Chance me, please! International student

Colleges and Universities A-Z Massachusetts Institute of Technology
1

<p>Hello,</p>

<p>I am an aerospace engineering student from Argentina and I want to apply to MIT as a international transfer student. </p>

<p>My GPA in the engineering course is 3.78, out of 4, weighed (the highest of my class).
90% of my grades in discilines related to math or physics are A.
I am a teaching assistant in two engineering couses at my university (in one course as a volunteer).
I am the leader of the teaching assistants (Tutorship program representative)
I have already worked as a teacher in private classes (in some classes, as a volunteer).
I got many awards of math and astronomy olympiads at high school, as well awards for my good academic performance at high school.
I don't have an really good score at TOEFL - 96 out of 120 (28 reading, 27 listening, 22 writing, 19 speaking).
I don't have ACT,SAT scores (I guess these tests are not required for my admission).</p>

<p>Do you think that I have any chance to be admiitted in MIT? Is my TOEFL score too low (MIT asks for a minimum of 90, but they recommend at least 100)? Is my curriculum good enough?</p>

<p>Thank you!</p>

2

<p>Do I have any chance at all?</p>

3

<p>let me know my chance, please</p>

4

<p>mateusfvp, sadly MIT admits so few transfer students, that really nobody at all on this board has any actual expertise. There is literally nobody here that can tell you anything authoritative. I’m sure that if you pushed it you could find one person that says “Oh, you are a shoo-in” and another ■■■■■ who says “you haven’t got a chance”. Neither of these actually will help you at all.</p>

5

<p>you need to be more specific otherwise we can’t really say.</p>

6

<p>Even if he is more specific. MIT takes like 10 transfers a year. These folks tend to be REALLY, REALLY good, but we have no context. I have never seen published the number of transfer applications, nor any detail about them. When we are dealing with freshman admissions, I have context. I have seen many students admitted and not admitted over the years. I have had to talk students through the sheer unpleasantness of the double waitlist. In all of its glory and its unpleasantness, I have seen enough of the freshman application process to have some context. I just don’t have it when it comes to transfer admissions. I don’t think that anyone on this board does.</p>

7

<p>^ Double waitlist?</p>

8

<p>ok, I understand that is difficult to say something without any context.
Thank you all anyway!</p>

9

<p>

Ahhhhh… The double waitlist. It works like this: Every year, each school admits a sufficient number of students to get the class size it needs. Like airlines, who deliberately overbook, because they know that statistically there is some percentage of flyers holding confirmed tickets that simply never turn up, each school will base the number of students that it admits with an eye to what the class size will be like after the expected yield. </p>

<p>They can get it wrong. Last year MIT’s yield was higher than expected and out of sync with recent history. The end result of that was that no kids were taken off of the waitlist. Other years MIT has taken 100 off of the waitlist. The goal is always to hit the target class size. Any number under that represents money lost, any over that may be hard to provide housing for. I remember one year that Boston University had abnormally high yield and ended up having to rent the entire Sheraton hotel for a year, as it simply did not have enough student housing. That is the sort of disaster that ends the careers of deans of admissions.</p>

<p>Anyhow, the students taken off the waitlist will already have accepted offers of admissions at other institutions, and usually paid their deposits. They will now simply walk away from those deposits to accept offers at MIT. However, there will also be a small percentage of students who have accepted offers of admission at MIT, where MIT was their second choice school (yes, hard to believe but true). They will in turn walk away from their MIT deposit. That is a normal part of the process.</p>

<p>However, the admissions office needs to hit a target number. In order to guard against a disproportionate and unexpectedly large number of students walking away from their places at MIT, when most schools (including MIT) go to their waitlist, then they do three things:

  1. Admit a number of students off of the waitlist<br>
  2. Release nearly all of the remaining students from the waitlist
  3. Take a very tiny number of students and tell them that they are on the waitlist AGAIN, in case they are needed.</p>

<p>This third batch is the dreaded “double waitlist”. Most of the double waitlisted students will not be offered admission, but these are the group that know that they really did come as close as it was possible to come, without being admitted. </p>

<p>As a regional chair of the educational council, I make sure that the EC’s in my region call to congratulate all of their admitted students each year, but also that they call all of the waitlisted students in the region to talk them through precisely what that means and what they should do (example: ABSOLUTELY accept an offer somewhere else). Its talking to the double waitlisted students that is hard. Fortunately, they are extremely rare. I think that my region gets about 1-2 per decade. That being said, I have had one of my interviewees double waitlisted about 5 years ago. </p>

<p>It is all part of that wonderful admissions process, and this is a part that is not unique to MIT, but common to most schools.</p>