Ppaayas

I thought this was a forum where each one had a chance to speak. Let us keep it that way and not vehemently split venom at strangers.
I do know how badly people might want to get into MIT and how it could be 'bad omen' for anyone to say their chances are few. But no. Don't bash.
Best of luck. May MIT select you, if you are applying.

dasadhikarik

Yeah, keep living in that world of superstition, and not the world of reality (which MIT is the keystone of), and I'm SURE they'll accept you. I've resolved to state things as they are in my posts, not some fairytale transmutation of reality where everything is hunky dory. If you want solace, go find Tizil--or any of the million other CC users who live in that fairytale world. Auf wiedersehen.

Ppaayas

Yes. MIT IS going to choose you, and interview or no interview, you are in.
And btw, Tizil is a very very accomplished human being, and he is pretty real too.

dasadhikarik

Yes, I like what Tizil does. He has a lot of positivity and must be a very accommodating person to spend so much time on College Confidential helping out others. See, this is what I'm talking about. I mention Tizil once, and you think I'm saying something bad about him. I'm not saying anything bad about Tizil. What I'm saying is that Tizil, being a nice guy, will not give you a clear picture of the MIT admissions process--and you know this to be true. I do not have any incentive to badmouth MIT at this point. What I'm telling you, about not being able to get into MIT unless you fit a certain category of people, is the truth. I'm not even discouraging anyone from applying. All I'm saying is that tackle the applications with the end in mind. There is no point in worrying about the interviews. It won't do you a lot of good at all.

What sort of a delusional world are you living in when you say, "MIT IS going to choose you." MIT does not choose. It accepts and rejects. And can't you understand sarcasm and figure of speech either? When I said Tizil lived in a fairytale world, I didn't mean that he was fake. I meant that he lives, at least online, in the world where everything is good and positive. I'm sorry, but far too many Indians are allured by that. It isn't healthy at all. I can only assume that you must have been very tired reading these posts, to extrapolate such a far-fetched comment from my responses. Is it the MIT stress getting to you? Do yourself a favor and RELAX. Come PI day, you won't regret all the preparations, like I did (unless, of course, you're one of the select few holding an Olympiad medal; in that case, you can just breeze through the app). Good night.

cursingmonk

^ You sound pretty angry towards MIT. Were you really hoping to get in and then got rejected?

cursingmonk

What category is that? Just olympiad winners or other exceptional students?

dasadhikarik

You've hit the nail right on the head. The "category" I'm talking about IS olympiad winners and exceptional students. BUT, what exactly does exceptional students mean. It depends on what pool you're applying from. In India, everyone has high grades, so in the normal sense, it's difficult to be exceptional academically--whereas this is the sort of exceptionality MIT is looking for! Have you won an International Science Fair? Have you participated in ANYTHING academic on an international level and came off as the winner? For international students, MIT really doesn't care that the average middle-class student has very limited access to all of these things. The concept of "we look at your context" does not apply to international students, especially because they will have very little knowledge on what your context is. If you send me a list of your accomplishments, that you're advertising yourself by, I can give you a pretty general idea of whether you can make it or not. Now, I know that MITChris claims that not even he can tell someone 100% whether they're getting into MIT or not. But that is because MITChris has to speak for the audience as a whole. This is the injustice of affirmative action. If a Zimbabwean and an Indian have equal stats in all respects, it's going to be the Zimbabwean that gets in. Indians/South Asians are ORM (over-represented minority) in the US, so colleges try to balance it out like this. The positive way to look at this is to think that you are only competing against Indians for the slots--and not that you're being discriminated against. But, if you're competing against Indians, then the requirements for admission go up by leaps and bounds, and at the very end, it always goes to 1 of 2 types of people: the olympiad winner with any bit of personality, and the rural kid who really exceeded his environment academically. The formal outweighs the latter by about 4:1 or 3:1.

But think about this: just like you, there will be 100s of south asians applying to MIT in any given year (600-1000, who knows?--I only know the rough figure for Indians). They will take less than 20. Where do you fit in that scheme of things? And is it something that you should really bother about to get an interview, which, I guarantee you, in the whole scheme of things, makes very little difference.

Am I angry at MIT? I've already said no, but you refuse to believe. Why would I still be angry at MIT? I'm at Imperial College London right now, doing Aeronautics, in the best Aeronautics department in all of Europe. I have the option of applying for internships to some of the top aeronautics firms; I recently won an international essay contest, and made a small amount of money from that (plus air miles); I'm trying to get the essay published; I'm thinking of applying for a few more scholarships, and think I stand a good chance (and because I study in Europe, without the need to take unnecessary courses, I have time for that); I'm busy, and relatively happy with what's on offer academically here. So, then, why should I CARE that MIT rejected me 6 months ago? I'm telling you the lessons I learned from my MIT experience. Do not get too emotionally/physically-attached. There may be 1 or 2 of you to whom this does not apply, but for the rest, you're in the same boat as me; heading for rejection. And you know what the LAST thing I want to see is? The LAST thing I want to see is any of you coming back to CC next year saying, "Hey! It's me again. I didn't get in anywhere because I poured all my time into MIT, didn't concentrate on my other apps (if I had any at all) and MIT rejected me in the end! By the way, I was SOOO counting on getting into MIT that I screwed up my final exams as well. Please help, what should I do?" There ARE several people like this on CC, and it's just sad what the MIT allure can do to perfectly decent students. Am I clear?

cursingmonk

I've heard them say that this is why interviews are important, because the interviewer will know of your context and tell them.

