<p>Why would Olin reject people who have been accepted early to MIT and other top places? I just can’t understand that.</p>
<p>Because Olin is free!</p>
<p>Because Olin is not MIT, Caltech, Stanford, Harvard, Yale, or any other top college. Olin is Olin, and they have different goals. They accept some and reject others, irrespective of where else they got in or didn’t.</p>
<p>Olin sent quite a bit of unsolicited mail to our home. My S did not take the PSAT or SAT, he checked the do-not-send-me-mail box when he signed up for the ACT, and he never visited the Olin website, so we have no idea how he ended up on Olin’s mailing list. One dominant theme in Olin’s mailings was, “Why choose Olin? So that you can reject MIT!” I think Olin is competing for the same students as MIT and its chief advantage in the competition is that it is free. If Olin weren’t free, I doubt it would be as difficult to gain admittance.</p>
<p>Well, remember there may as well be some students that are accepted by Olin and rejected by MIT. When it comes to top schools, who knows how they select their students. However, one thing to note is that according to Olin, they look for a “fit.” As an Olin student and a person who really loves MIT, I can tell you They are both pretty amazing schools.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>According to the USN&WR numbers, MIT received 11,374 applications for the Class of 2011. And according to collegeboard.com, MIT actually enrolled 1,002 freshmen. So MIT had about 11.4 applicants for each available slot (obviously an impressive statistic). </p>
<p>For comparison, Olin [url=<a href=“http://admissionblog.olin.edu/2007/02/]reportedly[/url”>http://admissionblog.olin.edu/2007/02/]reportedly[/url</a>] received 1054 applications for 73 slots in the Class of 2011. That’s 14.4 applicants for every available slot.</p>
<p>Does that answer your question? Simply put, the imbalance between supply and demand for a place in the freshman class appears to be greater at Olin than it is at MIT. It’s not really an apples-to-apples comparison, since the schools are very different in size, but it does explain why Olin may be just as selective (if not more selective) than MIT. </p>
<p>Olin says that its application volume has been rising fast, and has nearly doubled over the past two years. It’s quite possible that Olin could have an even higher applicant/opening ratio this year.</p>
<p>Let’s make sure we are comparing comparable figures. </p>
<p>Admission: </p>
<p><a href=“College Search - BigFuture | College Board”>College Search - BigFuture | College Board; </p>
<p><a href=“College Search - BigFuture | College Board”>College Search - BigFuture | College Board; </p>
<p>Test score ranges: </p>
<p><a href=“College Search - BigFuture | College Board”>College Search - BigFuture | College Board; </p>
<p><a href=“College Search - BigFuture | College Board”>College Search - BigFuture | College Board;
<p>
Apparently not. For 2008, the Olin Admissions Dept. [url=<a href=“http://admissionblog.olin.edu/]reported[/url”>http://admissionblog.olin.edu/]reported[/url</a>] only 965 applicants. Since there are about 75 slots (plus or minus) in a freshman class at Olin, this means that Olin “only” got about 12-13 applicants for every slot this year.</p>
<p>For comparison, MIT [url=<a href=“http://www-tech.mit.edu/V123/N66/66earlyad.66n.html]reportedly[/url”>http://www-tech.mit.edu/V123/N66/66earlyad.66n.html]reportedly[/url</a>] received 2,830 ED and 7,585 RD applicants this year, for a total of 10,415. Since there are about 1,000 slots (plus or minus) in a freshman class at MIT, this means that MIT “only” got about 10-11 applicants for every slot this year.</p>
<p>Again, this is not really an “apples to apples” comparison given differences in size, yield, etc., but it does suggest that the competition for a slot at Olin may be no less intense than the competition for a slot at MIT. Based on the links above, the quality of Olin’s applicant pool, as measured by test score ranges, certainly seems to be comparable:</p>
<p>SAT Critical Reading:
Olin: 710 - 770
MIT: 660 - 760</p>
<p>SAT Math:
Olin: 710 - 800
MIT: 720 - 800</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Olin has a cost of attendance (made up mostly of room and board charges). </p>
<p><a href=“http://olin.edu/admission/costs_fa.asp[/url]”>http://olin.edu/admission/costs_fa.asp</a></p>
