<p>Yes I think deferral is the most common decision for most people in the EA applicant pool for a multitude of reasons. Because most people who are applying early are usually very well qualified, MIT tends to defer them because they believe these applications will be competitive and have a fairly good chance (by MIT standards) in the RD application pool.
Also, because MIT has a cap for accepting people through EA (some percentage of the total admitted), they can’t accepted all qualified applicants during the EA period.
I guess they can be a little more upfront, but I would prefer deferrance over rejection any day, if you are the other way go look at the Columbia/Cornell decision threads and you might agree with me lol</p>
<p>dosoon, do you go to school around here too?
anyway, I go to BHS - initials that you will probably recognize if you live in the area. 
not a fancy private school or anything; very large public school that happens to have a really high concentration of crazy amazing kids…</p>
<p>I go to WHS, initials you might recognize if you paid attention to who beat you guys this year in football, lol jk
Yeah I didn’t know you guys had so many smart kids, I mean we have our share as well…but I don’t know 3 Columbia acceptances smart.</p>
<p>Lol. As it happens, I don’t actually pay much attention to football! Imagine that… too busy stalking CC, I guess. >>
3 CORNELL, 1 Columbia. But yeah, we usually do pretty well with acceptances…
It’s cool to find someone in the area on this thread. </p>
<p>Does anyone know what the actual percent cap is on EA admissions? I hear that there is one but I’ve never heard a number.</p>
<p>No worries, I don’t pay attention to football much either as our team is sorry compared to Katy and the playoff teams.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>[MIT</a> Admissions: Early Action Versus Regular Action](<a href=“http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/apply/early_action_versus_regular_action/index.shtml]MIT”>http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/apply/early_action_versus_regular_action/index.shtml)</p>
<p>Pretty much everyone from top 10% at our school goes to UT or A&M, it is quite depressing. Hoping to break that trend this year T_T</p>
<p>it’s about 30%</p>
<p>I think it’s around 300 students.</p>
<p>Actually, i remember it being 500. They just suspect 300 will accept the offer.</p>
<p>they want a maximum of 30% of the incoming freshmen class, so my guess is they pick the 30%, and whoever ends up accepting out of that 30% goes.</p>
<p>dosoon,</p>
<p>from what I’ve read on the subject, it looks like around 550-600 students are accepted by EA (total- about 300 EA and 300 from deferred), and they expect about 60-70% of those kids to take spots. I remember reading an article that their attend rate was at an all time high of ~68%. So, they want 30% of the entering class to be from EA… and if they have a high attend rate from EA, then it isn’t going to be 30% of all those admitted. And they’re expanding their class this year (though we know they’ll be taking more transfers), so that gives us a bi of hope.</p>
<p>In the end, the statistics don’t apply to the individual. I’ll refer to an episode of Scrubs where JD was freaking out about not being able to have dinner with his son every night. He said that families that dine together every night are less likely to experience domestic violence, and that the kids were more likely to succeed in school. He realized that just because he doesn’t have dinner with his son doesn’t mean his son will fail in school and they’ll have instances domestic violence. This is just like SAT scores and admit rates. Just because people with 1500+ SAT scores are more likely to be admitted doesn’t mean that if you don’t have that score, you won’t be admitted. Yes, there is a correlation between high test scores and high GPA… maybe even good extracurricular performance, but the important thing to remember is:</p>
<p>Statistics don’t apply to the individual. We all have unique talents and situations that will be considered in the reading of our application.</p>
<p>We all need to stop freaking out about how many people they’re taking. If they take more people, that’s great- people that are already qualified will take the extra spots. If you weren’t already in a random chance situation (I mean that they have so many good candidates that it just comes down to chance who they choose), then you were never up to MIT’s standards, and the extra spots don’t matter anyways. It comes down to chance in the end, as there are so many people that are qualified competing for so few spots, but you have to be in the situation where you’re uber-competitive in the first place to have those extra spots matter. (I’d like to think a lot of us are in this situation, but we can never be sure.)</p>
<p>At this point, I know I’m being a bit hypocritical about statistics, because I’ve freaked out over them as much as anyone else on here, but as the decision date gets closer, I think we need to have a bit of peace. We need to see the individual over the numbers and try to pick a college that fits us individually over a college that has the best numbers. MIT was my first choice for the past 6 months. Now, I have my doubts that it’s the right school for me as I’ve heard more and more about its intensity and I just get more and more overworked in school. I have these doubts, but I think it’s a good thing. I’m starting to look at colleges more with a sense of “would I be happy here?” rather than a “is this the best I can do?” That said, I think I could be happy at MIT, but I know that as long as I get into one of the schools to which I applied, I’ll be happy. Life isn’t about what college you go to; it’s about how you live. Yeah, MIT has the top programs in everything science, but is going to a different school, still strong in science, going to matter all that much? If you’re a genius whose meant to win a nobel prize, then you’re going to be able to express your genius and get that award wherever you go- the individual talents matter more than the institution.</p>
