how much do the adcoms know?

Colleges & Universities Massachusetts Institute of Technology
1

<p>how much information can the adcoms access about you?</p>

<p>i heard they can check your history and a whole bunch of stuff. and that one student even got called during work about his acceptance (how the adcom found the number is a mystery)</p>

<p>I’m just a bit paranoid after that incident. It reminds of of big brother. oh god…</p>

2

<p>I heard that they get Mollie to follow you to your house and report on all the bad things you do.</p>

3

<p>I heard they don’t even have to ask her, she just does it. ;)</p>

<p>ducktape (Shannon) got called at work about her acceptance – as detailed in a few posts of hers, Ben Jones saw that she posted on the blogs that she would be at work at Petsmart when decisions came out, found her hometown in her application, and called the Petsmart in her hometown. I don’t think that’s too Big Brother-like, and it’s not a big mystery – it’s not like he knew the number beforehand, he just did a little educated guesswork.</p>

<p>Admissions officers aren’t magic – they only have access to the information you put in your application or in the public domain. If they need more information about you, they might call your counselor, but that doesn’t happen very often.</p>

4

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<p>Couldn’t agree more. And, in some special cases, they may even contact the applicant directly, if they need to know something not revealed or available elsewhere.</p>

5

<p>Ben Jones, in fact, wrote about this in a blog entry in 2006:</p>

<p>[MIT</a> Admissions | Blog Entry: “Your Profile On The Web: Can It Hurt You?”](<a href=“http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/qanda/questions_and_answers/your_profile_on_the_web_can_it.shtml]MIT”>http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/qanda/questions_and_answers/your_profile_on_the_web_can_it.shtml)</p>

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6

<p>Using info I posted on CC (SAT score, home state, some ECs), Ben Jones was able to figure out who I was. After I found out I got in, he friended me on Facebook and asked if I was who he thought I was. =]</p>

7

<p>^ one more reason why you guys should be careful of what you put on cc 0.o</p>

8

<p>Haha, la montagne, I emailed Ben the morning of decisions and said, “la montagne got in!” And he emailed me back and said, “I know!!!” I was puzzled, but that’s Ben for you. :)</p>

<p>I’ve never seen an internet persona hurt an applicant at MIT – they’re not out to get people who are annoying online. But it is important to keep in mind that, once you post something on CC, it’s there in perpetuity; the mods don’t delete threads or posts on request.</p>

9

<p>To Post 6 (La Montage):</p>

<p>It does happen. My S is a junior. I happened to be reading one of these boards the day after the “Stanford Slaughter” and was pretty sure I had identified a girl who he did a math competition with (I’ve never met her.) Her CC handle was close enough to her name, the stats sounded vaguely like it might be her … So I sent her a private message, asking if she’d had a certain teacher for AP Calc BC the prior year. Bingo, it was her.</p>