For a student who has difficulty writing...

skysk
Thu, 20 Nov 2008 17:37:37 +0000

MIT has a “Communication Requirement,” which can be fulfilled through a selection of distributive courses throughout your 4 years at MIT. Unless your son has scored a 5 on either AP English [Lit or Lang] exam, he will have to take the Freshman Essay Evaluation if he is accepted. Depending upon his performance on the FEE, he might be required to take a “Communications Intensive” (CI) subject in writing his first year. These courses are focused on writing (there’s nothing wrong with needing to take these, by the way, they’re regular courses in the writing department that just happen to have a particular focus on writing). And if he does do well on the FEE, he’d still have to take a communications intensive course his first year, but it wouldn’t need to be focused on writing but would still require numerous essays, essay re-writes, and oral communication practice. To graduate he would need to complete 2 CI courses in the humanities and 2 CI courses within his major, which I suppose he would enjoy because those are more focused on technical writing and presentation.

ANYWAY, yeah, if he went to MIT, he’d have to meet some writing requirements. Good scientists need to be good communicators, no exceptions. But if he is accepted and chooses to go to MIT, he certainly shouldn’t FEAR these requirements. Rather, I’d tell him to look at them as opportunities to improve his writing skills. I certainly hope he wouldn’t “wallow” in these requirements at the expense of letting his “true talents shine.” Instead, MIT would be a great place for him to improve his writing AND let his talents in science/engineering shine. MIT has an excellent writing department with free writing advisors/tutors who are very good at what they do and very willing to help students who need extra writing assistance.

So definitely don’t discourage your son from choosing to go to MIT or apply to MIT simply because of the writing requirement. If his writing scores are very low and his humanities teacher recommendation does not have many substantial things to say, that will hurt his chances of getting in to MIT because MIT looks for communicators as well as scientists. But if his scores, grades, and recommendations in the writing/humanities fields are good enough for MIT to say “I think we see some potential here, our writing courses will really help him out, AND we really like his enthusiasm and potential in science/engineering,” then he has an excellent shot at MIT.

And Stanford’s and MIT’s acceptance rates are similarly low. They are both reaches for any applicant, and any applicant who thinks otherwise needs to re-evaluate their understanding of college admissions.