<p>I wish schools weren’t so focused on numbers, and one of the things that attracted me to MIT was that they are less focused on numbers and more on the person (whether the person will be able to survive the firehose). I think we’re ignoring this core part of MIT when we have pages of forums focused solely on statistics.</p>
<p>I know that was a long post, but I felt like it needed to be said, and I hope y’all won’t attack me for it. It wasn’t meant to hate on anyone. And I know a lot of you are already thinking this, and a lot of it’s already been said. It just helps to say it when we’re so close to so many people being depressed over being deferred or rejected.</p>
<p>My friend got accepted to Columbia yesterday. He is 2nd in the class, I’m 1st. He smoked a cigar to celebrate, haha</p>
<p>@kitkatkatie: That is the most epic post ever. I went through the same thing over the summer when I started thinking about colleges (yes, that is really when I really started- the summer before senior year). At first, I was on an ego trip (probably because of my GPA/scores). I decided that I’d apply to HYPblahblahblah because they were the best (and, in all honesty, I wanted to be that “one smart person” who get into a top school from my school). Then I rediscovered the MIT undergrad admissions site. I can definitely say that the “The Match Between You and MIT” section changed my view completely on my college choices. So I took a hard look at my college list and investigated the student life, architecture, set up, activities, and culture of them. By the end of the summer, all of the Ivies were out of my list, replaced with colleges that I think fit ME. (MIT, UMich, Carnegie Mellon, RPI, IIT (safety), and MI Tech (safety), if you’re wondering.)</p>
<p>So yeah. In conclusion, even if I don’t gain admission to MIT, I am completely grateful for their awesome help and transparency. It really changed my life and helped me to avoid a surely catastrophic future of misbelonging.</p>
<p>@kitkatkatie great post. Loved it.</p>
<p>good luck everyone. cant wait to finaly post my stats on this site</p>
<p>Thanks, guys. :)</p>
<p>@Valid</p>
<p>My list had to be finalized before I could really think things over, so it’s a bit odd. Everyone in IB at my school goes to top programs, and since I’m one of the top, I’m expected to apply to top schools. That was the extent of the reasoning initially. That and I went to an expensive admissions counselor junior year (my dad was obsessed with getting me into yale…), and she said I was a strong candidate for the ivies. So, i thought I could get in and have my pick. And many people in my life still think that. Now, I see how competitive it is, and I just want to go where I’ll be happy and not drop out with a nervous break down. </p>
<p>If you care, I’m applying to William and Mary, Emory, Duke, Stanford, Cornell, Harvard, Princeton, MIT, UChicago, UT Austin, and CU Boulder. I was originally hung up on Yale, but that changed to princeton when I realized that science >>>> study abroad. I feel like I’d be happy at any of those schools (except the state schools, but I’d be happy-ish for different reasons at those). I feel like Emory is my go-to mid-range that really fits me well (I have family there… long story), and W&M is more of a safety. All the others are really difficult, though. </p>
<p>I wish I had started thinking about this earlier. I only had a list in Early November because I’m a National Merit Semi and I had to submit all my rec letter requests and transcript requests in one big packet. I think I would have taken even longer than that to put everything together. I’m the overachiever type, so it’s kinda funny I wasn’t definite about college until later on. I’m kinda wishing I’d applied to caltech now, even though I wouldn’t really fit there. i just want some decisions already!</p>
<p>And I need to stop wasting time online when I should be studying for my OChem 2 and Diff EQ finals. 
Yay for crib sheets!</p>
<p>@kitkatkatie: I’m a NM Semi too! Woot! I can sympathize with the whole “I’m an overachiever type, but I just started thinking about college a few months ago” thing. Although, I go to a public high school that sends VERY few to top schools. The top 5-10% go to Michigan or Michigan State, and most of the rest end up at local universities or the local community college.</p>
<p>Anyways, that’s a nice list of top-notch schools. I’m glad that you have a list of schools that fit you. :)</p>
<p>Ps. I want decisions too! D: I’ve only been accepted to Michigan Tech so far. No rejections though, so that’s good.</p>
<p>I don’t understand the prestige of NMS semi…
Aren’t Siemens and Intel much more prestigious? What do you guys think?</p>
<p>It’s not really prestigious, in my opinion. All you have to do is score well on the PSATs. I don’t really understand why colleges like it so much, but as long as they do, I’m happy to be a NMSemi.</p>
<p>It really isn’t all that great… it’s more that most people- science lovers or not- can at least take the qualifying test. Most students can’t do siemens or intel, and those competitions exclude kids that aren’t into science. NMS isn’t all that prestigious. It’s more that you’re in the top 16k students (those that took the test), and that just gives colleges another way to rank students and compare them against each other. </p>
<p>I’m just waiting for all of my rejection letters. i just don’t know what I’ll do with them all. collage? scrapbook? new binder decoration? braided into a rope to hang myself? 
I’m guaranteed admission to my state school, so I have nothing to worry about as far as admissions goes. And my state school is really good. I’d just like to go somewhere out of state.</p>
<p>Ah, the waiting is finally getting to me.</p>
<p>Hahah, I feel the same way. I’m pretty much guaranteed admission to my state school too (University of Michigan), but I want some feedback from my other colleges!</p>