To me the main things that come to mind are that MIT is a lot of work, and that there are a huge number of opportunities on campus.
Perhaps the #1 thing is that the desire to work hard and to learn a great deal should come from inside the student. This should not be imposed by parents or society or others. It should be what the student wants to do.
Nerdy quiet students can do very well at MIT.
I remember when I was a senior at MIT there were other students who played poker for money, and who at least thought of themselves as serious poker players. Some were seniors who came across as taking this game seriously. There was one quiet freshman who everyone said played randomly. There seemed to be no sense to what he was doing. Yet every time they played he walked away with more money than he had started with. No one knew why. I think that he was probably a good fit for MIT.
Another example that was from graduate school somewhere else, but that would probably fit MIT just as well. I can remember one assignment from one course that had five problems. One problem was really difficult. It took me six hours on a Saturday (from late morning through about 5pm) to complete the one problem. Afterward I asked a few students what they did with this problem, and none of the other students that I talked to had been able to solve it. If you were to do the same thing, would you go to dinner that evening thrilled that you had managed to solve the problem, or would you feel like you just wasted 6 hours on a Saturday? If you would be thrilled to have solved the problem, then MIT might be a good fit for you.
So although this is sorta an academic answer, I think it is also a bit holistic as well.
I think the first and more important MIT fit question is are you an extreme outlier in terms of both math ability and math interest. There are lots of people like my S24 who are quite good at math, but his true passions lie elsewhere. I just don’t think MIT is likely to make sense for such kids.
As I suggested above, I think in a way this is a given for MIT, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t important!
And then as I said above, they also want math people who are nice, who like collaboration, who likely getting their hands dirty, who like reading and writing, who like doing things just for fun . . . .
Basically, be a well-balanced kid, who is also an extreme outlier in math ability and interest.
When you think about it, that is a narrow window. Lots of kids are well-balanced kids who are good at math but don’t have that sort of extreme outlier passion for math. These kids, if well-advised, probably don’t even apply to MIT. Other kids are math outliers but not so much well-balanced, and maybe more of those apply but end up getting easily reject.
What I frankly don’t know is exactly what deferred kids look like. What I suspect, though, is that they are pretty much all in that math outlier camp, but MIT is not yet convinced they will stand out enough in those balance areas too. Meaning I personally doubt MIT has left in the pool anyone who is not sufficiently into math.
Interesting. I know many MIT alums, but most graduated in eighties and nineties. I don’t think math was a passion for any of them, but I could be wrong. I’ve never asked. The majority of alums that I know personally studied architecture or engineering as undergraduates. And I know a surprising number who were graduate students or research fellows affiliated with the media lab. Over the years, I’ve also gotten to know some people who studied or taught economics, political science, urban planning, and management there. I even know one(!) person who was an undergraduate humanities major.
So my alum friends and colleagues are likely clouding my perspective on MIT academic departments (clearly I know a disproportionate number of atypical graduates of their smaller programs). They also all graduated 20-40 years ago, and I am wondering if the culture of the campus has changed in the last twenty years. I am particularly wondering about the experience of black and latino students there. It sounds like there is currently a lot of anti-semitism at least according to people posting this fall on the college antisemitism threads. What about other forms of bigotry (sexism, racism)? I don’t recall friends mentioning more than a typical amount of antisemitism and other forms of bigotry (obviously those issues exist everywhere at least in my experience. But again the people whom I know best all graduated decades ago so their experience with the campus bigotry is probably outdated, and the sorts of incidents that I’ve heard them mention were more about the Boston area than MIT in specific.
Original poster here. If my son by some miracle gets in, I would definitely spend the money to fly him out and see if it’s a good fit. From things people are writing here, it seems like it would be, but he would have to figure out for sure.
This all started because he really wants to go to school in a big city. Since we need a lot of financial aid, we ran the NPCs on pretty much every big city school and MIT (according to NPC) will give us one of the best deals. At the same time, he started Calc BC and has been loving it so much. I have never seen him so excited about a class and the material. He spends hours each day working on it with friends and says it is the best and most fun class he has ever taken. He has always enjoyed math and had an easy time with it, but I have never seen him so engaged as this. He is also enjoying Physics Mechanics.
We do not have degrees or jobs in anything STEM related so we are unfamiliar with all these math and science competitions and so he has never done those and doesn’t know anyone who has. But he has been very involved in other non-STEM related things in and out of school and is very social and likes working with others.
So I guess he won’t know if it’s a great fit unless he gets in and visits. But what he loves about the idea of going there is being with a bunch of other people who are so excited about math and talking about it and problem solving together and connecting it to other areas of life.
That said, he knows the admissions chances are miniscule and thinks he could fit in at a lot of other schools too.
So for sure, being an outlier in math doesn’t mean you need to end up in a math or science. But most MIT undergraduates do something math-intensive for a primary major, including how MIT does things like econ or finance.
It is a bit different at the grad level. Like, for example, MIT has a well-regarded PhD program in Philosophy. However, in the last NCES College Navigator cycle, MIT reported 3 PhDs granted in Philosophy (which is fine), and ZERO primary undergraduate degrees in Philosophy.
