How will the pandemic affect MIT admission this year?

Lindagaf
Sun, 06 Sep 2020 12:03:35 +0000

@sherimba03 , given two otherwise equally qualified students, but one with test scores and the other without, yes, I would expect that the student from the low SES town might be admitted before the other. However, we all know that holistic admissions is the secret sauce and we don’t know what ingredients each college values most.

Being realistic, there aren’t many occasions in life when hardship gives an advantage. Is it possible, especially in this probably very competitive cycle of admission, that a clearly qualified applicant who lives in a low SES area might have an advantage, in this particular instance? Yes. Notice the word might.

Does this mean that a good test score won’t be noticed? No. But they can’t give preference to the kid with the good test score over the kid with no test score. Notice again the rest of my post above: kids are at the mercy of high schools who are cancelling tests with little or no notice. (And btw, the third kid mentioned above had his test cancelled Friday afternoon, the day before the test. He had driven to a town four hours away and had a hotel booked. That kid is a go-getter.)

I have literally been working with students since November who planned to take the March SAT. Their tests have been cancelled three or four times. How does that make them not go-getters? Those kids played football or simply wanted time to practice the test. They had no time to take the test before. This issue is not about go-getters versus slackers.