Conflicted about whether to apply

MIT_9829
Sat, 25 Sep 2010 12:54:25 +0000

Unless I’ve misunderstood what Admissions has been saying for years and years, we essentially can. After 700, you meet their qualifications (which they have made by careful study of performance of current/past MIT students), and it’s the rest of your app that will get you in. Admissions won’t go, “Oh, whoa, a 750, this person is so much better than that 700 person”. The difference isn’t meaningful at that point.

It’s not meaningful. But what you’re essentially saying is that 700 is a cutoff…which it’s not, because there aren’t any cutoffs…and if “after 700 you meet their qualifications,” then what about 690? That’s close enough to 700 for there to not be a statistical difference. What about 680 then? In the end, it’s all holistic. Not a list of things to be checked off.