<p>A few years ago the Wall St. Journal had a long article about a truly disadvantaged inner-city kid who had been admitted to MIT but required lots of supplemental help, both before and after enrollment, to be able to hack it. After a couple of years, he was basically up to speed. The student was incredibly admirable, highly motivated, and had conquered all sorts of academic and non-academic challenges. He was the best math/science student any of his teachers had ever seen, but that didn’t make up for the fact that he simply hadn’t had the opportunity for what most of us consider adequate math training until his junior year in high school, and he had a lot of ground to make up.</p>
<p>That’s probably the profile of someone accepted at MIT with a 590 Math SAT I.</p>