So indians only compete vs other indians, pakistanis vs other pakistanis? Or do south asians compete vs all other south asians regardless of their country (e.g indians vs all indians, pakistanis, and bangladeshis)?

By the way I don't disagree with you, I think you are right about a lot of things.

dasadhikarik

I said that context does not apply ESPECIALLY because they have little knowledge; not ONLY because. Other factors come into play as well. Like I said, MIT can only take 100 international students in total in any given year (this is set by funding arrangements with the US government). Out of those 100 students, less than 15 can be South Asian. At that point, if you were an adcom, would you be looking to validate extenuating circumstances that would keep more applications in the running? Or would you just be trying to axe applications from the list because you know that no matter how good they are individually, they're all competitive in the normal sense, and you're going to have to raise the bar to fit your quota. Because that is what it is. It is a limiting quota. The people whose extenuating circumstances they DO look into are the people they can use later to claim, "Look at us! We help the underprivileged." But to claim this, they do not need to take all the underprivileged applicants; they only need to take 1 or 2 every few years. The rest of them, if they apply as international students (because remember, a fair number of Indians/South Asians apply as US citizens--and if they do, they no longer fall into that limiting quota), either have that medal, or are headed straight for the rejection pile. They have NO sympathy for South Asian middle-class applicants whose families have only recently (last 2 decades) started to earn money, and move to the level of international competitions. You'll see that a lot of the Indian applicants that do get into MIT have professors as their parents. This gives them many more connections and awareness on the international scale than the typical middle-class applicants. If you were American, I would agree with MITChris, and say I had NO idea whether you're going to get in or not. But you're not. You're going to fall into an unbelievably discriminatory quota, and that will be it, pretty much. This quota is not the fault of MIT as an institute. Rather, it is the fault of MIT as an commercial organization. Please remember that it isn't the professors or students (who make MIT worth going to) looking at your applications. It is a bunch of random adcoms, who are looking to fill quotas (David duKor Jackson particularly annoyed me last year with all his snide and lie-filled posts on the MIT blogs; thankfully, you won't have to deal with him this year)...

As for your question, "Indians onle compete vs. other Indians, etc." I don't know--it will depend on how closely MIT defines their racial brackets. (In fact, you could check on their application whether they specify "South Asian" or "Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, etc."--that should give you a general idea--although, even if they keep it to South Asian, they can pretty much figure out your nationality via school transcripts, addresses, names, etc.

Sorry if I was a little short on you earlier, but this is really not a joking matter. It's not just MIT either. ALL of the Ivies--Harvard, PTon, etc. are sending out recruitment letters to all sorts of people (indians included), who don't have the slightest chance of getting in. They then use the increasing number of people they reject to boost their selectivity (and caliber of rejected applicants), and to make themselves more appealing. It's a dirty game that they're playing, and we're one of the biggest victims of it. I hope that by keeping my advice in mind, you'll be spared a lot of hassle and (perhaps) pain in the end.

cursingmonk

What did he say?

dasadhikarik

Putting Diversity into Context | MIT Admissions
To whom much is given… | MIT Admissions

Read those, and if you can't find anything offensive, I'll give it to you here:

"While one's race can certainly come into play in a college admissions decision, the actual impact bears no resemblance to the common perception that checking a single box somehow guarantees a pathway to admission."

Oh really? Then why is it that Asian students (both American and international), are limited to 20% of any entering body? Whereas, if race is taken completely out of the consideration (as in the UC system), the number of asian students in the entering body doubles to 40% (at Berkeley, even, which has a "holistic" admissions process). Stop lying.

"is what an applicant makes of the opportunities that are available to them." You have NO clue on what opportunities are available to me. You have never lived in India or Japan (where I lived), and you do NOT know the work culture that students have there. We do NOT study at your average American school where, I'm sorry to say, the rigor, difficulty, and duration of the workload is so low that it allows for all sorts of other BS activities which you classify as "merit". Furthermore, if I live in Japan, and say that I haven't had many opportunities in the tech field, you won't believe me. You automatically associate Japan with robotics and tech. Well the truth is, that NO high school student in Japan has the extra-curricular activities you demand for Indian students, or does internships. High-school in Japan, and most of the rest of the world, is all about studying the basics to a great deal of rigor. Then, when you get to university, you'll be able to master the more advanced stuff with greater ease, studying alongside the rest of the bright minds. That's how it works. When you can't guarantee me admission, don't expect me to throw away my academic record just to fit into your box. Because then, when you reject me, I'm going to be well and truly screwed. Time is the only resource that all applicants share; and what we do with our time depends on the setting we are in. An A+ at the average American school takes far less effort than an A+ at the school I went to, or a school in India or Europe. Believe me, I've seen the whole process.

