I'm currently a sophomore in high school, so I still have a while to decide on colleges to apply to. Before I get into the question, I will give some background information about me so far.
When it comes to academics, I currently have a high GPA compared to others at my school (4.0 Freshman year, 4.45ish so far this year), and I am 4 years ahead in math (I'm taking Calc BC). I have taken the SAT Math 2 and SAT Chinese subject tests, both of which I got an 800 on. I got a decent score of 1370 on the PSAT in freshman year, and I currently score around 1520 on practice SATs. I am not sure how well I would do on the SAT essay, since I do not have a strong idea of how it would be graded, or what my score would be at the moment since there is not really a way to determine that using simply the rubric (I may score myself higher or lower than others might).
Aside from that, I am a huge math, logic, and problem solving person, so I enjoy studying for the math olympiad in my free time, and I hope to qualify for the USAMO by junior year and get a decent score on it. I'm not sure if colleges would count this as an extracurricular, considering how math is taught at school. But the content on math olympiads is a lot different from those taught at school. In fact, if you were to give even a pre-math olympiad test (say, the AIME or even just the AMC 12) to a class of calculus students (or even college students), they would certainly not do well on it unless they spent hours per day preparing for it. On top of that, I started my school's math olympiad club (I'm the president of it), where I teach interested students some of the interesting logic and ideas behind math, and ultimately prepare them for the AMC tests.
Besides math, my extracurriculars include Boy Scouts (I should be an Eagle Scout by the end of Junior year), piano (I never tested for the last level since my parents were unwilling to spend any more money on piano, thinking I'm good enough and it's not worth the money to have me go on to do the test), chess (I never went to a tournament or took a course on this, so there's not much I could say about it), martial arts (similar to piano, my parents felt that I was good enough, and so I never made it to black belt, despite being able to do so).
I am part of the web leader team at my school, where I lead new 7th graders (my school contains both middle school and high school) on helpful activities and get them comfortable and situated at our school. I also actively participate in my school's Science Olympiad and FBLA (Future Business Leaders of America) clubs.
My parents stress the SAT much more than they do extracurriculars (including math olympiad), so I feel like my performance in things that I'm interested in are greatly hindered, making it harder for me to succeed in what I love (including qualifying for the USAMO, which is extremely difficult in the first place, only 500 students nationally and from a few other parts of the world qualify each year). Nonetheless, I've worked extremely hard to get to where I am today.
Now, to the question. I am hoping to double major in computer science and math. I've been interested in MIT for a long time because of it is technology based and many people there would likely have similar interests to me. I also know that the MIT admissions rate is fairly high if you do an interview with one of their volunteers (I think it was 36% acceptance), which I hope to do early action to increase my chances more. However, since I live on the west coast, around 2 hours away from Stanford, I have a friend who's dad is a professor at Stanford, and I have had a personal experience with Stanford, I also extremely want to apply to Stanford early action. If you're wondering, the personal experience was that I was born with severe bleeding in my head around my brain, and I was rushed to the Stanford medical center, where I had to stayed for days overnight before I recovered. If it wasn't for this, I likely would have been born disabled or died, so I am deeply thankful to Stanford, and hope to represent them, despite mathematics not being a popular subject there. The problem is, Stanford early action requires that I do not apply for any other colleges early action, so if I do not make it into Stanford, my chances of making it to another college lowers, since I have to apply regular. I do not know if it would be worth it to take this risk. Any advice?
Neither appears like it intends to give any advantage to EA applicants, based on what they say:
https://admission.stanford.edu/apply/decision_process/index.html
http://mitadmissions.org/apply/freshman/cycles
Of course, both are reaches for everyone. Be sure to have affordable safeties when you make your list. Your parents should be doing the financial planning early enough to be able to give you a budget limit and financial aid parameters to put in net price calculators before you make your application list.
Don’t think about it now. Just focus on continuing to do well in school, to develop your interests, and to develop as a person. In a year or so you will need to start working on getting a more comprehensive list of reach, match and safety schools together, and researching schools in kore detail. Some of your information is woefully inaccurate (MIT as about an 8% acceptance rate, and all applicants are strongly urged to interview; I have no idea where your 36% number came from, but it is half an order of magnitude off), and you will need to get better information, visit schools, and figure out which ones are good fits for you, based on more specific reasons than general reputation in math and comp sci, or sentimental reasons.
MIT and Stanford are both very good at Mathematics. Both are very good at Computer Science. To me Stanford is a more cheerful place. I am not sure how much of this is the better weather, the palm trees, the campus that takes you outside to go between classes, or the fact that I was older and more mature and more sociable when I studied there.
There are a lot of other schools that are also very good at both math and CS. Thus if you don’t get into either you are not in any trouble – you can do very well at any one of many other excellent schools. When I was a graduate student at Stanford there were other graduate students there who had done their undergrad all over the place (I specifically remember students from Rutgers, UNC, and Michigan, but there were students from many other schools).
Thus to me it makes sense to apply EA where ever you want to apply. If it were me and I had your stats and was from California, I think that I would apply EA to Stanford and if I didn’t get in do RD to UCB and UCLA and Michigan and several other schools (maybe even UBC). However, I think that you should apply where you want to go, and don’t feel any pressure to get into MIT or Stanford, because there are many other excellent choices. You appear to be solidly on track to attend a very good university.
Also, @ucbalumnus is entirely correct when he says “Be sure to have affordable safeties”.
Oh, you’re right, I just checked the MIT’s website, and they said they admitted 10.8% of applicants who interviewed but only 1% of those who didn’t interview. And thanks for the recommendation! I’m just a little concerned about college admissions since my sister who is currently a junior recently messed up her early application to USC and missed the deadline (They actually sent her a mail, requesting her to apply early). I decided to prepare for my applications early so I won’t run into the same trouble my sister did.
@ktong777 The only consideration here is fit. There is no difference in strength, quality, prestige etc both overall and for what you are interested in. The two schools are quite different in terms of culture and vibe. I would suggest doing a ton of research on both and applying EA where you think you will fit in best.
@ktong777 , here’s the plan: EA to MIT and Caltech, RD to Stanford, Princeton, UCs.
BTW, the 36% MIT admission rate is given to the recruited athletes. I personally know quite a few students who got into MIT for playing their sports (swimming, rowing, x-country, baseball, etc.) They all have good grades, but their recruited status gave them a big bump in admission rate. And of course, if you are recruited by Stanford, you have a 100% admission rate.