<p>@pertussis Way to go! That’s right!</p>
<p>@trix19 No no I never wanted to bring you into a “never lasting” debate. Do I want to discourage the OP? - No. Do I want the OP to know the facts? - Yes.</p>
<p>MIT will look for a way to pull out all their admits from the rest of the applicant pool. Yes, they look for some kind of international validation. I can count on my fingers the number of opportunities available to Indian students to provide such international validation - Olympiads and Google International Science fair. That’s the reason we can see that most of the MIT admits won int’l Olympiad medals.</p>
<p>If you can see the posts above your first one, you will notice that everybody who answered the OP’s question made a point - “Olympiads or something equal to that”.</p>
<p>Talking to a professor and joining his research or asking him to help in your project? Yes, that’s a thing to do, but do you really think it’s practically possible in our country for a high school student? I don’t think so.</p>
<p>One last point I would like to make after which I will never take a look into this thread is “there are not many opportunities as you might think”. (If you can read your post, you said “If you’re LUCKY, they may offer some basic work for you to do. RARELY, it is hard to find a project that you can work in with deep knowledge”. You can also count the number of “if’s” you used there and in your next sentence. That’s what I am talking about.)</p>
<p>Yes I was rejected by MIT, but am I crying over the rejection? No. Am I feeling unworthy of myself? No. And I’m not bashing the MIT admissions for taking only those who proved themselves. What I’m trying to say is “without something very unique, don’t expect MIT to take you”.</p>