<p>^I’m not Chris, but I can say that was absolutely untrue for me. As he said before, interviewers aren’t centrally trained to interview, so they all may follow different procedures. I can tell you that while mine was two hours and covered like 3 or 4 notebook pages, the woman never lost eye contact with me.</p>
<p>I have to agree with some of the earlier posts that I really liked everything about MIT’s admissions process. When I first saw the admissions office webpage sophomore (or maybe junior?) year, I loved the resources it provided for high school students, in addition to just information about applying. The design and aesthetics also made it look very friendly. I also liked the way decisions were released, and the page right before you found out your decision. </p>
<p>I also like the short essay format for the application, because I felt I could actually show various facets of my personality. I felt the common app essay was harder to write, because I felt I had to focus on one idea, and couldn’t convey other aspects of myself as easily. </p>
<p>Another thing I liked was that when I visited campus, MIT gave everyone a little sheet that had places to visit on campus, based on each student’s interests. I got to explore the campus a bit more, and learned more about my favorite department (as of now haha).</p>
<p>I had a good experience with the MIT website and response time for emails and such…</p>
<p>But, basically I just loved the MIT application itself. The fact that you do it your own way - because you ******* can. (I censored that myself!).</p>
<p>I loved the essays because they allowed me to give you such a wholesome picture of myself, and what I’d done up untill now. Also - clever touch about the first part of the app being so short - I think you get a clearer picture of who’s considering applying than other colleges.</p>
<p>In short - as an international - I felt welcome by MIT. I felt like someone actually wanted me to fulfill the dream I’d harboured since the tender age of eleven: applying to and attending college in the US.</p>
<p>Thank you for making this whole application process as painless as you could - and I look forward to attending in the fall.</p>
<p>MIT does itself a disservice by not providing finanical aid information up front. Yeah, it’s great to know you got accepted but honestly the MIT web page acceptance (no letter??) goes to the bottom of the pile until the financial aid information is provided. Who would prepare to attend CPW not knowing if they will get financial assistance? Oh wait, yeah, kids from wealthy families.</p>
<p>Sure MIT has solid and motivating applications process, but it’s not practical to leave the financial part out of the equation (pun intended).</p>
<p>^
This. </p>
<p>10char.</p>
<p>@SunDiego</p>
<p>It may not help much without the numbers in front of you, but…</p>
<p>Like many MIT applicants, I applied to a few other colleges that offer no merit based aid but are “100% need met” institutions. For what it’s worth, in my small sample size, MIT was at least as generous in their package as these other schools. So, if you are in the enviable position of being able to reference a few ivy or “equivalent” aid offers, that should give you a decent idea of what to expect. Your other aid offers, merit scholarship offers aside, should be comparable. And if it comes down to a couple thousand dollars a year, don’t let that keep you from going to your top choice, even if it’s not MIT ;). </p>
<p>For most people with a top-tier education, the extra 8k in loans will come out in the wash after a few good years in the “real world.” (Unless, of course, you plan on doing something that is notoriously underpaid).</p>
<p>Not that education should be looked at only as a financial investment (in fact, I am deeply troubled by the fact that the US mindset has moved so far in this direction), but these are some pretty compelling data to demonstrate my point: [Average</a> Cost for College - Compare College Costs & ROI](<a href=“http://www.payscale.com/education/average-cost-for-college-ROI]Average”>http://www.payscale.com/education/average-cost-for-college-ROI)</p>
<p>…Also remember that (I dare say) <em>every</em> MIT student turned down a full scholarship elsewhere to attend, either explicitly or implicitly. The majority of them came from middle class families. I’m not saying that it’s the “right” decision for your family to follow suit. It’s just something to consider.</p>
<p>MIT’s application process is excellent. I really liked the questions, though I think that the application is really missing an interesting, hard to attack question.
I think those questions that make someone give his monitor a double take are the kinds that really expose a person’s creativity, and I felt like I couldn’t do that with my MIT application.</p>
<p>What you all do is tremendous though. The tube was amazing. I cried when I saw the admissions screen on the computer (the e-process is brilliant). The christmas card and valentine card were awesome.</p>
<p>I would probably ship things a little earlier (out in the country, it took a while to get these treasured cards).
Regardless, MIT has made me happy this year; it provided me the security that most guys get from girls (okay that was weird).
