<p>Shameless and transparent! More applications = a lower admittance rate, resulting in a higher school ranking. BTW not being able to mathematically predict one’s chance is contrary to everything MIT teaches. I’m not buying it.</p>
<p>Hahaha MITChris that picture is gold 
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<p>Sent from my SGH-T959V using CC</p>
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<p>1) We don’t need to be ranked any higher.</p>
<p>2) Also, college rankings are a terrible scam and sham in order to sell you more copies of the books that contain the rankings, which I would tell you no matter where we were ranked. </p>
<p>3) “BTW not being able to mathematically predict one’s chance is contrary to everything MIT teaches.” - um, no. What MIT teaches is complexity, contingency, uncertainty, and the limits of one’s own knowledge until put to the test, the same test we subject every applicant to, one which you cannot know the answer to until the time comes.</p>
<p>Seriously, none of the top 10ish schools need to play the rankwhoring game. So they don’t. That’s for the #11-50 schools to spout “Hi we’re EastWestern State U and we’re ranked 3 in major x and 10 in major y and OMG the rankings!!!1!” MIT Harvard and Stanford just say “Hi we’re Harvard” and nuf said. </p>
<p>and anyway… [World’s</a> Best Universities; Top 400 Universities in the World | US News](<a href=“http://www.usnews.com/education/worlds-best-universities-rankings/top-400-universities-in-the-world]World’s”>http://www.usnews.com/education/worlds-best-universities-rankings/top-400-universities-in-the-world)</p>
<p>MIT Chris</p>
<p>1)Possibly but MIT does not want to drop in rankings, which could happen if the applicant pool drops.
2)I’m not buying until MIT announces that it refuses to be ranked and asks not to be.
3)Dreck, try again. Are you really saying the brain power of MIT cannot do a simple probability analysis of acceptance?</p>
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Okay, sure.</p>
<p>But on a day-to-day basis, I guarantee, the MIT admissions officers do not think at all about college rankings. They do think about things they can do to put together the best possible class for MIT, which includes encouraging people to apply who perhaps wouldn’t otherwise have MIT on their lists. </p>
<p>One outcome of casting a wide net is that more people might apply, and the admit rate might fall. But that is not the goal – the goal is to find the best people.</p>
<p>This is ridiculous. If MIT wanted more applicants or a higher ranking they would have joined the common app. Use some cents people.</p>
<p>Is it true that international students need international olympiad medals or have a long list to ECs to get them into MIT?</p>
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<p>I wish the applicant pool would drop! There are a lot of kids who apply every year to MIT who probably should not. We cut back on our recruitment of students who we think are unlikely to be admissible candidates specifically because we’d rather have fewer, well-matched students apply to MIT than a larger pool of randoms. Which is exactly WHY we haven’t switched to the common app. </p>
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<p>I have written quite publicly on the admissions blogs that the USN&WR is a sham and a scam and a terrible methodology just like all of the other rankings. You might not get a statement from Reif - mostly because he has more important things to do than to pay attention to stupid rankings - but we seriously do not care. </p>
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<p>Sure we can. But there’s nothing “simple” about the admissions process. Once you get beyond 8% (or whatever the admit rate will be this year) it’s way more complex than anything you could possibly imagine. Doing a “simple probability analysis” would not tell you anything worthwhile and could in fact only be misleading and bad.</p>
<p>I’d love for a smaller number of better matched people to apply to MIT than a larger number of unreliably matched people to apply because in the former case I can spend a lot more time on each meritorious case then the latter. </p>
<p>mollie and sosomenza are both right to note that if suddenly our pool dropped and ranking dropped there would probably be bad PR but that is only because people continue to care about these dumb and horrible rankings. If people stopped caring about them and started caring about things that matter (like cultural match, interactions with faculty, availability of opportunities, personal financial aid, etc) then we would be better off as a society. </p>
<p>Have I mentioned yet how I feel about college rankings??</p>
<p>Yet..Chris..I have a question..I am an international student, who applied to MIT..because I have heard and read a lot about the college. How can I find out if i fit into MIT(I feel I do because I have always followed my dreams..sounds cliche I know:))..</p>
<p>But the fact is that I have never been to MIT and have never really been outside my city..(only once to Beijing to collect an award:D).
How much of cultural match,Interactions etc do I loose if I have never visited the place..The only people I know who are MIT’ans are some friends here on CC:)</p>
<p>Good question! And a tough one to answer. The best thing you can do is read everything you can and get a sense for the culture from your admittedly attenuated position to decide if you want to apply. If you end up being admitted, then it’s a matter of talking to your future fellow classmates to see if you feel at home with them. Two step process.</p>
<p>Yeah I guess so…It’ll be like living the MIT dream or something..
