International students and Olympiads

This comes up a lot and its just not true that you need to have a bunch of Olympiads and international awards. It really truly is not true. I am an international regional chair of the MIT educational council, that group of alumni who interview prospective applicants, and I eventually get to meet a majority of the admitted students from my international region, and I can assure you that most of the admitted students do not have these things. They do have other ways of demonstrating the match between themselves and MIT (see http://mitadmissions.org/apply/process/match). Winning awards is great, but it is not a requirement for admission in any way.