I’d be surprised if she doesn’t have to regularly write recommendation letters, for undergrads going off to grad school/med school if nothing else. Could your son draft a letter to make it easier on her, or ask what material would be most useful for her as she composes a letter? </p>
<p>(I am violating my cardinal rule of answering questions on CC here, in that I am not just answering the question that’s being asked. But it would be an unusual academic who didn’t see it as part of her job to write recommendation letters. At any rate, it would be totally fine for your son to talk about his research experience in the application without submitting a supplement, if he doesn’t feel confident that the letter from her will be strong.)</p>
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Either is fine; if you put down November, they’ll know to keep an eye out for your new scores.</p>
<p>Two other (hopefully final) questions - my school requires that underclassmen take a standard half credit religion course every year, and seniors are allowed to pick which they take. I couldn’t find a place to fit them in the coursework section though - the only class I could maybe bump would be the one art course I took, but I thought it might be good to show I met my school’s fine arts requirement. On the other hand, I wanted to give a full picture of my senior year schedule and not make it look like I’m taking a study hall or less classes than I could be. I figure neither class will be factored into whatever average MIT calculates but I wasn’t sure which I should leave on (or could this be explained elsewhere?).</p>
<p>Secondly, I realized that I used the “grading system” box to explain how I took a few high school classes in 8th grade and describe how the for-credit internship I did worked (along with grading system info). Should that be done in additional information at the end instead? </p>
<p>Hi, I have one major question about my application (I am applying EA as a freshman for Fall 2015).</p>
<p>In my essays, I refer to popular math competitions, such as the American Regions Mathematics League (ARML) and the Harvard-MIT Mathematics Tournament (HMMT), by their respective acronyms to stay under the essay’s word count. Which type of people will be reading my essays and deciding my admission? The person reading the essay may have no idea what the acronyms mean, which I think would hurt the quality of my essay greatly. Should I use the full names of the competitions and shorten the word count somewhere else in the essay?</p>
If all of your classes are on your transcript, I wouldn’t worry too much – they’ll just use the self-reported coursework as a guide to interpret the transcript, but they will also see the transcript, and they understand that people run out of room. You can leave off whichever course you would prefer.</p>
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Why do you think it should be done the latter way and not the former? Either way sounds fine to me.</p>
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The admissions officers are definitely familiar with ARML and HMMT. (Actually, Matt usually visits HMMT, which makes me think that he maybe participated in it when he was in high school lo so many moons ago.)</p>
<p>My son exceeded the 40 words on one of the descriptions of one of his activities. A red popup occurred stating “Activity Description exceeds allowed length please edit your response” It fits OK in the preview pdf, but it shows with a smaller font. Should he get it down to the 40 words so that the font isn’t automatically shrunken? Also, he is submitting a research supplement using slideroom. There is the option to either submit an abstract or the entire paper.
Which is better to do? If it is going to the admissions reader my guess is just the abstract. If it’s being sent to someone else maybe the entire paper??</p>
Yes, application materials should be postmarked by Nov 1, and online materials should be submitted by 11:59:59 PM Eastern Daylight Time (GMT -4) Nov 1. (For the record, I would not suggest putting it off until 11:59:59!) MIT is generally flexible about application materials that are submitted late by other people (recommendations and guidance counselor information).</p>
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IIRC, it is not possible to submit the application with answers exceeding the allowed length – this has been a change that occurred in the past year or two. If the description is really hard to cut down, he can certainly try to submit it with more than 40 words, but he should prepare a backup less-than-or-equal-to 40-word description in case the system gives him trouble when submitting. </p>
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Speaking as a scientist, if it’s a well-written abstract, and it tells the whole story, he shouldn’t need to submit the entire paper. </p>
<p>If there are more than 5 extracurriculars I feel passionate about, should I include the ones that dont fit in additional info?</p>
<p>In the activities section, I have to list my activities, my summer activities, and my employment. What do I do if my job is an activity that’s important to me? I’m a research intern, and research is big for me. I also started working over the summer, so should I include it in my summer activities as well? Or are summer activities limited to activities that started and ended over the summer? What about something that started in May and ended early September, with the bulk of the work done over summer? Should I put down completely different activities for all the different sections(activties, summer activities, employment) with no overlap, or can there be some overlap, since I’d like to talk a little more about my job/internship?</p>
<p>Just a couple more quick questions:
I took a college class at UC Berkeley in the summer between my sophomore and junior year, but my school’s transcript system can’t handle summer classes, so they just added it to my 10th grade schedule. Should I clarify this in the additional info section, and just put down as having taken the class over summer anyway?</p>
<p>Also, does getting 1 B in the midst of As and A minuses count as a grade dip, and do I need to explain it in the additional info section? (It was an Extended Essay grade for the IB program, and I missed a deadline because I was busy studying for the AP Physics C test)</p>
It’s up to you – that’s certainly something you could do.</p>
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Again, it’s totally up to you as to how you want to define “summer” activities (as long as they happened over the summer), whether you want overlap between sections, and how you want to divide activities vs. employment. There’s no wrong answer (and, conversely, no right answer).</p>
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If you list the class as a summer activity, there’s no need to explain that it was taken over the summer in the additional info section, although you certainly could do so if you like.</p>
<p>I don’t mean to be unhelpful. It’s just that yes, all of the above are things you could do, and it’s up to you to decide how to present your information optimally. Try to think about the application in terms of the minimal information necessary to describe yourself and your background – you want the application to paint a strong picture, and you want to eliminate extraneous detail.</p>
<p>Is it possible to submit part 1 of the application at this point and still get the MIT ID in time to submit part 2 for the deadline?
