<p>I have a few things that I need to say to give a better impression of who I am. But I'm kind of confused. Should I go ahead and tell it directly, or use an essay to illistrute it?</p>
<p>Reason I'm asking is because I've heard that admissions officers don't have time to read additional essays, so should I keep it as short as possible?</p>
<p>Hey Durran!</p>
<p>You could write about whatever it is you need to tell the admin officers in the two required essays - if there's still more you need to tell, say a hardship you've overcome, or a personal situation that you believe has had a significant impact on your life, go ahead and write an additonal essay. Don't worry about it not being read - colleges want to know who you are, and why you should deserve to be at, say, MIT. Admin officers at MIT value supplemental material, be it an essay or a poem written by you.</p>
<p>I hope I've been of help :)</p>
<p>Goodluck!!!</p>
<p>Great, I just don't wanna annoy the adcoms with too much reading.</p>
<p>And, two required essays? Do you mean the main essay and the activities one?</p>
<p>the same. =)</p>
<p>Still, I think it might be prudent to note that brevity is the soul of wit (and a lot of other things too). </p>
<p>Sending supplemental material is great. But if it doesn't present something about you in a succinct way, its message will likely be lost -- although Ben and the rest of the gang will no doubt read your essay/poem/50-page manifesto, it might be more effective to summarize it for them. They don't know you, so providing a few salient gems will help them -- if it's hard to pick out the bullet points from whatever supplemental material you send, it probably won't help much in a practical sense.</p>
<p>Brevity is a good skill to learn anyway. In several of my humanities classes at MIT (and the science writing classes as well), students are given an upper page limit rather than a lower one -- ie write "up to" 6 pages rather than "at least" 6 pages (and students who go over the limit are penalized). Writing succinctly is more difficult than writing volumes, but it's much more effective.</p>
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although Ben and the rest of the gang will no doubt read your essay/poem/50-page manifesto.
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<p>Teehee, mollie makes funny joke. Not to speak for Ben J., but I think he'd draw the line somewhere before 50-page manifesto. ;-)</p>
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providing a few salient gems will help them -- if it's hard to pick out the bullet points from whatever supplemental material you send, it probably won't help much in a practical sense.
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<p>Bravo!</p>
<p>And yeah, I'd draw the line somewhere before page 50. :-)</p>
<p>hello
I want to write about soccer, but I find that there are no suitable place to do so. If I want to write about my achievements and why it's meaningful to me in the 'additional info' section, would it be more convenient (or less annoying) for adcoms if it's bullet-form or paragraph form? Or can I just write any way that works best?
Alright...one more thing that confuses me is how people have such long lists of ECs in the stats forum. How do they fit everything into the application??</p>
<p>RE paragraph versus bullet points - whatever works best for you, we're not too picky.</p>
<p>RE the long lists of EC's - they don't fit everything into the application, and that's sortof the point. :-) We want to know about the five activities (or areas of passion) that mean the most. You can get creative about it too - for example, instead of counting cello lessons, symphony, and choir as three different EC's, you can list "music" and then list all three under that one.</p>
<p>Hee, just a note -- when I was talking about brevity, I didn't literally mean that everyone should write all their application stuff in literal bullet points.</p>
<p>I just meant that you should write in a clear, succinct way such that it's easy for someone who doesn't know you to pick up on what you want them to pick up on. :)</p>
<p>"We want to know about the five activities (or areas of passion) that mean the most. You can get creative about it too - for example, instead of counting cello lessons, symphony, and choir as three different EC's, you can list "music" and then list all three under that one."</p>
<p>Ben that is perfectly fine. But do you accept Notes of explanation which like explain the activities and awards by giving a brief description. coz there are some activities like say "featured speaker at Intel seminar" now this will not tell anything about the level of achievement so you know is it allowed to write a 2-3 line description of this on another sheet and likewise for other awards. (Matt endorses this idea...just wanted to get you views too).</p>
<p>P.S. I attended a UPenn info session on 18th of october and the lady there told me to prepare a list of certificates and get it signed by my principal and send it in and not to send the photocopies of certificates. Does MIT like or more appropriately want such a list or do you just want the 5 major awards that have been won.(coz other certificates reach like 30-35)</p>
<p>Sure, clarifying the 5 things you submit in Question #10 is totally fine. There's a big difference between that and submitting a 4-page resume of everything you did in high school including the 15 minutes per week you spent walking your neighbor's dog in 9th grade. (Yes, we do actually get stuff like that!) :-)</p>
<p>As for the certificates question, I'll check with the international admissions expert (Matt) and get back to you.</p>
<p>Okay, to follow up on the second part - spoke with Matt, who said to stick with sending in the ~5 major awards. No need to send all of them.</p>
<p>hey ben,
just out of curiousity, may i ask how much time is spent on an application??</p>
<p>At Caltech, as much time as it takes it to fall down the stairs and land somewhere, which then becomes its position in the admissions preference ordering. You know kinematics -- figure it out! (The staircase is about 20m long and we throw them with a middling initial velocity at an initial angle of 45 degrees.)</p>
<p>I would be surprised if our friends at MIT did not have the same confidence in the power of physics as we do.</p>
<p><em>whimper</em> now the powerful international college admissions cabal will have my head for revealing best practices.</p>
<p>Ben, clearly it would be effective to make use of a centrifuge, which would separate them such that the heaviest (and therefore obviously most accomplished) applications are at one end.</p>
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how much time is spent on an application?
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<p>Rispat - do you mean on your end or on our end? My guess is that significantly more time is spent on your end.</p>
<p>:-) Sorry, bad joke.</p>
<p>Well, let's do the math. First a senior staff person will do a quick read to make sure there aren't a bunch of D's or combined 400 on the SAT. This takes about 10 minutes tops. Any application that has even a remote chance of making it through selection committee will make it past this stage. This is just to make sure we're not wasting time doing full reads on people who aren't competitive (and by that I mean <em>really</em> not competitive).</p>
<p>After than, 2 readers will read everything in your folder (yes, everything) and write individual summaries. Figure 25-45 minutes per reader, depending on the speed and experience of the reader and the size of the app.</p>
<p>Then selection committee, where different groups (each generally comprised of 2-3 admissions officers and sometimes a faculty member) will discuss the app for ~10 minutes each, guided by the two summaries (but able to access anything in the folder they want). If it's a clear admit, sometimes the group can admit, but generally an admitted app is seen by at least 2 groups and usually more like 3, even 4.</p>
<p>Then Marilee (Dean of Admissions) will personally review each and every admit (I don't know how long, prob 5-10 minutes) before approving the final decision.</p>
<p>So I'm not sure if your question meant just reading, or the whole process - but either way, you can figure it out from the info above.</p>
<p>The unfortunate question then arises -- does one add a 5-kg weight to one's application? This would guarantee admission using Timur's system, but would likely prevent admission entirely using Ben G.'s system (assuming that the order is determined from the top step to the bottom -- perhaps it is done the other way around).</p>
<p>These are weighty questions.</p>
<p>Mollie, clearly, the best answer is to equip the application with pressure-sensitive rocket engines.</p>
<p>Case</a> in point...</p>
<p>EDIT: On second notice, rocket propulsion seems to be much more useful.</p>
<p>Hahahahaha. precious. :)</p>
