<p>I'm worried about my chances of getting into my dream school of M.I.T, so could students or alumi of this school do me a favor? Prove to me that you don't have to be a super genius to get in. I'm rather smart, but I'm no prodigy; I'm just a hard-working kid who is in love with M.I.T.</p>
<p>Er, you can look all over these boards for acceptance threads with stats. Even in the crazy world of College Confidential, you see really smart people get in who didn’t do the impossible first.</p>
<p>Sorry, my bad. I don’t want rates, I want to hear about stories from M.I.T students who got in.</p>
<p>This is my story: [MIT</a> Admissions | Blog Entry: “How to do everything wrong and still get into MIT”](<a href=“http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/apply/the_freshman_application/how_to_do_everything_wrong_and.shtml]MIT”>http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/apply/the_freshman_application/how_to_do_everything_wrong_and.shtml)</p>
<p>And my hubby’s: [MIT</a> Admissions | Blog Entry: “How to do everything wrong and still get into MIT, part deux”](<a href=“http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/apply/the_freshman_application/how_to_do_everything_wrong_and_1.shtml]MIT”>http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/apply/the_freshman_application/how_to_do_everything_wrong_and_1.shtml)</p>
<p>I agree with Piper that the decisions threads (which are stickied at the top of the forum) are worth reading. Although they don’t provide a complete picture of people who applied, they’re still the histories of a large number of people, and they definitely contain more than stats.</p>
<p>Stories? Huh.</p>
<p>Well, I went to a Catholic all-girls school in California. Which may sound like an advantage, but the local public schools offered way more APs (and IBs), and better educational programming overall. My school had 8 APs, with two being non-humanities: Biology and Calc AB. Certainly not a bad school by normal standards, but MIT kids tend to have it a lot better.</p>
<p>My background… well, I didn’t know what MIT was until junior year, and certainly people at my school didn’t know. Let me tell you, it was terrifying being on the MIT applicant chat rooms and hearing about all this strange national competitions and awards people were getting! You mean, there were high schoolers doing real research? What the hell was the USAMO? I didn’t have any of these things! I was a mostly-A-some-B’s student! How was I ever going to get in?</p>
<p>I… don’t really know where to go with this story, other than I found MIT, fell in love with it, then found out about what all the other applicants had under their belts, and thought I’d never get in. (If I had seen CC at the time… jeez, I may not have applied at all.)</p>
<p>But it turns out that MIT doesn’t take cookie-cutter awards this and that. They want to see potential, fitting with the MIT community, passion, and drive. Now, people who had to opportunities to do national competition can certainly show it that way - but other people do competitions because it’s the “thing to do”. </p>
<p>But really, Admissions takes context into account. I never heard of all these competitions, but I showed my fire and passion through flying, horseback riding, and a couple of other things. So… find your own way 
</p>
<p>And frankly, the odds are against you getting into MIT - they’re against any applicant. But whether you get into MIT or not, the drive and passion are what really help you succeed in life. An MIT degree helps a lot, but it is most definitely not the only indicator of how your life will turn out.</p>