<p>Next year I am going to be a sophomore in high school and I have a 4.25 GPA on a 5.0 scale (1st in class), in a class of 587 students. I took the highest classes that my school provided, including one AP class (World History).</p>
<p>I am very active and am very passionate about Mock Trial (a competition-based law club where you try cases against different schools). I was wondering if this would count towards me or against me because of the fact that it is not directed towards math and engineering and the things that MIT is known for. </p>
<p>Mock trial can take almost 8 hours out of my week, but I still try to join along with Academic Team and I might try to join newspaper, which is a class at my school.</p>
<p>I was wondering what types of activities you would suggest I do. I’m really passionate in law, but I’m equally as passionate with math, and I am good at computers. My school has a math team and a FIRST robotics team, but due to Mock Trial, I don’t think I can join them. Can you suggest any activities that I could do during the summer that I could think about joining?</p>
<p>8 hours really isn’t that much… that’s only a little more than an hour a day. That leaves a lot of time for other things, unless your homeworks consumes the rest of your day.</p>
<p>Besides that, there’s not much you can do this summer that I know of, but for next year you can apply to one of those really selective/prestigious summer programs like TASP or RSI; that will definitely help your chances.</p>
<p>It’s good that you’re thinking of college so early, but it’s also bad. Don’t get obsessed. Find things that you enjoy to be passionate about. Keep up your studies and take as many challenging (AP/Honors level) classes that you can. Do amazingly on your SATs (though naturally this guarantees nothing) and… good luck!</p>
<p>dude, you’re only a sophomore… high school is going to suck if that’s all you think about… I definitely wish I didn’t freak out as much during my senior year!</p>
<p>I wasn’t really writing this to freak out about colleges, I was just wondering what kinds of things you did during the summer so that I could look at those things.</p>
<p>If I can recommend anything, keep a notebook of your clubs, interests, hobbies, or anything in which you get involved. It will help you a lot. I did this, and it made writing applications so much easier. I did think about college (in 8th grade actually) and yes I did obsess, but I regret nothing about it. Just don’t make yourself miserable and stress out. Understand that you have to find your interests and they may not exactly fit with a certain college, but it doesn’t mean you’re not good enough.</p>
<p>Sorry that’s off topic. Try to find something (maybe like 2 or 3 things) meaningful or fun for you that is unique or eccentric. Something about which you truly care. Then get involved.</p>
<p>Honestly, if things like Mock Trial, World History, and Law fall under what you may pursue in college, MIT is not for you. Plenty of places have these in addition to math.</p>
Having extracurricular activities that aren’t math- or science-related isn’t a black mark on an application. Do the things you like to do, and worry about what the MIT admissions committee will think later.</p>
<p>Almost all of my high school extracurriculars were in the performing arts, a situation which isn’t terribly unusual among MIT admits.</p>
<p>There’s nothing wrong with having an interest in the humanities. In fact, MIT is an excellent school outside of science, math and engineering. However, you should at least be excited about math and science as well if you’re looking into MIT.</p>
<p>i’m currently sitting in a hotel room in wichita, kansas for nationals in debate. as an incoming freshman who is a huge philosophy junkie (as well as a math/science enthusiast, obviously), i can tell you that it is totally okay to spend a significant amount of time on the humanities. in high school, i spent at least as much, if not more, time doing debate work than physics/math work in high school even though i was a lot more successful in competitive physics/math than in debate. i even talked about this on the application. i attached a supplementary essay entirely about debate.</p>
<p>Keep in mind that MIT operates a single admissions office. Unlike some schools where you apply to the school of Engineering, or the school of the Humanities, or what have you, at MIT, you simply apply to the Institute as a whole.</p>
<p>That means that the admissions office are recieving applications from students interested in MIT’s top notch school of Architecture, its top-10 political science department, its business school, as well as a vast smattering of future scientists and engineers. </p>
<p>If you have a passion for law, then by golly do mock trial. If you lack that passion, but are doing it because it would look good for the application, then forget about it. </p>
<p>I am an EC (an interviewer for MIT), and every year I meet at least one applicant who had loaded up on extracurricular activities purely because they thought that it would look good (community service and charity fund-raising activities are particularly popular in this regard). Don’t waste your time in this way. Do what you feel passionately about, and that will definitely shine through on the application.</p>
<p>You can NOT do both mock trial and FIRST robotics, in my state at least, because the competition days overlapped. BUt what about math club?? My mock trial meets 7 hours a week (though I’m quitting to do robotics) and I still work in science bowl and dramatic productions.</p>
<p>Silly, just don’t go to the FIRST competition. The important part of FIRST is building the robot, and while it sucks not to go to competition, that doesn’t mean you don’t learn a lot. And you are part of the team, so whatever they get you get!</p>
<p>And besides, there isn’t just <em>one</em> FIRST competition – there are dozens of Regionals, and then the Nationals… which not every team qualifies to attend! differential is right, if you’re interested in FIRST there’s no reason you couldn’t participate in the build and possibly even one or more Regionals. Or you could do the animation, or website work, or publicity, or fund-raising, or graphic design, or any number of things for your FIRST team which don’t require going to the competitions!</p>