to stay after that unless you impress your employer so much that they agree to sponsor you.
Of course the obvious Canadian answer for CS is Waterloo, but you might want to check out UBCâs arrangement with the University of California system. Hereâs a possible hack you might want to explore if you do end up staying in Canada: UBC has a direct exchange program with the UC system. You canât pick your exact campus, but you rank your top choices on your application. If youâre lucky, you can spend an entire year at Berkeley or UCLA while paying UBC tuition (CAD$7,200 vs. close to USD$55K): University of California | Go Global
I think that girls are still sought after by MIT, and a 780 math score definitely meets the bar for admissions.
However, I do not think that paying more for a top US school vs what youâd pay in Canada for a top school is worth doing. Better to get your undergrad degree for cheap in Canada, and go to a top US school for grad school.
While MIT admission may be easier for girls, the admission rate for females is still in the single digits. Also MIT does not give any preference to EA applications so the rate of acceptance is about the same for EA as it is for RD. According to the link below, the rate for males was 3% while females was 5.5% for 2026. It has since gone up very slightly for both genders as 2026 was still test optional.
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