<p>To Mollie: How much time does MIT spend on each application? Assuming 20K in applications, how much time can they possibly spend? Does anyone really know? Is it in the link provided? Sorry but logic dictates that they cannot do a holistic review of everyone. Most students get a cursory review at best. Pedantic I know, but there is a difference.</p>
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As I said above,
So each and every application gets, say, 1.25 hours. (Some might get more – applications are discussed in committee until a decision can be made on them, so the time spent on them will necessarily vary.) This is possible because there is a relatively large group of people reading and discussing applications, and because the review is divided into three more reasonably-sized groups (6000 applicants for EA, 8000 domestic applicants for RD, 4000 international applicants for RD). The reading period takes place over the course of about a month to six weeks of full-time reading for each admissions officer, and selection committee takes about two weeks of 10-hour days, plus weekends. </p>
<p>Each application absolutely receives a holistic review, and information about the mechanics of this review is freely available on the MIT site.</p>
<p>Oh and is prior selection done before interviews?? because a few of my friends got their interviews sometime last week…I haven’t got one yet!!</p>
<p>In order to know how feasible it is to do a full holistic review of each applicant, you would have to know how many people are in the admissions office that read applications and how many people read the application on the first review. </p>
<p>My experience is that MIT is very transparent about their admissions. </p>
<p>It’s hard to say in practice where the holistic review ends. It does get harder as a person’s scores become significantly lower. However, if you look at the common data set there are a some people that get in with scores in the 600-650 range on the math SAT subsection. This suggests that all of the people in that range at least get read. If you get lower than 600, I would bet that they would still read it, if only because there aren’t a lot of people that low who apply.</p>
<p>Mollie: to support 1.25 hours per application, there has to be over a hundred readers working full time over the six week period. Is there a hundred readers? Also is 1.25 really enough time to accomplish the holistic thing.</p>
<p>sosomenza:</p>
<p>Mollie worked in the admissions office at MIT for a while. She knows what she is talking about. The process is very transparent and has been described by a number of admissions officials in the exact same manner. You may be skeptical but the process is just as she stated.</p>
<p>Cellard: I stick with my last query. Does MIT have a 100 readers on staff to do the job? Also and more importantly, should 1.25 hr - per app, be considered a holistic review?</p>
<p>First, the admissions’ process is 10 weeks or longer not 6 weeks. The candidate pool is also much smaller than your example. MIT has full time admissions officers reviewing the files plus additional reviewers (including faculty) screening the files and preparing them for further review by the admissions staff. All this triaging makes the process highly efficient. It is all computerized and analyzed across multiple dimensions.</p>
<p>You also don’t seem to appreciate that every applicant gets an essentially compulsory interview (you pretty much don’t get in without one) with an educational counselor (EC) like me whose role is precisely to evaluate the candidate holistically. I will spend anywhere between an hour and two hours meeting with a candidate. I even did some interviews with international candidates over Skype to make sure they would get a fair shot. ECs are required to write an extensive report on each candidate and answer specific questions. We are also supposed to rate each candidate along a number of attributes, mostly relating to fit between the candidate and MIT. There are thousands of dedicated ECs around the world who perform that critical function. Each of our own reports are then graded and the ECs who don’t perform adequately their functions are booted and replaced. </p>
<p>As part of our training, ECs go through a number of prior application files with the admissions office to fully understand the process. Between the EC reports, pre-sorted files, recommendation letters and short applicant answers, it does not take an hour to determine if a candidate has the right fit. Holistic admission does not mean that every activity is considered the same or randomly. MIT is an Institute of TECHNOLOGY so the motivation and affinity for math and science has to be clearly demonstrated. You just can’t fudge on that. Beyond transcript and test scores, there are a number of objective metrics to measure such affinity such as extra-curricular math and science activities, research, competitions and awards. Finally, MIT evaluates any unusual circumstances that would warrant special consideration: family, first generation college, access to quality courses etc…</p>
<p>What may appear from the outside as an impenetrable black-box is actually a fine-tuned machine constantly being adjusted. After all, MIT pioneered the field of quantitative sociology and some of these principles do find applications all the way into its admissions process. It starts with extensive outreach to target high school students, even internationally. ECs are also very active in that process. It continues with the application. MIT does not use the Common App very deliberately. Every single element of its own application is there for a reason and helps measure the fit between MIT and the candidate. No long essays, just short to the point questions. The interview then adds elements not captured by the application. Together with multiple internal reviews for all applicants, I believe only the military academies do a more thorough job at screening its applicants than MIT.</p>
<p>Back to my original query 1,25hr seems to be the correct answer. Mollie seems to have had the facts down.</p>
<p>thanks for all the help guys! goodluck!</p>
<p>I somehow came across this blog post: [The</a> Value of Creativity | MIT Admissions](<a href=“http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/the_value_of_creativity]The”>The Value of Creativity | MIT Admissions)</p>
<p>Any ides on that? I agree with most of the points made except a few that I think do not work for the international pool. In fact, it opposes the tag “holistic admissions”.</p>
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Isn’t that actually true?? Is that a mold the society has imposed upon us?</p>
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Please tell me that this line is not for MIT applicants.</p>
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Who listens to my story, my passions, my dreams? MIT wants those who already have done something super great. They don’t care about those who were unable to do that. Oh yeah, they take students who have lived shelterless on the worst slums of the world. I don’t oppose taking such students, but what about the students who are a part of lower-middle class family? They don’t live in slums but they don’t have any resources too.</p>
<p>Anyways I am not a MIT hater. Albeit I love MIT a lot. It’s just that I couldn’t digest the point that MIT isn’t making their international admissions clear to the students. Over and over, it has become like each country has certain requirements (not quotas). for example, Indian students MUST be highly accomplished like IMO medalists, Finalists of big international science fairs.</p>
<p>Pls mind the TOS.</p>
<p>Bear in mind that the First Read blog entry is from 2004. Not today’s technology.</p>
<p>^I do think that now the reading is done mostly in electronic form, rather than in paper form. But the process is still the same.</p>
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And MIT takes a lot of those students, too. That’s the whole point of a holistic admissions process – they want to admit people who have the potential to be great, whether their circumstances have allowed that greatness to flourish yet or not.</p>
<p>All things considered, there are a lot more students at MIT from lower middle class families than there are from the worst slums in the world. </p>
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This is not true.</p>
<p>International students are considered with the same criteria used for domestic students. It’s true that the overall international quota, combined with the staggering numbers of international applicants, leads to an absolutely obscene winnowing of a very talented and promising applicant pool. But there is no requirement on MIT’s end for any particular award or awards, and no quota on any individual country.</p>
<p>Exactly what molliebatmit said. International admissions at a school like MIT are obviously going to end up looking like you HAVE to be in international science/CS/math Olympiad, have perfect grades, etc., because there are only a few spots available to international students and there are MANY highly qualified international applicants. They will still choose based on their domestic admissions policies, but so few will be admitted that a few traits they all share (international competition winners, etc.) look like requirements. However, it just turned out that the 2-18 most qualified Indian candidates all happened to have those traits. Correlation vs. causation.</p>