I will try to get a full scholarship/aid at other universities as Plan B.
Are you willing to consider schools with no name recognition in your country if that’s what it takes to study in the US?
I do not want to go to a University that does not have a brand value. But I will have to do it if there is no other option left.
It happens at schools with specific criteria - if you hit a threshold or ranking or score, you’re good. So, (theoretical example) if year 1 you hit a score or rank of 79 and you need 75 or below, you can try the following year, hit 80, and get in.
In the US, the university of Iowa and CSUs use this system. Unfortunately they do not offer full rides.
However in 15 years I’ve never seen it for colleges with holistic admissions (with the exception of students getting their green card and thus becoming domestic applicants when before they were in the international pool).
Nov1 your MIT EA application is due.
Should I just apply to MIT RD, as more of my ECs would have matured by January?
I will follow your advice and work on a “throw-away application” and I will get all the deadlines and all things organized during the summer.
But to get your student visa you need to show proof of available funds. Potential future earnings don’t count.
How are you going to produce $350,000 if you get into a private school like CMU without aid?
Why wouldn’t you instead go to a highly reputed Indian university instead and apply for an MS in the US later as others have suggested?
Admissions (and funding) will be a lot easier.
I will add: please pay heed to @MYOS1634’s advice. They have extensive experience with international applicants and US, Canadian and European admissions.
I am so grateful to everybody who has helped me in giving me a better understanding of my position. I will broaden my list and apply to a lot more unis so I have a better chance and do not rid myself of every option if I do not get into MIT as @blossom says:
However, I would still like to strengthen my plan A even more. Are there any pointers that I can work on to increase my chances considering that, I have by plan B figured out and I am applying to other Unis as well.
Two reasons:
That said, I understand where you are coming from and I appreciate your advice. You are correct, I have miniscule chances to secure the FA that I require, so yes, I will apply to other universities and try to get my tuition covered there. If I do not get the required FA at any uni, then I will ultimately have to take a gap year and work on either strengthening my resume or prepping for IIT-JEE.
What do you plan to do after you get your bachelors degree? You will have a student visa if you get accepted to study here and can prove funding. Once your studies are over, it’s very possible you will need to return to India. Maybe you will be eligible for OPT. @MYOS1634 can elaborate.
If you have to return to India, perhaps getting a degree IN India would benefit you more.
After my bachelors, I aim to get a job at a Startup and then a Big Tech company. Work for an year or two and get back to India to build my own startup.
An alternative to this is very dreamy, the startup that I am working on($5000 seed) is what I want to build my career into. So, if it takes off, I might just get back to India right after my bachelors.
Note: I do not want a US education to settle down in the US. Rather, I want to come back to India as I see that the opportunities for growth are better here. I just want a US education so that I can learn from the best in the world and network with them. India also has amazing Unis, but they are not the best in the whole world. So my philosophy is that I try for the best, if I do not get it, I shall settle for less.
Considering your extensive and adult-like ECs, the US would seem like the best place for you since it’ll be the bwst environment to develop your project while learning a lot.
You are perfectly positioned for plan A. But as i said, it only means your odds go from 2% to perhaps 5%.
But if you don’t get into MIT, it doesn’t mean you’ll have to “settle”.
US university quality is hard to fathom.
There are 3,500 of them and if you combine national private universities, public flagships, national LACs, and top 10 regional universities, you have 300- 350 universities that are topnotch.
I bet you’ve never considered UNebraska, perhaps never heard of it, and never heard of this program
https://raikes.unl.edu/
Yet it’s incredible.
Look into this program: I think it’d be a great fit for you.
https://www.nets.upenn.edu/aboutus
In addition, lots of potential collaborations with VC through Wharton or Jerome Fisher.
Based on your interests, you’d likely get a STEM OPT (27 months minus time spent in off campus internships aka CPT). After that, either you get into a Master’s degree or you go back to India. Since that’s your plan, what you need is a university that’ll be a launching pad. It can be MIT but it can be many others.
My two cents is MIT is actually pretty good about explaining what makes for a strong application to MIT:
It isn’t in the shape of a formula (do X, Y, and Z and you will maximize your chances of admission to MIT), because no such formula exists.
But I think if you really take the time to reflect on all those things that they discuss, maybe come back to them more than once, and then think about how to incorporate those things in your own life in your own way, you have done what you can.
And the good news is a lot of US colleges are going to like the same things, so really you can just see that as general advice as well.
MIT also allows you to submit a creative/maker portfolio - which could be a good way to showcase some of your EC projects. A few other colleges allow applicants to submit maker portfolios (I know Tufts and WashU do), and my S23 reached out to other admissions offices to see if they would accept his maker portfolio as additional application material. A few other colleges (mostly private universities - not big state flagships) allowed him to submit this as additional information.
