My two cents is MIT Admissions seems to make a point of explaining they take their HASS classes (and yes, the S and M in STEM are also part of the Liberal Arts and Sciences tradition) very seriously. And I think there is ample evidence one of the filters they use to cut down their applicant pool, not least their International applicants, is watching for kids who seem uninterested in and/or unprepared for their HASS classes:
In their What We Look For page, they include this note:
Collaborative and cooperative spirit
The core of the MIT community is collaboration and cooperation; you can see it all over the Institute. Many of the problem sets (our affectionate term for homework) at MIT are designed to be worked on in groups, and cross-department labs are very common. MIT is known for its interdisciplinary research—passionate people working across their differences to tackle big questions and challenges together. If you enjoy working alone all the time, that’s completely valid, but you might not be particularly happy at MIT.
And here are their current supplementals:
I’d suggest, for example, this middle one might be a bit of a “test” for how someone thinks about academic paths:
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While some reach their goals following well-trodden paths, others blaze their own trails achieving the unexpected. In what ways have you done something different than what was expected in your educational journey?
Of course it is not easy to compare with, say, what Yale has said on related subjects. But personally, I would suggest applicants to MIT, not least Internationals, think carefully about materials like these.