I will be graduating high school in May. I plan on studying Computer Science and Mathematics. I run cross county. I have a 4.0 gpa and took IB classes. I plan on joining a fraternity. I scored a 1530 on the SAT. I got a 35 on the ACT. I have already applied to the following colleges: MIT, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, Dartmouth, and Yale. I am hoping you guys can help me discover what distinguishes these amazing Universities from each other and help me make a decision.
What they all have in common is you will be lucky to get in more than one of them for computer science. So your choice might be surprisingly easy.
Are you recruitable for XC/Track? That could be a hook especially at the Ivies and MIT.
I am recruitable for cross country.
Are you more technology driven or people driven? There are two types of jobs in broad stroke 1) product/technology driven 2) helping people/businesses with technology. Former deals with theory, technology while later deals more with non-tech people. What do you want to do? Analyze yourself and find which part you would enjoy the most.
Harvard, Yale etc. fits later while MIT, CMU fits former. Others in between.
Either case the ones you mentioned are amazing schools.
Is it worth going to a prestigious school just because you can get into one? Are the colleges that I am not looking at that I should be? What should I be looking at during my second tours? How do you get the best sense of what it is like to go to that college? How do you differentiate between similar schools and programs?
I want to be on the tech side.
The most likely outcome with that list is a shutout. Do you have a safety, or is starting at a community college your safety plan?
Fraternities vary considerably across and within campuses.
If you want to be Tech side, my list would be: Stanford, MIT, CMU. IMHO (I am biased towards Stanford as I used to live next door)
Penn is my safety school.
Penn cannot generally be considered a safety.
@coldwerewolf How can Penn be considered your safety school? Penn along with the rest of the ivies and ivy-equivalents are high reaches for practically all qualified applicants. If you are a really impressive prodigy with major national/ international awards, perfect scores and grades they might be considered a match, but even then calling them a safety would be a stretch.
Maybe you mean Penn State?
Something is off with this posting and the responses. 1) hard to imagine that anyone would consider an Ivy a Safety, 2) a recruitable D1 student-athlete who is a Senior would have either already signed an NLI in November, would be getting ready to do so In February, or would be worst case trying to put together a last minute partial, but in all cases lots of dialogue with coaches would be going on - they wouldn’t be throwing out a response like posting #4. My assumption is that OP is an eager Sophomore, maybe a Junior, looking for advice for the future - IMHO.