[mathking]

The thing that every student needs to understand about admission to any elite school is that schools get a great many more qualified applicants than they have spots open. Most people tend to think that admissions is a ranking system, and that higher SAT/ACT scores, higher grades, more AP classes necessarily equates to greater likelihood of admission. In fact the situation is closer to using test scores and grades to set a floor. Applicants above the floor get considered. After that, the process becomes far more opaque, and many other factors come into play. There is no magic formula to insure admission to M.I.T., Yale and the like. I have had kids with perfect test scores and all As not get in to M.I.T. and kids with lower scores get in. Elite schools spend a lot of effort looking for ways in which particular applicants will enhance the school. Lots of factors play a roll. For anyone interested in a little window into the last few decisions, I recommend the book Alma Mater by P.F. Kluge. It is a book about a year spent as an instructor at Kenyon College, and one section talks about the author observing the admissions process and in particular the way in which the last few decisions get made.

None of our Dean's list finalists have gone to MIT or Yale but they have gone to Carnegie Mellon, Ohio State and Virginia Tech. (I think one of them applied to M.I.T. and was deferred, the other two did not apply. I believe our finalist this year is considering M.I.T., but we'll have to see about that.) The program has not been around long enough for there to be any conclusive data about the benefit for college admissions.