Getting into MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

In My Humble Opinion
21

Sorry if I carried it a bit far-- actually scratch that. I didn’t go far enough. You want to know how to get into MIT and I told you. It’s nothing personal, I gave you a 30 second read of your “application” and my opinion of it. And gave you my suggestion of how to get into MIT (or equivalent). You are young and can make a significant impact on your resume and your appearance to a college admissions department. But right now, i think you look like 100 other kids from your county alone.
Yes I could rip Taekwondo for not being a team sport, but I think my real message to you is that the admissions folks can smell resume padding versus engaged and passionate (and truly unique) activity.
Now my chance to pull out my qualifications - I’m not bragging;)
Since you seem enamored with MIT (and I assume Harvard), I was accepted at both for both undergraduate and graduate school (and at Harvard for a Post-Doc) and turned all five opportunities down. I attended other higher;) quality schools for both and do alumni interviews of undergraduate applicants for both schools as part of undergraduate application process.

I scored an 1180 on the SAT (in one of the last years of the 1600 high score) but was an all-state football player and recruited in person by Tom Osborne from the University of Nebraska. I can omit my music (not as accomplished as you), science (Westinghouse finalist and SciOlympiad multiple national medals), math, student government, homecoming king achievements because the football is what made everyone want to meet me and made them take a second look at my scores and the rest of what I’d written in my essays. I was really damn good at one thing that made me unique and good at several others that got me into both of those schools. How do I know that? Because during my alumni interviews and during my admissions interview I was asked almost exclusively about one thing-- football.

And what do I ask the applicants about? The thing that makes them the most unique and they are most passionate about (it sounds like that may be violin for you, or cancer research or your robot), because it shows me how they can become part of the college community and contribute in class and to the “Life of the Mind”. I couldn’t care less about their volunteering hours or the other “checklist” items as there is a certain level of humanity expected.

Good luck.

22

I grew up in Connecticut and went to MIT. I was accepted in 2004. I had a score of 1560 on the SATs (when 1600 was the highest). I think I got 800s on all of the SAT IIs. I had good grades, mostly A’s with a few B’s, all in AP courses or the equivalent.

I participated in exactly zero clubs, activities and generic “community service” sort of things. I did not play an instrument, did not play any organized sports, and essentially did not do anything that was “recommended” for college acceptance. There were three or four other kids at my high school who had better grades than me, better SAT scores, and participated in the usual smorgasboard of resume-padding crap, who applied, and did not get in.

Many (approximately 80%) of the people I met at MIT shared a common characteristic - they did something in high school that was relatively unique and required initiative and organizational skills on their part to carry out: essentially, something that demonstrated entrepreneurial skills. Not just attended/led a bunch of clubs that already existed, joined the high school sports teams, played an instrument, etc. I, for instance, started a small engineering business that became mildly successful and donated a significant amount of work to the town / school district for free. I am happy to PM you with details/examples if you are interested.

My take on your extrapolated resume as stated is that it places you in the top 70% of applicants to MIT. Obviously, you need to be in the top ~10% to get in. My recommendation is that you do something that will distinguish you from the guy with the same resume in the next town over. For instance: start, run and organize a program, on your own, to teach mathematics to lower-income students in other towns. Get a grant from the state. Enlist students from other high schools to help. Obviously, this just one possible example.

MIT’s applicant pool is full of people who play an instrument well, joined a bunch of clubs, play sports, and got good grades / SAT scores. Essentially everything you’ve listed in this thread so far is irrelevant, since everyone else applying has it too. The good grades are necessary - everything else is not. The violin is not “extra”, not enough to matter anyway. Instead, you need to dedicate your time and energy to something that will seriously differentiate you from the other candidates.

If you want to maximize your chances of getting into a high-end school, ditch all the resume-padding activities that every other smart, motivated, hard-working kid is doing too, and think of something different.

I wouldn’t bother trying to excel at sports. I can’t think of anyone I met at MIT who I concluded got in because they excelled at sports (and I spent a lot of time freshman year quizzing people on what they did that they thought got them in). No one at MIT treats sports as more than a serious hobby and a way to stay in shape.

Similarly, with the instrument. MIT gets plenty of people who are good musicians incidentally to their other qualifications.

23

Isn’t this the same poster that was struggling to find the number of candies in a jar?

24

I’m going to give this thread some help getting into IMHO.

25

I was admitted to MIT in 1973. I couldn’t tell you why they accepted me.
I had high grades in high school (many AP classes), got 1480 out of 1600 on the SATs (790 out of 800 in Math). I was in Band for four years, Chess Club, Math Club, and Chemistry Club. I was an Eagle Scout and an Order of the Arrow Vigil Member. I contributed to the school literary magazine (I’d been writing and sending out fiction and articles to “real world” magazines, thus far without success). I advance placed out of the first term of Calculus at MIT, but that happened aftrer I was accepted.