thanks Chris:) Hope to see you there soon!!</p>
<p>It feels nice after reading the whole thread.It creates a hope that without having any international medals or stellar ECs, one might still have a chance at MIT</p>
<p>Thanks MITChris</p>
<p>Just curious: how does MIT admissions committee measure the soundness of its decisions? Who is accountable for the decisions made and how is it measured? </p>
<p>My understanding is that they compare their decisions to how students end up coming out of MIT and how they end up a few years down the line, but I can’t say for certain.</p>
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Stuart Schmill, the Dean of Admissions is absolutely accountable for the undergraduate admissions decisions made. He has a boss, Philip Freeman, the Dean for Undergraduate Education, who is responsible for vast quantities of the undergraduate experience. He in turn reports to Cynthia Barnhart, the Chancellor of MIT, who is one of the top two educational officers of MIT (along with the Provost). The Chancellor is responsible for almost all aspects of the undergraduate and graduate student experience. The Chancellor reports to L. Rafael Reif, the President of MIT (who is in turn accountable to the board of the MIT Corporation). </p>
<p>As with any hierarchical organisation, at each level, each officer is given clear targets and metrics by which their performance is measured, and Dean Schmill is completely accountable to his bosses for the decisions he and his team make. As MIT is a university, there is also a faculty committee with oversight and input into policy, in this case CUAFA, the faculty Committee on Undergraduate Admissions and Financial Aid, that provides high-level guidance on admissions and financial aid matters. Dean Schmill is expected to report to, and take guidance from CUAFA. Dean Schmill also recruits faculty to read applications and provide feedback on them. These faculty may sit on CUAFA (or they may not). Dean Schmill is accountable to CUAFA and to Dean Freeman and may in theory be asked by them to justify the decisions he and his team are taking. He is not accountable to any of us.</p>
<p>A high schooler here, just joined. I am really interested in this question. Most reputable institutions and universities have a similar structure to the best of my knowledge. No one is claiming that they are accountable to any of us. How is the output of their decisions measured? It appears that whatever decision is made can be justified with any number of arguments, but what accountability exists for those decisions over let’s say 4-10 years from now when the ramifications of their decisions can be clearly measured. How are mistakes rectified? They can’t be right all the time, can they?</p>
<p>That is, of course true. And there is nobody that will state that mistakes cannot happen, but it also true that the admissions office at MIT makes very few mistakes. When subtle shifts in admissions policy occur, they most often are driven by CUAFA. So if the faculty committee responsible was reporting - AND THIS IS A PURE HYPOTHETICAL - that the students, while bright, were not challenging entrenched orthodoxy opinions enough, or alternatively, they were challenging the faculty too much over small things, then the Dean may be instructed to value certain traits higher or lower than previously. This would normally show up in a subtle change to the match criteria (<a href=“What we look for | MIT Admissions”>http://mitadmissions.org/apply/process/match</a>) which is what gets a student in or does not. </p>
<p>The key to understanding admissions is to remember that MIT can fill their class multiple times over with academically qualified students. Indeed, MIT for a variety of reasons has a much more self-selective pool than some other institutions. Far fewer students with a bunch of D’s on their transcript apply to MIT, than to (say) Harvard for example. So some 70%-80% of the MIT applicant pool has the academic chops to thrive at MIT. So the distinguishing characteristics, and the things that really get you in or not are the personality traits that represent match. The match criteria are often quite different between different but academically strong schools, a good match for MIT may not be a good match for Harvard, for example. These may shift subtly over time.</p>
<p>Over the thousands of admissions decisions that MIT makes in a year, mistakes most often occur in individual cases, when the applicant does not do a good job of getting themselves into the application folder. People do not apply to university; applications folders apply to universities. Sometimes, students are so worried about making the right impression, that they excise any sense of who they are from the folder and just present as a generic “good student”. MIT does try to compensate for this. The alumni interview for example, should not discuss much that is elsewhere in the folder. The educational counselor wants to meet you, as a person, and to report on what that experience was like. </p>
<p>I know of one case where an exceptional applicant applied, was not admitted, then realised that there was nothing in the folder who reflected who they were. In that case, the kid decided to take a gap year then applied the next year and got in early. In cases like this there really is a “how did we miss that?” sense in the admissions office. For balance, I should note, that in the overwhelming majority of cases, students reapplying for admission will get the same decision that they got the first time. I really, really, really would recommend against reapplying unless you know objectively that you really screwed up your first application. Mistakes can happen, but most of the time they are attributable to the candidate rather than the admissions office.</p>
<p>Still not a very convincing answer. The answer still views the admission decisions in the present time rather than reflecting the decisions made by admissions office from future data back to the time when the decisions were made. Decisions made on an individual can still be grossly wrong and an entirely new class composed of rejected candidates could have done just fine or better. The attitude that “in the overwhelming majority of cases, students reapplying for admission will get the same decision that they got the first time” indicates pompousness, stubborn thinking that every decision made is correct with a shaky and subjective basis behind it and with no data to defend it. There are also several contradictions in MIT applications:
- “The open movement is strong at MIT”, but the basis on which decisions are really made is shrouded in secrecy. Why not release the reason why a candidate was rejected to the candidate?
- “It’s a meritocracy”. In reality, it’s not a meritocracy and decisions seem to go well beyond the some leeway that should be allowed to compose a diversified class (this is based on my observations at two past graduating class at my school).
I am sure I will find some more contradictions as I move forward.</p>
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