<p>"But the statistics given are for applicants accepted, so obviously the statistics for those that applied will be much lower. "</p>
<p>Show me the statistics for those applied. I think it will hardly be lower at all. Looking at my school’s TCCI Naviance program, most people that apply to these top schools have top grades and scores. Only a handful apply with statistics below average, and very few apply with below 25% SAT scores.</p>
<p>Look at the decision threads for one of the top schools. You will see that not nearly 50% of students with over 2300 and over 3.9 were accepted to Harvard- and many of these students had amazing extracurriculars.</p>
<p>Cornell would be a Match. Harvey Mudd would be a slight Reach. MIT & Olin would be slightly tougher Reaches. Princeton would be the toughest of them all. Good luck!</p>
Ben Jones, who is an MIT admissions officer who posts frequently on this board, has stated before (you can search his posts) that somewhere around 70% of the MIT applicant pool is numerically qualified to be at MIT. So the averages for all applicants will be lower, but the average for that “qualified” 70% will presumably mirror the accepted student statistics quite closely.</p>
<p>MIT in particular is looking at quite a bit more than statistics, and merely having good SAT scores is not a way to distinguish oneself in the applicant pool.</p>
<p>If you receive a 2 in AP English do not, for heaven’s sake, include it on any of your college applications.</p>
<p>Remember to look at the male/female acceptance rates - especially at the tech schools. MIT’s is under 10% for males, so that it will be a reach for the OP. However, if you don’t apply, your chances of acceptance are about zero. </p>
<p>I would suggest adding one more match-ish school to your list. Maybe Northwestern or CMU?</p>
<p>I’ve been thinking through chocolatelvr88’s post, and I believe he/she is probably correct. It is a logical argument–so I’ll accept the 20% number;</p>
<p>–and change my chances for this applicant at MIT to reach.</p>
<p>I was accepted to Olin and MIT, and I ended up choosing MIT. I know several people who were accepted at one but not the other. </p>
<p>The people who were accepted to Olin but rejected from MIT were generally female, and there were even more rejected from Caltech. This is probably because Olin likes well-rounded engineers and strives for gender balance somewhat more than MIT and certainly more than Caltech. </p>
<p>The people admitted to MIT but not to Olin (after Candidate’s Weekend) had very noticeably poor social skills. The best advice I can give you for Candidate’s Weekend is to be well-groomed (it sounds crazy, but there were a few people who did not understand how to dress for an interview or neglected hygiene) and be assertive. Picture that annoying business guy who oozes charm and always wears a big smile… then play it down to a level you can stand. Try to be as outgoing as you can manage without seeming spastic. And don’t worry about the building exercise, it is strictly for fun. Kids always suspect otherwise, but one of the profs laughed and told me they were all still asleep while we were doing it.</p>
<p>When speaking of Olin’s prestige, there is one important thing to remember - it is not a full university. It may become extremely prestigious, but only ever to a niche group of engineers who are interested in the disciplines Olin offers. No small school can match the depth and breadth of fields and research or the alumni networks of the tech schools/ivies. Olin will end up more along the lines of U Chicago as far as prestige goes - an unarguably excellent school, but only truly appealing to a specialized group.</p>
<p>i don’t understand how u’re considering both MIT and Calpoly, but not caltech. mit shows that u’re looking for a good school, and poly shows that u dont mind moving to cali, and caltech has both of those, so why’d u overlook?</p>