Overall, my application looks good but not exceptional, probably not as good as many in this thread. Maybe my essay "wow"ed them.

26

Also, note that these days, MIT and other top schools get many highly qualified applicants from China, India and elsewhere around the world. So as an applicant from Connecticut, you’re not just competing against that farm kid from Nebraska and the prep school kid from Philips Exeter, but the kids from New Delhi, Shanghai and Beijing. My nephew just went through this, although he wasn’t applying to the technical colleges.

27

Soccer scholarship? At MIT?

Double check with your nephew on that one.

28

This is a giant load of crap, and if you’re serious about this, you need to stop deluding yourself into thinking you can delude the admissions counsellors at MIT. MIT doesn’t want “community service” - they want you to be involved in something you’re passionate about, and that you can articulate how that involvement (in whatever it might be) will translate into you being a superior applicant/future student.

It’s clear you have not spoken to anyone at MIT. Do that. Do it today. They’ll give you a roadmap for what you should be doing and planning for.

To head off any ridiculous “how do *you *know?” questions, I volunteer to staff local college fairs to represent my alma mater. Notre Dame isn’t MIT, but it’s a Top 20 school with a competitive acceptance rate. A “well-rounded student” is not someone with a giant grocery list of things they’ve been involved in, where “involved in” essentially means “went to a few meetings during my break”. They want to see you get involved in something you are interested in, and they want you to aspire to a position of leadership in that activity. Doesn’t matter if it’s chess, football, debate, SADD, whatever - just find your passion. It sounds like violin may be yours - that’s great. Find ways to use that. Don’t just get involved in “community service” - find an afterschool program where you could teach children the violin. Find a way to use your talents in new and innovative ways.

But seriously, give MIT a call or e-mail, and do it soon.

29

I think who you know can be a huge factor. See if you can get into some kind of summer class or internship there while you are still in high school so you have your foot in the door.

30

Um, no. It only shows you’ve joined a ton of clubs and activities. It doesn’t show that you’re serious about any of them or that you’re a better candidate for it. MIT gets literally thousands - tens of thousands - of applications that look exactly like this.

Think about this the way an adult might: if I get a job applicant who claims to be an active participant in 15 different clubs, is a hard working over-achiever, and finds time to play an instrument in a local orchestra, I’d say that applicant is (a) lying, (b) clearly not serious about any particular activity and will probably also be a dilettante on the job rather than a serious worker, and © too willing to toot their own horn to be a good co-worker.

  1. As Disheavel noted, what actually differentiates you from any of the thousands of other students with exactly the same profile? At this point, you’re just rolling the dice and hoping for the best.

  2. Don’t get defensive. You are the one who asked for advice. If you’re going to dump on anybody who says something you don’t like, you’re not asking for advice but an echo chamber.

  3. “Well-rounded” is well and good but having exactly the same profile as everybody else is not. Take the advice given - ask high school counselors, read (and more importantly - believe) what college admissions officers have written on the topic (that good grades and a bunch of activities isn’t really enough on their own), and try to grow beyond being simply a “profile”. Interesting, truly well-rounded (not the sophomoric notion of a college admissions “well-rounded”) people will succeed in life and find opportunities everywhere, but “well rounded” profiles only demonstrate mediocre originality and the need for more maturity.

As noted above, only a small fraction of people who apply to MIT get in. They reject several people who have perfect GPAs, who have perfect SAT scores, and have exactly the same profile you have presented.

Then again, they also accept several people who have the same profile.

If you simply want to know if the profile you present hits a minimum cutoff, then, yes, it does. But the answer to the deeper question of whether or not this profile elevates you over the competition is that that it’s not really sufficient.

31

Given this and your academics / extracurriculars, you will be able to get into a top tier school. May not be MIT, but apply to the top 10 schools in the country, you will gwt into several.

32

The question isn’t necessarily “can I get into MIT”? The question you need to be asking is, “what do I want to do with my life?” It’s okay if your answer right now is “I’m not sure but I want to do something in science or engineering”, but you need to think about that, not about the school. Go to MIT if you really, really want to be one of the things they do best. If you don’t really love it, you’ll wash out (trust me, however many people you think wash out of MIT, CalTech, Georgia Tech, etc? You’re off by orders of magnitude.)

33

I went to RPI, which is, I think, more purely a nerd school than MIT. (By which I mean that I think that MIT has more legitimate programs in softer fields than RPI seemed to.) I knew several people who “failed in.” These were kids who were good in math and science, so they decided to go to a technical college to study sciences/engineering/math/etc. But once there, they figured out that this really wasn’t the best thing for them. By then, though, their grades were weak enough that they couldn’t transfer to another high-end university, so they were essentially stuck at RPI. So in general I recommend that people look at attending a more well-rounded school. Stanford, for instance, is a top technical college but also has many programs in the softer fields.