I note that goes along with their paragraph about “Hands-on creativity” (in that admissions page), so I would suggest submitting a portfolio is a pretty important thing to consider doing!
I don’t think that people who are unfamiliar with our educational system, understand the numbers.
The “elite” schools, that every high achieving student seems to target, are not that big (with some exception of the large publics). There are only so many seats and so many professors. Certain majors are “impacted” which means that those departments are full and cannot provide the support needed to facilitate a good learning environment for those majors if they go over the limited seats and spaces.
MIT stats indicated the following: 1,259 students out of 26,914 applicants to the Class of 2027 for an acceptance rate of 4.68 percent .
In the US, there are about 20K high schools. Each of those typically has a Valedictorian and a Salutatorian who may send an app to schools like MIT. It is a numbers game and the schools with the money, have limited seats. So you have to “pay to play”.
You have to consider the numbers and that admission decisions are controlled by the admissions committees. They build a class each year and look for a theme that binds those class members. No one knows what that will be.
If those colleges have to shell out their funds to bring in a student, that is where the chances of admission drop. The FA budgets are finite.
Saying that the funds will “materialize” from the future, means that a US Visa wont materialize.
Look at other schools that may provide funding. That should be your Plan A.
More importantly for the OP,
120 international applicants were accepted from 5,889 applications, for an acceptance rate of 2.04%.
Three things just sort of popped into my head when re-reading this thread.
One is to read as much as you reasonably can from the MIT admissions web pages. In addition to the “what we look for” blog that @NiceUnparticularMan posted above, you might want to also look at the “applying sideways” blog on the MIT admissions web site. As I understand it, it recommends that you do what is right for you, and do it very well. This does sound like what you have done up to now. This is also what I did many decades ago and it did get me into MIT, but what I did and what you have been doing are mostly different, and this is entirely appropriate.
Another thing that comes to mind is that you might want to apply to the University of Toronto (as others have suggested), and get your high school to nominate you for the Lester B. Pearson scholarship. This scholarship is very, very competitive, but for the small number of students who get it it is a very good scholarship, and the University of Toronto is a very good university. Both MIT and Toronto are academically very challenging. In terms of the number of students enrolled Toronto is way bigger than MIT, although MIT feels a bit larger than it is possibly due to the enormous amount of research that is going on in various parts of the school.
https://future.utoronto.ca/pearson/about/
Regarding your letters of reference, you mentioned that you are not sure how well your Robotics coach and your Math teacher write. It is entirely fine if their writing skills, or their English language writing skills, are shaky. What matters is what they say about you, not whether their grammar is correct or their exposition skills are extraordinary. MIT and others schools will not be planning on hiring either of them to teach English to incoming freshmen. Math skills are important, and there is significant value to getting a reference from someone who can attest to your math skills. Robotics is of course somewhat related, and also speaks to your creativity.
Thank you so much for your replies. I am sorry I had been in an internet-restrictive retreat with my family in the mountains so I could not reply earlier.
You have opened my mind to consider more universities and not be attached to just MIT. I may get a more comfortable education at other programs as well. I have kept it on my next weeks’ to-dos to find out the universities which will fit my requirements.
As far as OPT is concerned, if I get incubated in the US or funded by a US firm and wish to establish my business there. Can I still not stay for a little longer? This is just a possibility(~1%).
I have gone through these blogs and I will follow your advice go through them a few times more and then structure my summer break to work on those things. Infact reading one of these blogs got me hooked to MIT.
No jokes, I have a big 5ft by 8ft MIT dome picture in my room, captioned with “Mens Et Manus”. I just feel a connect with their motto: “Mind and Hand”. You imagine the solution to the problems and then apply engineering to solve those problems. It resonates with my goal of becoming an Engineer Entrepreneur. So I will go through the blogs once again to still gain a better understanding.
Thank you.
Yes, I will be working on my makers portfolio. One of my mentors, who is a professor at a Canadian university suggested me that I make something that appeals to the senses of the AOs rather than keeping it completely technical. I will try to highlight the impact of my ECs in my makers portfolio. Thank you for the suggestion.
Thank so much for re-reading the thread to help me.
I had never considered UToronto as an option as I did not want to go study in Canada. But, since many qualified people have attested UToronto’s programs, I will definitely give it a shot so that if I do not get admitted to MIT, I always have an equally rigorous university to attend. I will talk to my school counsellor to nominate me for Lester B. Pearson scholarship.
Regarding the LORs, my ITR(IT & Robotics) coach is an engineering weapon but since he hasn’t written any LORs for college applicants(he has just about to graduate himself) I am a little reluctant but at the same time, he is only person who knows my technical abilities inside out. The best I can do is give him LORs which were accepted to the best colleges as a reference point. If I ask my school Director, I am scared that since he is busy all the time I may get a half furnished letter.