Does anybody know how selective/prestigious MIT Primes is? The alumni seem to go to very good schools, but not sure if this is just a correlation.
It is super selective and super prestigious. The kids who are selected for PRIMES have a stamp indicating they’re gifted for STEM fields and all colleges know that.
Thanks for the response!
Happen to know if it is RSI level difficulty/prestige or is it below that? Also, would getting in serve as a “hook”?
Yes, getting into MITES would be the equivalent of a “hook”.
For each targeted group, it’s as difficult to get but doesn’t target the same groups and the criteria aren’t the same.
Are you thinking you could be in MITES or RSI?
@MYOS1634, you’re confusing me. Why the MITES discussion?
As far as I can tell, the OP is interested in PRIME, but wants to know how difficult it is to get in and how prestigious it is (hence the RSI comparison). As I understand it, a big difference is that PRIME is limited to applicants within commuting distance of Cambridge, so it has a much more limited applicant pool.
my bad… I meant
PRIME/RSI are both as selective within their respective targets but don’t target the same groups so I’m not sure there is a lot of overlap.
Beside the commuting aspect, I don’t think PRIME helps with big competitions and it’s math-focused as far as I know whereas RSI is more science-focused.
I saw some of the awards that the people from PRIMES got, and thought they looked pretty prestigous:
http://math.mit.edu/research/highschool/primes/honors.php
I agree with @renaissancedad though that PRIMES has a much more limited pool of applicants. This is why I was wondering if anyone had thoughts on whether the PRIMES alumni just happened to get into good schools because of their merits unrelated to PRIMES, or if PRIMES was a deciding factor.