Something I'm surprised hasn't been mentioned yet: Cost.

MIT is a fairly expensive school. Their web site says it varies by program, but is about $45K per academic year for tuition alone. That puts it among the most expensive schools out there.

I'm not sure where you are from, but wherever it is, if your GPA is high enough that you could get into MIT, it is also probably high enough that you could get in to most state schools and maintain a full or half tuition scholarship.

If your family happens to have that kind of money -- and certainly some families do -- the go ahead and consider MIT. If you don't have that kind of money be very careful about the decision, because it is often difficult to maintain scholarships. If you get a scholarship and lose it the first year, can you afford the remaining $135,000 in debt?

Just consider the $180,000 price tag carefully. Around my area, if you choose to attend a junior college and then major university the four year cost is around $20,000 - $25,000. That's for all four years. Or if you attend a state-run university (Locally the University of Utah, a well regarded school) for all four years that's about $35,000; which is one-sixth the cost of MIT. Add the fact that you would be that much more likely to get full-tuition scholarships and your cost could be quite minimal.

It's nice to dream big, but make sure you can afford it.

It would absolutely be fun to own and drive a Ferrari, but I own a Prius for practical reasons. Similarly, I was accepted to several schools decades ago, but being smart, I chose the one I could afford.

Really 4.0 for HS is kinda expected if you want a scholarship, plus good test scores don't hurt. It's not too hard to get in HS in USA, but not that many people apply themselves that much that early. To keep the scholarship you usually have to keep up a 3.8 GPA or so.

I believe MIT requires 3.8 GPA+

As Graelig pointed out earlier, in alot of prestigious private schools (MIT, Ivy leagues among them) while grades do count, they place an equal value on extracurriculars. You're probably familiar with the college admissions process, so you know they have you write essays to certain prompts, and if you can explain how an extracurricular activity has bettered you as a person, that's a fantastic place to start.

I just went through the application process last year, and plan on attending USC in the fall (here's hoping my grades don't drop and I don't get my scholarship rescinded :P). Now, I may be wrong, but I always felt that out of my entire application, if I were to pick one thing that helped most, it would be my summer extracurriculars. I would recommend getting involved over the summer somehow in the field you're interested in (in this case, games, im assuming) that you can end up showing to an admissions committee. In my case I worked on and co-authored a research paper on Science Learning Games, and I'd like to think that was a big factor in getting into USC and Columbia in NYC. I have a friend who's attending Columbia and he also involved himself in medical research over the summer. Now, correlation is not necessarily causation. There's obviously alot of other factors in play, but getting involved certainly never hurt.

Thanks for the answers. I'm now officially finished with this schoolyear (Called "seconde" in France, first of the three high shool years. So I still got two years before me.), with a final grade average of 15.85/20 (Would be higher if it weren't for sports and history )

AP stands for advance placement. It's pretty much just an advanced version of the course for people that understand the material better and are ahead of the normal class. The AP classes that are available depend on the school and the amount of students there that can take it. Some schools also offer college classes for early college credits, sometimes in the school and sometimes you go to a college class a few times a week at the actual college.

When I was in highschool our school offered AP classes for English, math, chemistry and physcis.

Hm, I don't think that we have those. Maybe next year. The school system here is generally so much different of the one in the US...

Really 4.0 for HS is kinda expected if you want a scholarship, plus good test scores don't hurt. It's not too hard to get in HS in USA, but not that many people apply themselves that much that early. To keep the scholarship you usually have to keep up a 3.8 GPA or so.

I just hope that the french/US Grade-scaling isn't linear, because getting an average of 20 here is pretty much impossible (I personally never heard of people getting 20, even if you can find a few of them in the internet).
By the way, I ain't applying right now, I still have two more years. Sorry for the misunderstandings.

Something I'm surprised hasn't been mentioned yet: Cost.
-snip-

Well, I read somewhere that scholarships at MIT are given out depending on the income of your parents. Wouldn't that solve the problem completely?

Having a 3.2 GPA in the US is not considered very good.

Are you certain the two even map linearly? I'm not familiar with the French system, but I'd certainly not assume its linear, or that the grading standards are the same. Even within the US GPA system, a particular instructor's grading standards can shift you around vs. another instructor, or from one school to another. France has entirely different education standards than what we have in the US.

(What I'm about to say may or may not be true depending on wether what I read about the US Grading system is true or not)
I can't really imagine them being linear too, since it is reaaaaaaally hard to get an 20/20 average here, since even the smallest error will cause a drop in points. Since in the US you have some kind of margin in errors for each grade (A etc), I think there must be another way of converting grades.

I don't know how accurate it is, but I found this site: http://www.foreigncredits.com/Resources/GPA-Calculator/ (Put in France as country)
Weird thing is, if I just put in my grade average (Sum of all grades divided by the number of grades) (15.85/20), the site tells me that I have 4.0 GPA. But if I put in all my grades separately, all with "1" in credit, I get 3.64... Welp, not that good I guess.
Another thing is, I read about how american colleges want to know which "rang" you have in your school. But my school doesn't have such rangs...
And are "appreciations"/"comments" by the profs also considered? Because those are pretty favorable for me.

As Graelig pointed out earlier, in alot of prestigious private schools (MIT, Ivy leagues among them) while grades do count, they place an equal value on extracurriculars. You're probably familiar with the college admissions process, so you know they have you write essays to certain prompts, and if you can explain how an extracurricular activity has bettered you as a person, that's a fantastic place to start.

If you mean me, I ain't. I still have two years of school, so I will probably send out my first "college-essay" in about a year and a half. Also, as I said, unfortunately I'm a really boring person, so it will probably make it even harder...

I wanted to say a few more things, but I forgot them... I'll edit them in later or something.

Kind regards

Well, I read somewhere that scholarships at MIT are given out depending on the income of your parents. Wouldn't that solve the problem completely?

This is true for certain scholarships but are usually reserved for those that put 150% into their school work and extra curricular activities and show that they are extremely motivated.