34

It’s a crapshoot sometimes at the really top tier schools. I visited MIT, but hated the campus and didn’t apply. My top two schools I applied to (for engineering) were Cornell and Princeton. I got in (and went) to Cornell, and I was waitlisted at Princeton and eventually rejected.

I was valedictorian of my high school (which was a very good HS), a four year varsity letterman in swimming, four year band member, did lots of other clubs and such and had good (but not great) SATs (1340 on the 1600 scale) but quite good SAT IIs (780 on the Math IIC, 740 writing). I know someone with worse SATs and worse grades, but got into Princeton the same year, so who knows in those cases.

Anyway, I ultimately am quite glad I ended up at Cornell, as the campus is gorgeous and the program was excellent, with wonderful diversity both in the student body and in the available courses of study. Going to a top school has also helped in the job market. When I was laid off at my job when the economy tanked in 2008, I was hired 6 days later at a better firm, and they told me they were quite impressed I had a degree from Cornell. So, the top tier schools do open a lot of doors. Thing is, make sure you like the college. There area lot of really good schools…find one that is good in the field you want to pursue, narrow it down and then VISIT the schools. I thought I wanted to go to MIT as well, but I left my visit feeling quite underwhelmed (not that you can’t have a great time at MIT). Find a school that fits you.

You’ll also find that your major may evolve. Math is a fine major, but it’s a career path meant for academics…your job will likely involve mathematical analysis and study and likely teaching. You may find that’s awesome for what you want to do, or you may want to go towards a less theoretical major and steer towards engineering. (I first thought about being a physics major, then by the time I applied to college, I thought mechanical engineering, and then by my sophomore year of college when it was time to go into major specific courses, I switched and decided on electrical engineering.)

Key for now, as a freshman in high school is not to try and shoehorn your life into one specific goal this early. MIT is a great school, but there are many great math/science schools…several in the Ivies, plus excellent schools like Boston University, Purdue, Carnegie-Mellon and dozens more.

35

I know a lot of MIT grads. You have to be good at math and have good grades and test scores, and you need some luck to get selected. Many will apply and only a few are selected, and it seems to be an almost random selection process at times. Also, based on almost all the grads I know, being a well rounded person isn’t taken into account at all, and you don’t need to be the least bit creative, or productive. I think they may have a tendency to get over-achievers who are already burnt out by the time they get there. This is just observation from the outside based on a limited sample of people who mostly couldn’t be bothered to leave the Cambridge area after graduating.

One thing that was mentioned to me is that the students are expected to have a fairly specific area of interest that they want to pursue during their studies. I get the impression that having that gung-ho desire to build a better flashlight will be important in the acceptance process. If you’re just looking for a quality education in engineering without any specific goal in mind there must be a lot of other schools that could help you out with that.

36

Your observations are your own, of course, but I have to say I disagree. While it’s possible to not be well-prounded, virtually all the people I knew at MIT were into multiple activities, including sports, theater, the arts, and various nerdy competritions. They were, overall, the most creative bunch I encountered, and I was disappointed by the lower level of effort and creativity (especially outside of class) by the undergrads at the schools i went on to do graduate work at.

That said, there certainly were a few folks who seemed to be stuck in the library al the time, or the EEs I wouldn’t trust with a toaster. But then there were guys like the inviolved-in-all-the social activities guy with a black belt in martial arts who graduated after five years with four degrees.

37

But is not my violin the thing that makes me stand out?

38

Bluntly put, no. There are going to be hundreds of applicants who play a musical instrument.

39

Massive underestimate. There are literally thousands, if not tens of thousands, of applicants who play a musical instrument. Some will play nearly at a professional level, at that.

There’s an old 80s comedy that demonstrates just how unoriginal and common the OP appears: How I Got into College.

Some of the characters that are basically the checklist the OP presents: perfect GPA, perfect SATs, plays an instrument, “well-rounded”, lots of clubs, etc. None of those things are exactly “new” if they pop up in a 20+ year old movie.

40

Defintely not. Unless you like, invented a brand new way to play the violin, or have your own business selling homemade violins, or play Carnegie Hall every thursday night.

Here’s the bad news. If you’re normally-good at everything, that does no more than place you in the middle of the pack of people MIT would ever consider. But they only take 10% of applicants. You can’t just be great - you have to be exceptional. And you aren’t. You look just like every other high acheiver.

I remember this one guy from my HS who got into MIT - he could barely speak English and got the minimum score on the verbal part of the SAT (which was, back then, 200). How do you get into MIT with a 200 on your verbal SAT? By solving a math problem that people have been working on for 2,000 years.

Another guy from my year, who would later invent Bittorrent and be Time’s Man of the Year - was not accepted to MIT. He actually went to a middle-of-the-road state school (and dropped out). So getting into MIT actually isn’t the be-all end-all either.