Brother of accepted MITES student here. He has near-perfect SATs, ECs with leadership, private school, educated, upper middle income very well educated parents. Comments from parents of other similar kids who were not selected have made him feel badly because he was chosen while, according to them, their kids were essentially much smarter, much more rich or had parents much more well educated to have been selected. A few thoughts occur to me, a college student who was not selected for MITES in earlier years. First, it is pretty obvious through all the MITES threads that different students are chosen for different reasons. There are public school kids, private school kids, rich kids, poor kids, kids with parents who never went to college and kids with parents who have PhDs from Ivy League schools, high test scoring kids, low test scoring kids, URMs, Asians and white kids. We also know that this year 4.5% of applicants were chosen for MITES and the same or a bit more were selected for each of the other 2 programs.
What can we logically conclude? 1) All different kinds of kids are chosen; 2) If you don’t apply you won’t be chosen; 3) If you apply it would not be wise to count on being selected given the low acceptance rate; and 4) there are helicopter parents out there who are so caught up in their kids lives they have to spend their time rationalizing their kids’ outcomes on a thread intended for high school kids.
For this year’s applicants who were not chosen – know that the process of writing all the essays has better prepared you for college apps in the fall and if you were confident enough to apply for MITES you can go anywhere and do anything if you stick to trying. For this year’s applicants who were chosen – do not feel you were selected only because you were too poor, too ethnic, too dumb, or too anything. You were seleced for one of the most prestigious summer engineering programs in the country, competing for a spot with the brightest kids in the context of many different backgrounds, from under-priviledged to priviledged. Your futures are bright as shining stars.