Thanks Chris, you really do a great job.</p>
<p>I think I agree with many of the posters when I say MIT had one of the best applications. The questions were not easy, but they helped me organize my perception of myself. I thought my application to MIT was the strongest of all my applications because I was able to present myself as a person rather than a list of numbers (which is kind of strange, because MIT does “like” numbers). Please do not switch to the Common Application!</p>
<p>MIT really cared about every applicant. The bloggers, the admissions office, and the interviewers all provided the best information that they could. I remember calling to check on my extra materials, and the admissions office was very nice and helped me solve my problem. </p>
<p>In the end, I have only one small suggestion. I realize that admissions officers have limited time to evaluate an application, but I wished that I could have written longer essays. The word limits are “guidelines” but I felt guilty that I wrote a 300 word answer for a 250 word limit. Still, I could have written more!</p>
<p>Thank you for trying to make the admissions process easier for us. I appreciate your effort to reduce our worries!</p>
<p>A few points:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>I like the separate application. It discourages people from applying “just to see if I get in.” When those are really qualified people, they sorta ruin it for those of us who actually want to go.</p></li>
<li><p>I applied EA and was deferred. Luckily, I got in, but I think deferring such a large portion of the pool is really misleading. In my mind, accepted EA means: you’re awesome, we want you. Deferred means: you’re pretty good, we would let you in, but let’s just see if more extraordinary people apply RD. Rejected: you’re good, but you will definitely not make it in with the larger applicant pool. I feel like 10% accept, 80% reject, and 10% deferral would be better for our mental health. Haha.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Tagging along with Chris’ questions, is there anything we can do over here at CC to make the admissions process better? </p>
<p>My major goal here is to provide useful information and to keep stress levels at a low simmer, but is there more I should be doing to inject a dose of reality into the process? I can certainly hit the “90% rejection rate” and “don’t fall in love with one school” angles harder next year.</p>
<p>What about forum organization? Are the stickied threads useful, and do they contain enough information for newcomers? Is it easy to drop by and find useful information?</p>
<p>I liked the multiple short essay format of the MIT application. It allowed me to express my whole self well, whereas for other college applications I felt I wasn’t able to give a whole story.</p>
<p>this may have already been mentioned, but online financial aid award summaries would have been very nice. i’m sure mit has good reasons for doing what they do, but the situation is somewhat stressful. i feel like mail is erratic, and it adds more waiting to a season of waiting.</p>
<p>Oh also I just remembered something. It would be helpful if MIT had an alternative to email or upload documents instead of faxing them. Less and less people seem to have a fax machine now. I had to go to a friend to use her fax machine. But I can easily scan and email documents. </p>
<p>Otherwise I am in awe of how awesome the process is.</p>
<p>I didn’t get in, but you’ll be hearing from me again in 4 years for grad school admissions.</p>
<p>^Well, they won’t. 
Grad school admissions are done by professors in each department, not by a central admissions staff.</p>
<p>It’s a tricky balancing act to achieve. As someone who has been an EC (interviewer) for some years now, there is this perception that a majority of students have that they even if they get in, everyone else on the MIT campus will be a genius, and that they being merely extremely bright will somehow not fit in. Indeed, I see it talking to the admitted students from my region every year, at least a few each year who, while they are delighted to be accepted, are vaguely worried that perhaps the admissions office might have made a mistake in admitting them. And of course it isn’t close to true. I’ve met these kids, I know how wonderful they are. I am not sure how to stress any harder the idea that most students will not get in, without discouraging some of the best candidates from applying. And I am writing this as an international EC, dealing with an admit rate which I expect will be lower than 3% this year. </p>
<p>As to those with a bad interview experience, please tell us, even anonymously. There are more than 3000 of us, the Regional Chairs work very hard to ensure that their EC’s are well trained, well supported, and know what the interview should be. But since we are all volunteers, occasional lapses happen. If you had an interviewer who never made eye contact, or worse, said something awful about the school, drop me a line or MITChris, and we will try to help, or at least ensure it does not happen again. We would really appreciate knowing.Sometimes it is a matter of more training for an individual EC, sometimes something more, but we cannot make things better if we do not know about it. And of course, the overwhelming majority of of EC’s that I know, are some of the finest, most interesting folks that I have ever met.</p>
<p>I was deferred and then rejected. I’ve gotten over it. I was absolutely impressed by the MIT admissions staff every step of the way though.
Two things.
- It would be nice to be able to also submit our CommonApp essay (although I liked the short format). I spent a lot of time on it and felt like it contained information that I was just unable to put in my MIT short responses. I realize that this may be a calculated decision based on how much time each reader has. This is a fairly minor issue imo.