<p>Corbett,</p>
<p>According to your numbers, Olin is pretty much the hardest place to get into. Are you sure about those stats?</p>
<p>Olin’s appeal is not solely because it does not charge tuition. Just about everything about it is great.</p>
<p>Yes, I’m sure Olin is great; that has not been disputed on this thread. The OP’s question was why Olin appears to be more selective than MIT. If Olin charged tuition it would, in my opinion, not be able to be nearly as selective as it is now. I think many students who choose Olin do so because MIT/CalTech/SchoolX is significantly more costly.</p>
<p>I have nothing but praise for Olin, but it’s not on my son’s application list (despite a recommendation from his high school counselor) because there isn’t the depth of math classes or computer classes at all levels as at most of the colleges he is currently considering. For someone who wants a pure-play engineering program with an innovative curriculum, Olin is hard to beat at any price, but some students look for other characteristics in a college. Olin does have an impressive line up of enrolled students in each year’s smallish freshman class.</p>
<p>^^ Corbett: The article you linked to on “reportedly” regarding MIT numbers was from 2004. Marilee Jones is no longer admissions director, and I believe EA applications surged because of Harvard and Princeton.</p>
<p>According to a friend who teaches engineering at a nearby university and who recently visited Olin (there is a waiting list for people like him to do that because of the tremendous amount of interest Olin is attracting from the rest of technical academia), the key differences between Olin and others (not MIT, specifically) are experiential learning and entrepreneurship. This guy was truly pumped about the place and said that if he had his education to do over, he’d definitely want to go to Olin.</p>
<p>Summing up an answer to the OP’s question, it’s not clear that Olin is any harder to get into than MIT. The standardized test score profiles are comparable, but I rather suspect that the MIT students tend to have more amazing extracurricular accomplishments, other factors being equal. Across the whole enrolled class, MIT would have more students who are more “lopsided” in being amazing in a greater variety of ways not reflected by test scores.</p>
<p>
You are 100% correct; sorry about that. I think I was confused because the article referenced the “Class of 2008”. But of course, this means the class that graduates in 2008, not the class that enters in 2008. Duh.</p>
<p>I haven’t seen any numbers for the Class of 2012, but ED applications at MIT are reportedly up over last year.</p>
<p>
You can click on the links yourself to verify the data.</p>
<p>But note that the ratio of applicants to openings, or grades and test scores, don’t tell you everything about admissions selectivity. First of all, some schools may look for amazing extracurricular activities (as noted above). Second, some schools have higher yields than other, and this also affects the acceptance difficulty. </p>
<p>According to Collegeboard.com, MIT has a slightly lower acceptance rate than Olin (13% vs. 17%), even though Olin has slightly more applicants for every spot (as noted above). By this standard, MIT is harder to get into.</p>
<p>The difference in acceptance rates is probably because MIT has a higher “yield” than Olin. I don’t have the numbers at hand, but it’s likely that most of the people who are accepted at MIT actually do decide to attend MIT (and not some other school). MIT probably “loses” relatively few accepted students to other schools, and this tends to minimize the number of students that it needs to accept.</p>
<p>Olin (a much younger school with a much smaller name) is probably less successful in this regard; it likely “loses” a higher percentage of accepted students to other schools. So Olin may have to accept a higher percentage of applicants, in order to fill every spot in the freshman class.</p>
<p>
MIT’s yield has been between 65% and 70% for several years, and incidentally, the vast majority of accepted students who choose not to come to MIT go instead to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, or Stanford.</p>
<p>For the year for which I have data, MIT lost 10 cross-admits to Olin.</p>
<p>molliebatmit,</p>
<p>Do you have the data for the cross-admits.</p>
<p>P.S. How do you like Harvard?</p>