OK MIT, Princeton, Harvey Mudd, Cornell, Franklin Olin

kcastelle
Thu, 08 Jun 2006 00:41:49 +0000

I was accepted to Olin and MIT, and I ended up choosing MIT. I know several people who were accepted at one but not the other.

The people who were accepted to Olin but rejected from MIT were generally female, and there were even more rejected from Caltech. This is probably because Olin likes well-rounded engineers and strives for gender balance somewhat more than MIT and certainly more than Caltech.

The people admitted to MIT but not to Olin (after Candidate’s Weekend) had very noticeably poor social skills. The best advice I can give you for Candidate’s Weekend is to be well-groomed (it sounds crazy, but there were a few people who did not understand how to dress for an interview or neglected hygiene) and be assertive. Picture that annoying business guy who oozes charm and always wears a big smile… then play it down to a level you can stand. Try to be as outgoing as you can manage without seeming spastic. And don’t worry about the building exercise, it is strictly for fun. Kids always suspect otherwise, but one of the profs laughed and told me they were all still asleep while we were doing it.

When speaking of Olin’s prestige, there is one important thing to remember - it is not a full university. It may become extremely prestigious, but only ever to a niche group of engineers who are interested in the disciplines Olin offers. No small school can match the depth and breadth of fields and research or the alumni networks of the tech schools/ivies. Olin will end up more along the lines of U Chicago as far as prestige goes - an unarguably excellent school, but only truly appealing to a specialized group.