- Tell the deferrals SOMETHING personal. A sentence or two from their reader or the committee as to what they can specifically do to improve their application before RD. Paraphrasing, but “Keep your grades up and keep following your passions” is mind-blowingly generic and doesn’t give much guidance. That was what we had been doing for 3.5 years and it obviously wasn’t good enough to get in EA. If you did this, it would be one more place where MIT admissions owns everyone else.
Again, I was super-impressed by the whole process and if any other school did this I would have way more complaints/suggestions.</p>
<p>^That would give a) one hell of a huge advantage to applying EA, something they’re not willing to do, and b) it would decrease the chances of internationals even further, as if they’d need that, and c) nothing you can do senior year will likely be a tipping factor anyway, there’s no one magic trick that will get you in and d) doing what the admissions office asks you to do to get in kind of defeats the point of their choosing the class most well-fit to MIT based on merit alone (and by merit I mean people who don’t have an advantage and can still get in.) There are probably other points that don’t come to mind right now, but the idea is unfair - I wouldn’t have been comfortable knowing that deferred EA students knew something I didn’t.
PS: I know of the athlete/international thing which gives the former an edge and the latter a disadvantage in the process, so it’s not all based on equal merit and stuff, but this is sort of negligible in the grand scheme of things. And this is coming from an international student who didn’t get in.</p>
<p>Hi MITChris!</p>
<p>I’m going to confess that I have not read through all the other responses, so forgive me if I’m now off-topic. I did want to answer your questions and tell you how incredibly impressed we were with MIT’s admissions process! It was BY FAR the best, most transparent, most user-friendly of all my son’s schools.</p>
<p>What did we like? Lots of thing!</p>
<p>The blogs!! Wow. The blogs were incredibly helpful. They were very informative, in terms of the process itself, and in terms of what you’re looking for in an applicant. But they were also informative in terms of what my son can expect at MIT – they said a lot about the people who attend, the people who’ve attended, and the people who work there. They were quirky, and funny, and smart, and perfectly brief but enlightening. They gave us so much insight into the school.</p>
<p>The fact that you’re on here day in and day out answering questions (and that questions are answered on the blogs). The fact that you (and MIT others) are so refreshingly honest and transparent.</p>
<p>The (can’t remember what they’re called) video thingies that my son was able to watch on his computer. Great stuff.</p>
<p>The application!!! BY FAR the best application he filled out. He loved the somewhat prying questions that inherently prompted him to reveal more about himself – without having to go on and on about it. Loved the word limits. Perfectly appropriate. Led him to really let you know who he is, but he didn’t feel like he had to write a novel about it. And he didn’t have to guess what admissions wanted to know. He just had to answer the questions!</p>
<p>The kindness at all times. We got the impression, over and over again, that MIT admissions personnel are very kind and genuine. No cold, callous people on the other end of the phone, on the blogs, or on CC. Just general kindness towards others. Much appreciated!</p>
<p>The chilled-out interview! My son somewhat reluctantly showed up in his jeans and polo shirt, because he felt that best represented who he is day in and day out, and lo and behold, the interviewer answered his door in his shorts and t-shirt with bare feet, fresh-out-of-bed hair, and some stubble. My son LOVED this! They proceeded to have a nice Sunday morning conversation for the next 35 minutes, which was just about exactly how much the interviewer said he would use.</p>
<p>MIT always kept us informed, more than any other school. By far.</p>
<p>The MIT website is definitely THE best. (As it should be, one would think. ) Easy to navigate, really easy to track stuff. Like everything else about the MIT process – pretty transparent. If my son ever forgot exactly where he was in the process, he could just sign in to the site and know immediately what he had to do. He REALLY liked the website! Between the application and the website, everything was very clearly laid out. There were no questions along the way; he just had to read the directions.</p>
<p>The TUBES!!! My son loved the tube! What fun! And the cards – at Valentine’s and at Christmas. Nice, personal touches!</p>
<p>What didn’t we like?</p>
<p>Well, I can only think of one thing. I sure wish the financial aid could have come out sooner. As it was, it came out much sooner than we originally thought it would, which was nice. And, admittedly, many schools sent theirs out at about the same time. But MIT is so special and such a dream school, that we really, really couldn’t wait to find out if my son could afford to go. Sadly, we think he probably cannot. (But it’s not a done deal yet.) The sooner we could have found that out, the better. Something about MIT being such a dream made knowing earlier all the more important to us. It was like we couldn’t fully celebrate his acceptance until we knew. And now we know. And now we see that we probably shouldn’t really celebrate his acceptance. Sad. But that’s okay. If not now, then maybe for grad school! We will see.</p>
<p>Thanks, MITChris! You’ve been awesome!</p>
<p>wow, thanks simplelife!</p>