Here’s a dose of reality. Almost every applicant to the very top schools is outstanding in many ways. Each school has a responsibility to admit a well balanced group of students who can learn from each other, become adults together, develop skills in communicating with different kinds of people, and learn about the world at large through each other.
So, if MIT has 500 asian boys who played first violin in their city IB high schools, were raised in upper middle class homes by college educated parents, and had all A’s and high scores on SAT’s, and they only have 1100 spots, it behooves MIT to find a way to admit the best of that bunch and the best of lots of different types of bunches of students as well as a lot of one-offs, so that the admitted students can not just meet themselves coming and going but have that full college experience of getting to know themselves through getting to know the world.
That doesn’t mean that the other students admitted instead of the majority of those well cared for violin playing asian boys are not well qualified. It simply means that MIT has a ton of well qualified kids to choose from and is going to choose a diverse group of kids so that the experience of the kids who are chosen is richer and so the benefits of an MIT education is spread further and deeper.
So, if you play an unusual African musical instrument and you’re a tightrope walker, and you were educated by Tibetan monks until age twelve and then lived in the Yukon through tenth grade before heading down to Wyoming to finish off school with your ranching cousins, you might be picked over someone with similar grades and scores who grew up playing tennis and going to cotillion dances in Philadephia with a banker father, a stay at home mom and a little sister who dances ballet.
In other words, don’t take it personally and don’t become outraged if you’re not chosen. MIT chooses not to accept thousands of excellent students every year. They only have so much room.
Another factor might be interviews. A lot of schools don’t require interviews but offer them. A very boring but polite white valedictorian boy with an engineer father and a nurse mother from Texas might lose out to a gregarious kid who didn’t take a single IB or AP class but who was obsessed with robotics and taught himself to take apart and put together motorcycles when he was ten while his mom worked all night at the convenience store. His SAT’s were within the acceptable range required despite having less academic opportunity and support than the other kid, but it was his passion and ability to suck people into his world that hooked the admissions committee onto him instead of onto the “safe” kid. In truth, the robotics kid might be a better bet because he did what he did in spite of lack of all the usual support. How would the boring kid have turned out in the same circumstances? So, the robotics kid might be more talented and successful after all. This is where an interview might help some and hurt others. It’s not just what is on paper. If you really connect with the interviewer instead of just politely answer questions, you’ve got a big advantage over a kid with the same things on paper but an inability to connect with the interviewer.
I’ve read a lot of stories about kids who felt they had followed the formula to get into MIT but didn’t. Some were bitter, some were angry, and some were devastated. But, they were in good company–not alone at all. This is part of why no college admissions coach can truthfully guarantee admission to any particular school. If there were two of those robotics guys, maybe only one of them would get in. Diversity of interests and background is as important to some schools as racial and other diversity types of diversity are.
Another factor is your presentation of your credentials and so on. Did you take great advantage of the opportunity to build an amazing extracurricular resume, pointing out where you did anything extraordinary? Just filling in the blanks won’t cut it. Did your references really know and connect with you, or did they barely know you because you were quiet in the back of the room?
It’s not about whether a kid was good enough for the school. It’s a matter of the committee picking a group of kids who will interact with each other and support each other’s development in the best possible manner to promote the goals MIT sets out to achieve in the world and for itself as an institution.
Also, if a kid doesn’t get in, it’s possible that it’s mostly due to the school not being a good fit for them. A kid who fits well into Harvard is likely not to fit well into Caltech. So, be glad if you are not accepted into a school that would not be a good fit for you. That means that you won’t be in a place that seemed great on paper or the internet but that would be just miserable for you because your personality is a better fit for a different school.
When my son was in public school before running out of math and science, I got to know one of his classmates and her mom. The girl ended up being valedictorian of that school. She assumed that because my son and another girl were expected to and did get into Ivy League and other top national universities, that she would naturally do so also. But, she didn’t. She got into the state flagship school that is well ranked nationally and was offered a half scholarship. She refused to go to college as a result. She felt humiliated. She was going to keep applying to the same schools till she got in with a full scholarship, doing little until that time came. That’s when I had a talk with her. I asked her if she wanted me to help her and she agreed. I told her I might hurt her feelings but I was going to be blunt. She was a good little girl type student. She used a little girl voice, agreed with everything adults said to her, did everything the schoo told her to do, and did nothing unique, held no leadership positions, and initiated nothing on her own. I told her to stop using that little girl voice and use a woman’s voice, to stop agreeing with everything and say what she meant, to stop following instructions so well and do something unique, to stop covering up her family hardship and start describing their journey and her role in helping the family stay afloat, and to recontact one of her interviewers (with my getting his permission first) and ask him to help her set up a science project in his area of interest that she can complete at home (since she didn’t have transportation) and to also start as Spanish language tutoring program for recent immigrant kids from Mexico, and so on and so forth. I told her what her life would be if she sat on her hands and waited for someone to accept her as she was when they didn’t before. I told her to grow, to do, to say, and to be all that she could be in the months until the next wave of applications were due. I coached her in developing and describing her goals and showing progress toward them. Long story short, she got into Brown, Cornell, and University of Chicago and chose to go to Cornell on a full scholarship. Yes, she went a year late, and this wasn’t on her list the first go round. But, she is happier than ever there and has stated that she’s glad she went through that year of challenge and discovery, of transformation to get to where she is now. By the way, I suggested that she say that she took a gap year to help her parents and sister resettle in Mexico and to grow as a person. She actually did do that but not initially for that reason.
I am not suggesting that students who don’t get into their favorite schools should take a year off and try again. That’s an option. The point is that there can be reasons other than academics that you don’t get in, and it can be a blessing. I think it’s easier to get in after a very productive gap year than to transfer, so consider that if you’re up for a risk and think it’s worth it. The risk is that you won’t get in the second time and may lose heart, be disconnected from your class, and never really get on track academically at the level where you can learn the most. I handled this girl this way because she refused to go to the state university at all. So this was a recovery project. It helped tremendously that the Ivy League interviewer advised her on which schools to apply to, gave her a reference regarding her project, gave her her project in fact, and otherwise supported her efforts. I basically told her “It’s now or never, so do this right if you’re ever going to do it.” She responded well to instruction, so she did it.
