My Math story... will a D ruin my chances for MIT?

mathboy98
Sat, 06 Jun 2009 04:49:02 +0000

My own opinion is that you should have the attitude “I will get an A” since it’s not usually that bad to, unless your teacher hates human beings entirely, but don’t sound pretentious in the application.

I’d take to heart that you shouldn’t consider MIT strongly unless you take calculus, having done precalculus, and really sail through it and develop strong analytical skills. But I’m willing to believe that you could’ve had a very strange transition to the way your math curriculum was structured, and that’s what caused a bad first two years. Like I said, if you struggled then because of silly reasons and you ace calculus now you have the act together, done. But else, I’d be very scared to consider admitting a student who only claims to be able to do better, and hasn’t given evidence – for his/MIT’s own good.