Even in Architecture, MIT is much bigger in grad programs–116 Masters, 19 Doctorates, only 27 undergrads. Business, it is 851 Masters (Sloan is a big deal), 20 Doctorates, only 26 undergrads. You mentioned Media stuff, 49 Masters, 14 doctorates, 2 undergrads.
The really big areas for MIT undergrads are CS and Engineering. Math, and interdisciplinary studies involving Math, are third, followed by Life Sciences and related, and then Physical Sciences. Those categories accounted for 989 of 1100 undergrad primary majors.
At Yale, those same areas were 594 out of 1420. So, 90%, versus about 42%. In Philosophy, 4 PhDs, 23 undergrads.
Again, this is supposed to be about fit/vibe not just academics, but I think it is hard to escape the fit/vibe implications of such a different academic mix.
Even though MIT is ranked #1 in Social Sciences and #2 in Arts and Humanities in the world by Times Higher Education, the default assumption is that no one matriculates as MIT undergrad intending to major in these fields exclusively.
The very few that end up with those as their only majors are typically ones that found MIT STEM majors more than they bargained for. You can find some of their stories in MIT Admissions blogs. I am sure there are exceptions.
Sorry to keep adding thoughts, but this is an elaboration on a prior thought. My S24’s STEM interest is Bio, but he is also interested in non-STEM things.
MIT at least has Bio, and I included it in this comparison, but even then it is not necessarily a core strength of MIT. Like, Yale had 176 Bio primary major undergrad dgrees, plus another 39 Cognitive Science. MIT had only 42 Bio, although 40 Cognitive Science.
Contrast that with Physics. 50 at MIT, 36 at Yale.
So I think that is sort of supporting my thesis too, in that the “line” in terms of relative weight is basically being drawn between Physics and Bio, which is a pretty math-related line in my view.
Or discovered that majoring in linguistics, cog sci, econ, poli sci (which would be in the School of Arts and Sciences at another university) MORE than scratches their math itch. Some of the Poli Sci professors at MIT- for example- are doing voter analyses, population studies, income correlations which are every bit as math/modeling/programming/regression intensive as their colleagues in actual applied math departments in other universities. So at XYZ college they’d be a math professor with a strong interest in public policy or voter fraud or examining the link between inherited wealth and political affiliation around the world. But at MIT they are part of the Poli Sci faculty, and students gravitate towards them accordingly.
TLDR- not a bug but a feature. You cannot graduate from MIT without taking the entire core. So the linguistics major takes the same required classes as the mechanical engineer. Not Chem for poets.
I would guess that this is unlikely to be seen as prima facie evidence of a great fit by the adcom, since many admitted students will have taken Calculus BC as sophomores if not freshmen, and a good number of them will proceed to test out of multivariable calculus (and some even Differential Equations and/or Linear Algebra) during the orientation ASE.
Yes, I am aware of how few people (especially undergraduates) study those fields (arch, planning, social sciences) at MIT, and obviously the dominance of CS and engineering and other STEM fields impacts the culture/vibe on that campus. But knowing about the numbers of math-passionate students doesn’t really address other important questions about the culture --for example, what is the experience of black and latino students? What is the experience of women scientists (or for that matter women in all fields) there? When I talk to alums from there, they definitely talk about experiencing sexism from some professors. But they attended many years ago when only 30-35% of the students were women. Is it less of a problem now that nearly half the undergraduate population is female? What is the experience of low-income students? I assume that it is not quite as dripping with wealth as some other elite schools, but I still don’t know whether FGLI undergraduates have positive social experiences there or how good of a job MIT does at supporting the needs of students who are low income or poor. What are extracurriculars, parties, and housing like? The frat scene? How is living in that area of Cambridge? I am less familiar with the neighborhoods near MIT than other parts of the Boston area. In general Boston seems like a great city for college students from the outside, but I know people from the Midwest and South who think Boston is kind of cold and unfriendly (or at least used to think so). Also, many years ago, Boston was considered one of the most segregated Northeast cities, but I am under the impression that has changed in recent years.
This is a GREAT reminder to examine colleges through your DC’s own particular lens. When S23 was looking at engineering schools, we did most of the research on our own. We needed to know how Black male students experienced the schools. CC posters tend to represent a small slice of the population and talk in descriptions that are relevant to a very specific population. (How many times do posters toss out “no brainer” without thinking about demographics?)
Don’t get me wrong—CC is a valuable resource for many things. But parents and students seeking advice need to know its limitations.
I don’t think she was asserting that taking BC calc and doing well is evidence of the student being a fit for MIT. Her point was that his love of BC calc and the fact that he is spending so much time outside of class, working on it for pleasure, and generally being intellectually curious about it makes her think it could be a fit.
Thanks for clarifying that I was talking about his excitement/love for math, not his math level. I was definitely not saying my kid is so advanced in math that MIT would want him. We are aware that he is probably way less advanced in math than most applicants.
My son is starting at MIT in the fall. Just one word of caution, they do not always give you the aid that the NPC says that you should receive. I could not get a plausible answer as to why and eventually just decided to drop it, because we appealed and they improved the aid substantially, to the point where it was manageable but still not what the NPC said we should get. And they were far more generous than any other school.
