Kind of Student

Colleges & Universities Massachusetts Institute of Technology
1

<p>What kind of student actually gets ACCEPTED to MIT??? O_O</p>

<p>I keep hearing stories of these AMAZING children being deferred and rejected!</p>

2

<p>Normal, passionate students… acceptance is a lottery… all wrongs will hopefully be made right in the 2nd pass.</p>

3

<p>About 10-13% of those who apply.</p>

<p>The applicant pool is fantastically talented, and a whole bunch of the kids who don’t get in are just as talented as the kids who do.</p>

<p>That doesn’t mean that everybody who gets in has a perfect SAT score, or has done research, or has even heard of scholastic olympiads.</p>

4

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<p>That’s a reporting bias … you never hear the tons of stories of AMAZING children being accepted, because not many kids who are that amazing would want to brag on a forum about their impressive stats and their recent acceptance.</p>

5

<p>^ Ha, they’re probably helping starving children in Africa RIGHT NOW.</p>

<p>…Just kidding, admissions is just kinda weird, I guess. I feel all uneven - me and one of my friends just got in EA, so I feel almost like it’s not terribly abnormal, but then I look on CC and on the MIT chatroom at all these people who are so awesome, who’ve taken college classes and written amazing AI programs and taught themselves five programming languages, and see that they’re deferred… I really, really wish every one of you is accepted in March.</p>

6

<p>^—<em>cries</em></p>

<p>I need to go through 3 more weeks of torture now…</p>

7

<p>^ Cookies! Cookies fix everything! [Cyber</a> cookies](<a href=“http://wiki.coolmon.org/files/cookie.jpg]Cyber”>http://wiki.coolmon.org/files/cookie.jpg) for everyone! Hugs all around!</p>

8

<p>Yeah, what sucks about holistic admissions is if they reject you, you KNOW it’s personal – they’ve in effect rejected your personality, not your academic profile.</p>

<p>And then if they accept you you keep wondering about whether you really deserve to be there.</p>

9

<p>This is an excerpt from a letter from Dean of Admissions Marilee Jones about how MIT selects from its applicant pool:</p>

<p>"There is so much frenzied buzz about how and why some students get admitted and others do not, and so many rumors that there is a formula of sorts. Let me take a moment to put these rumors to rest and tell you the truth…</p>

<p>Turns out, there is no formula. There is only what we refer to as “the match.”</p>

<p>Admissions is really always about the match - on both sides. For example, after studying up on us, you decided that MIT might be a great place for you, and after reading your application, we decided that you would be perfect for us. Your application was read, evaluated and advanced through four to five different stages involving as many as 12 different staff members as we tried to determine if you had the qualities we know will ensure your success at MIT. We’ve been doing this for a long time and always conduct a vigorous assessment of our evaluation tools, so we don’t make mistakes - ever.</p>

<p>The match comes down to a few fundamental principles and to understand this, it helps to understand the circumstances of MIT’s birth. MIT was an idea born in the mid-1800s by William Barton Rogers, the premier geologist of his day and the president of the National Academy of Sciences. He was frustrated that the great universities of his era were either schools of philosophy, theology or of the classics. He felt that America needed a new type of university at which students would learn the principles of science and technology. He believed that the nation could use more people who could look into the future instead of studying the past.</p>

<p>Then the Civil War happened. Because Rogers lost many friends, family and students on both sides of the war, and because he was horrified by the waste of it all, he changed the original charter of MIT. The new mission was to teach students to apply science and technology “for the betterment of humankind.”</p>

<p>We know that an MIT education is an instrument of enormous power. Very much like electricity or fire, it can be used for destruction or it can be harnessed to benefit the greater good. With Rogers’ mission in mind, we in Admissions work hard to admit and enroll students who will join us in solving the great problems of our era, to fix the world for those who cannot fix it for themselves. That’s why we picked you.</p>

<p>Yes, SAT scores and grades are good measures of potential and talent. But above all else, character matters. How you live your life, the fact that you live your <em>own</em> life and not the life of your parents or friends, the fact that you are awake and thinking and fully involved in your life - that is what matters to us. Not some formula."</p>

<p>There’s nothing jaw-dropping if you’ve read the admissions blogs, but it reinforces what Mollie and others on CC have been saying.</p>