"scrutinize applications with sufficient rigor to easily differentiate between disingenuous applicants, who are simply looking for an edge in the admissions process, and the authentic applicants"

How pompous can you get? Yeah, you must all be the greatest lie-detectors in the world, picking out from a 200-word essay from an applicant half-way across the world, whether they're "real" or "fake". Why don't you just admit that you don't have a clue what you're admitting when you accept an application, like Yale did? http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/20...or-ukrainians/

Moving on to the other article:

"Let me be frank. Any serious applicant to MIT has been given much."

Much compared to what? 100 years ago? Dogs? Beggars on the street? And doesn't your admissions record show that you take a couple people from certain groups (hem hem the 3rd world) just because you declare that they have NOT been given much with respect to everyone else? You're making a relativistic argument here, and it just does not fit in with your admissions record. And besides, YOU belong to the same group of people (MITChris, Matt) who claim that ANYONE has a serious (but negligible) chance of getting into MIT. So which side is lying? Or are you telling me that since EVERYONE has a good shot of getting into MIT, EVERYONE must have been given much. If that is the case, you, sir, need to have your reality checked.

And here's the most disgusting part of it all. Down in the comments section of the page, you see Indian applicants going, "Dear David sir (sick opening), I completely agree with you. Please tell me what I need to do to get in." You just missed the entire point of his article.

tryingforcollege

^you go to Imperial college, London? Would like to know how it compares to US education (culturally and academically)

dasadhikarik

^ UVa, Georgia Tech, Purdue, UIUC. Those types of universities. I got into Georgia Tech, but didn't want to live in the American South, so came here instead. Of course, that's just a matter of personal preference; there's nothing wrong academically with Georgia Tech.

dasadhikarik

Yes, I'm currently attending Imperial College, London. The system here is completely dissimilar to that in the US. I'm in the Aeronautics course, which is one of the tougher ones here, and I can truly say that it is hard. Basically, they just hurl you into your subject head-on and see how well you do. In the US (and in Switzerland and Japan, from what I'm hearing from my friends), there is a period of integration when all you do is review high-school material. Not here. 99% of the course material is completely new to me, so I have to spend a good deal of time trying to conceptualize it.

Probably the toughest course I have is Structural Analysis, which I don't think you do in US colleges until the 2nd or 3rd year. A tutorial sheet for Struct. can take me as long as 4-5 hours (6 questions; without external help). However, that's probably because I try not to ask for help from lecturers; whereas many people just wait and get it down quickly with help during weekly study sessions. Coursework is not marked, so it's up to you to find your own learning style, and judge how much work you want and need to do to pass. There is also an extended practical project each year (you actually have to go down to the workshop and build something), and the occasional lab with accompanying lab report, which is graded (I think this applies to all courses). Most of your grades do come from your final exams though (there isn't really any such thing as a mid-term--although some courses are only half-year-long, so you have a couple of exams in January). I know that most freshmen in the US have 18-20 hours of classes each week. Here, you should expect a few more (22-30)--but it's much more flexible, and varies from week to week.

I'm not really the type of person that goes out clubbing or anything, but if you're into that sort of thing, there are many opportunities. Wednesday evenings are particularly popular for that sort of thing because we only have a half-day on Wednesday. The soccer fans here typically opt to go watch a game instead (Chelsea is right nearby--to the dismay of Arsenal fans like my roommate). But, generally speaking, it's London. If you can't find a way to socialize here, then you're not going to find a way to socialize anywhere you go.

The diversity here also seems to be much broader than what I saw in America (admittedly, I have only visited Stanford for summer school, so I can't say for sure). Just in Aero, I know of people who are English, French, German, Spanish, Romanian, Indian, Iranian, Malaysian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Bangladeshi, Singaporean, Indonesian, Kenyan, Swiss, South African, Trinidadian, American, Swedish, and so on (I haven't actually met all of them yet).

Now, for the bad points:
1) The weather. It's never sunny for most of the year, and it gets pretty cold too. I'd advise any Indians coming here to really bundle up for the first day or two. I caught a week-long cold cause I forgot those extra layers.

2) The bureaucracy is stifling. You have to fill out a million different forms to get ANYTHING done, and even after you submit them, everything moves incredibly slowly. I'd say that it is about equal to Indian speed (except here, you have a guarantee that it will EVENTUALLY get done).

3) The money. For most Indians, I'd say that if you can get financial aid from a respected college in America, or get into one of the relatively low-tuition public Ivies, it may not be worth coming here. Tuition's about 39,000 dollars a year, which is about on par with the full price for Stanford, Cornell, CMU, MIT, etc. It's also unlikely that you will receive any substantial scholarship. Furthermore, starting salaries in Europe tend to be 25-30% lower than those in the US (although they do equal out with experience).

I think I've covered everything in this stream of consciousness. If you have any other questions, I'd be happy to answer.

cursingmonk

Which are those?