<p>It’s a dumb reason, but none of my humanities teachers know me well enough. All my humanities teachers see me as an ‘average’ student, so I’d seem pretentious if I asked for a single recommendation to MIT.</p>
<p>Part of me is asking ‘What if…’ and another is saying ‘No chance’. I’m not comfortable posting my stats. So in brief, 2250 SAT, 800 Physics, 800 Math IIC, 3.7 UW GPA (weak). Extracurricular are strong and focused (math and science), but are very few. Honors/Awards are very weak.</p>
<p>This is not a chance thread. Please don’t reply with ‘no chance’ or ‘very high reach’. The question is: Is it worth applying?</p>
<p>Teachers should understand that some colleges will require recommendations from teachers of certain subjects, so I don’t see how it would seem pretentious. If they ask, just say you need a recommendation from a humanities teacher. But yea, this is kind of a silly reason to not apply.</p>
<p>eh…there are people that might be BELOW average in their humanities classes and still applied.
I was pretty average in my class, just did all my hw and stuff, but my teacher was very happy to write me a rec.</p>
<p>Wouldn’t it make even more sense for you to apply to MIT, rather than settling for a second rate school?</p>
<p>You’ve already convinced yourself that you don’t have much of a chance/interest at a top school with a liberal arts focus (basically all ivies). Plus you wouldn’t have posted your stats if you weren’t looking for some sort of reassurance/confidence booster. It’s a no brainer that you’re competitive at MIT.</p>
<p>You’re going to base your entire future off of being afraid to ask for a rec?
The worst that can happen is they say no or they say yes, you get rejected, and are out the application fee. If you can’t even take a small risk like that, than you probably do not belong at MIT anyways.</p>
<p>Honestly, who cares if your teacher thinks your pretentious? (I don’t think they will since many students ask for recommendations every year…) But still, take a rish… you’ll question your decision for the rest of your life if you don’t.</p>
<p>You still have quite some time before you absolutely have to ask for a recommendation. Make good relations with your humanities teachers this year. Fix whatever the problem is. Recs from senior year are completely valid. Regardless, you should not feel shy in asking your teachers about recs. Just because you may have not been stellar doesn’t mean they won’t write you one. </p>
<p>Also, humanities is a fairly broad term when it comes to MIT. Admissions will accept recs from humanities, social studies (including psychology), English, or foreign language teachers. There must be one teacher who’ll write you an above average rec. Any teacher you’ve had should know you well enough for a rec. How big could your classes have been? Take a chance and ask. Don’t refrain from applying because of this :)</p>
<p>Honestly, I think everyone is sort of pretentious for asking for a letter of rec for MIT. I remember morbidly thinking to myself that the science teacher and the humanities teacher I asked for recommendations to MIT must be sitting together in the teacher’s lounge having a good laugh about it- and I got in, so it was clearly worth the try.</p>
<p>As repeated above, this is a really stupid reason not to apply. Haven’t you ever heard the phrase “you never know until you try”? Do you really want to spend the next four years wondering “what if”???</p>
<p>So let’s do the “What if” first. What if you apply? Two end results as far as admissions go - you are accepted or rejected (“waitlisted” will eventually still fall into one of the other two). If you are rejected, will you be crushed? Will you really miss the application fee or the time spent applying? And what if you are accepted? Will the happiness on this side be greater than the sorrow if rejected? Will the benefit from attending MIT outweigh the loss of the application fee (as you’ll have that either way anyhow)? The only way you can have “No chance” is by not applying. If you apply, your worst case is actually “low chance” rather than “No chance” as even if you had lousy stats for MIT like a 1700 SAT and 3.4 <em>weighted</em> GPA and whatever else, there can always be a fluke…but only if you bother to apply.</p>
<p>So you ask if it’s worth it to apply…it depends on how much the money and time means to you versus how low you feel the odds to be. My son applied to MIT for graduate school without his parents being willing to pay the application fee as we felt his odds so slim (given that he was only 14 and had no research published yet) that it would be a waste of money (we were willing to pay the application fee for the highly ranked state U application as we felt his odds of being accepted there exceptionally high), but <em>he</em> was more confident about his odds and applied using his own money and was accepted. I credit him for going ahead and trying for something he wanted even while having parents who lacked support in him there.</p>
<p>Thus, even if everyone on this board told you not to bother applying, if it’s something <em>you</em> really want, I’d say go for it. Even if you don’t get in, research has showed that a certain amount of “failure” helps in life, so given that, it seems applying could only be a win/win situation for you.</p>
<p>Yes, if you want to go to MIT, it is worth applying! I’m about to start at MIT in a week, and speaking from experience, my SATs were lower than yours on all fronts. My extra-currics were also focused on math/science, but probably not as strong. Most importantly, the humanities teacher I asked taught me English. Specifically, AP English, my worst class in all of high school (and before). :)</p>
<p>“So you ask if it’s worth it to apply…it depends on how much the money and time means to you versus how low you feel the odds to be.”</p>
<p>Good answer, LazyBum201. I’m trying to weigh it out myself. Right now, the chances of me ‘attending’ (not being accepted) are very low. Before you ask, my number 1 school is slightly less selective than MIT, but still a crapshoot.</p>
<p>Thanks everyone for the responses. There are other reasons that are holding me back from applying other than ‘no humanities recommendation’. These are mainly my low chances and the fact that MIT is not my number 1 school. These reasons make me hesitant to ask for one humanities recommendation for one school that I’m not likely to attend.</p>
<p>Now I have to note that I wouldn’t let odds have anything to do with asking for a recommendation. I earlier noted that I felt our son had extremely low odds of getting into MIT, and yet I never thought twice about his asking people for recommendations (though I did think the people he asked might be ruling him out from getting admitted as the application said to submit LOR from three professors or two professors and a <em>current</em> employer and he had letters of recommendation from the president of his university, the director of his honors college - whom he had for two upper level honors courses but neither were in CS or math or a science of any kind, and a <em>former</em> boss). I just figure it’s part of an employer’s or professor’s job to write LOR for workers or students they’ve had unless they feel they can’t write a decent letter, in which case they should say something along the lines of “Sorry, but I don’t have time to write you a letter anytime soon, so please ask someone else.”</p>
<p>Indeed, I think any teacher should feel <em>honored</em> to be asked to be writing a letter of recommendation for a student as it shows that student thinks the teacher’s word matters, that the teacher writes very well, etc. So try to look at it as a win/win for you and the teacher both.</p>
<p>I am not aware of any other school that specifically requires a science/math teacher recommendation and a humanities recommendation. Just a heads up: the MIT web site will track all your application materials received on line and they will track the actual MIT Recommendation Forms (but not a general recommendation letter if you submit those).</p>
<p>If you don’t put in a serious, well-planned effort on your MIT application, I think they’ll be able to determine that. It’s not like the schools that accept the Common App.</p>
<p>If anyone thinks taking the SAT II is too much effort: then 4 years of MIT is not going to be a fit for you IMO.</p>