Also, is the application due by 12:00 AM Nov 1, or by 11:59 PM on Nov 1?
Thanks in advance!</p>
<p>@molliebatmit, thanks for all the help! I think I was overthinking things a little, so I just finished everything up, read it over one last time, and submitted Really appreciate the quick answers!</p>
<p>Please settle a disagreement about the maker portfolio. My son’s interviewer told him to make sure that he submits a project they discussed. My son says that the instructions say not to submit anything you did for something organized & this was for a company sponsored challenge with a school advisor. The project was built in my basement using my supplies and my tools to solve their challenge. The schools paid the admission fee and the advisor went to the competition with the team but other than that he was hands off. Should he submit? Thanks in advance for your advice.</p>
<p>How does MIT track documents sent through naviance? My school/school counselor sent my transcript and secondary school report several days ago and naviance shows everything as sent but MIT has still not received it. Since the deadline is tomorrow I am starting to get very worried about getting my school’s stuff in on time. Just for the record my side of the application is already completed, submitted, and received.</p>
<p>Does anyone know what the requirements for the maker portfolio are? I’ve found a few documents from last year saying you can describe 1 project with 4 photos/video - however Slideroom has options for 25 photos, and the supplements portion of the admissions site isn’t quite clear on the number of projects/photos allowed.
I’ve sent an email to admissions, but no one has replied yet. I need to get this done asap… darn procrastination!</p>
<p>Gave in and answered my own question. Called the admissions line and the Maker portfolio is limited to ONE project, but image restrictions have loosened somewhat - now up to 25 images are allowed.</p>
As far as I know, it should be fine to submit part 1 at any time. The deadline for submission of online materials is 11:59 PM Eastern Daylight Time (GMT -4) November 1.</p>
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This sounds okay to me – I think the intention is to keep people from submitting things that were made for school requirements. But this is definitely not my area of expertise.</p>
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If it’s submitted through Naviance, it’s fine. It takes MIT a while to sort through the zillions of documents they receive right around the deadline, so you may not see your tracking update for a few weeks. (Frankly, I’m not sure whether Naviance-sent documents will be marked as received by MIT, given the new online recommendation system.) But even if the documents need to be re-sent, MIT will contact your school, and it won’t be a problem for you.</p>
<p>Hi! I just submitted my application for early admission. I had thought that I selected MiT as one of the schools that would receive my SAT subject scores from earlier in October, but Collegeboard told me that I did not use any of my free reports, and I could not use them at this point. </p>
<p>So, I just sent the scores as part of an “additional report”, even though the deadline is tomorrow. Will this hurt my application? </p>
<p>After I submitted everything last week, I went back and re-read my essays, and I found one small grammatical error:-( I submitted a total of 7 essays, but with one small error… Will this serious hurt my chances!!!</p>
<p>On a lighter side, wouldn’t it be reasonable for MIT to admit all applicants that went through the process of crafting 7 essays just for MIT? =D> </p>
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(Actually, Matt usually visits HMMT, which makes me think that he maybe participated in it when he was in high school lo so many moons ago.)</p>