<p>Hello, I just had my interview lasted about 1 hour. He told me that I was on 4th stage(5 is best). What does it actually mean to my chance??
Thanks a lot!</p>
<p>I’ve never heard of that. Interviews generally don’t affect admissions that much. They are intended to be more of an opportunity for you to get to know the school better.</p>
<p>All applicants are given a score, from one through five, for both objective and subjective factors. Objective would be grades and test scores. Subjective would be essays and extracurriculars. Your interviewer must have implied that you would get a four on one or both of the those categories. Congratulations. A four is very strong.</p>
<p>I am surprised to see that an interviewer would have so much power as to determine the applicants subjective score.</p>
<p>Don’t the readers at the admissions office determine the actual score? I was under the impression they simply factor in the information from the interview into their determination of the score?</p>
<p>And for those of you who don’t know:</p>
<p>The way the process at MIT is that they assign a number of 1-5 on subjective and objective criteria, with 5 being the highest. What they then have is a 5 by 5 matrix. (1,1) , (1,2) , (2,1) , (2,2) … all the way to (5,4) , (4,5) , (5,5).</p>
<p>They admit people from each group, with the (5,5) people having the most likely chance of admission.</p>
<p>Now, how they assign these values I have no idea.</p>
<p>WHAT??? HOw come I never knew about this…</p>
<p>Nato, how do you know this? And do you know anything about how the numbers are assigned?</p>
<p>oh sorry didn’t see your last comment about not knowing how they assign those numbers</p>
<p>In 1999, a short piece on the admissions office was in The Tech – the article is [url=<a href=“http://www-tech.mit.edu/V119/N13/admissions.13f.html]here[/url”>http://www-tech.mit.edu/V119/N13/admissions.13f.html]here[/url</a>]. It discusses the numerical ratings a little. Personally, I have no idea if the system has changed in the past eight years – I would be very surprised if it had stayed exactly the same.</p>
<p>this is probably what he meant-article talks about interviewer rankings</p>
<p>[The</a> Tech - MIT, Other Colleges Look Past Scores of Applicants](<a href=“http://www-tech.mit.edu/V123/N64/64globeadm.64n.html]The”>http://www-tech.mit.edu/V123/N64/64globeadm.64n.html)</p>
<p>I guess there’s a rating that goes with the interview report and you got 4/5</p>
<p>I know someone who is heavily involved with people at the admissions office at MIT.</p>
<p>And remember, this process doesn’t really change much. One still doesn’t know how to get a 5 in each category. I mean, we all already knew that being well rounded was important, right?</p>
<p>This system is just MIT’s method of categorizing and sorting out the applicants. really, it’s kind of a useless piece of information from an applicant standpoint, except for the sake of pure intellectual curiosity in how the system works.</p>
<p>It doesn’t actually mean much. As an interviewer, we are asked to assign scores to a variety of characteristics on a 1-5 basis. The content of the interview report is much more important than the number. 4 is a very solid score, but I am surprised at an interviewer suggesting that it means all that much.</p>
<p>Interviews are very important at the extremes, a really brilliant interview or a really awful one can seriously affect your chances. Most of the middle ones matter much less. </p>
<p>For example, on every interview report that I file there is a box that I can tick if I have interviewed that “one in a million” candidate that MIT simply cannot let go. I have never yet ticked that box. I know of a couple of EC’s who have had the opportunity to tick the box. Of all of the cases I know of, every candidate who has had that box ticked, got in (I acknowledge a statistically insignificant sample size).</p>
<p>huh, my interviewer told me the scale was 1 to 8… but didn’t tell me my score</p>
<p>Each interviewer, along with the 1 to 5 for the interviewee, writes about their impressions and are graded on a 1 to 5 scale. I’m not sure how those two play into each other, but I know that interviewers who receive 5s for their interviews basically write essays about their interviewee, and I’d assume that their judgment counts more than an interviewer who says something along the lines of “this applicant is a 4 out of 5”. If I were you, I’d worry more about the content than the number.</p>
<p>mikayle, what were the conditions or attributes of the applicant that caused the other EC’s to check that “one in a million” box? something academic or something interpersonal?</p>