@parent600 To add something.
It’s OK for your son, and you for that matter, to feel that the decision was “unfair”. Even if you and your son know, intellectually, that is was simply how college admissions go, one cannot control what one feels. Your son sound like a great kid, and he is probably also feeling bad about feeling “but I deserve it more!”
Let him express this to you, where it’s safe, so that he can work through the feelings and move on. He should know that these feelings are normal, and do not mean that he is a bad person and a bad friend. The only thing that he should remember is to suppress those feelings around his friend.
And forget about what anybody else says. It’s OK for you to feel the same, and you’re not a bad person for feeling this. You’re a parent, and that’s what we do. We rail at the universe for not treating our kids the way we wish our kids were treated.
Very soon, this too will be in his rear view mirror.
MIT is an excellent school, but that doesn’t make it a Shining Temple on a mountain which only accepts the best of the best of the kids who fought their way through the dense jungle, suffered the hellish heat of the rocky desert plains, climbed the icy precipices, solved the riddles of the Sphinx, and were chosen by the spirit of learning and knowledge because they remained pure of heart and clear of mind.
A great school, but forget “rankings”. There is no such thing as an objectively “best school”.
Stephen Jay Gould was one of the greatest evolutionary biologist of his generation. He was rejected by Harvard back when it was far easier to be accepted than today (1960). He attended Antioch College instead.
From there, he was accepted to grad school at Columbia. He got his PhD in four years, hired by Harvard on graduation. Tenure in four years, full professor in eight and the most prestigious named chair at Harvard for Zoology in 16 years.