I applied to MIT early action. My dad is a faculty member and has been for 25 years. However, he is not a big shot professor or in with the admissions committee. I am an otherwise qualified candidate, but so are many other students from my school. Some of the other students applying from my high school are “recruited” athletes, but I’ve been told that coach’s help at MIT is not a big pull. Does having a parent who works at MIT set me apart from the athletes and other students applying? How much better of a shot do i have?
Did you ask your dad? If not you should. And if he doesn’t know, he needs to go speak w/human resources YESTERDAY. Being a Fac Brat is the best hook possible. If you’re in range, your odds are astronomically higher than others.
HR won’t know anything about an admissions boost. Your Dad should talk to colleagues about their kids who applied to MIT. Also, if there are a lot of MIT faculty kids at your high school, the GC office may have some idea if there are differences in the acceptance rates between similarly-qualified students.
While this is true, it is unlikely. Of the 1021 MIT Faculty, only 37 are either Adjuncts or “Professors of the Practice” , and none of these will have been on the faculty for “25 years”.
That being said, most of the posts above, I find to be useless. Several people have pointed to Chris Peterson’s post, “Just to be clear, we don’t do legacy”, but that post states clearly: “For those of you not familiar with the practice, “legacy admissions” means preferring the children of alumni in the admissions process.” But faculty kids are not legacy, as MIT defines the term. Frankly, I do not think that there are enough such applicants in any year for anyone to really know. MIT is quite clear that they will not admit anyone not capable of prospering at MIT. That aside, I do not know of any statement MIT has ever made about faculty children in admissions. Further, with the possible exception of ChrisP, I really do not think that there is anyone on this board who has the slightest chance of any meaningful answer to the OP’s question.
I don’t know anything about MIT admissions and as noted there’s a clear statement in the blog that faculty children don’t get any advantage. Nonetheless I find it hard to believe that the child of a tenured professor is treated exactly the same as any other applicant.
It just doesn’t coincide with my experience of how people generally make decisions, and those on the admissions committee are ultimately people making decisions, not computers following an algorithm.
I’m not saying MIT admits anyone who isn’t qualified, but at the margin I would expect someone who is the child of a colleague, maybe even the child of a friend, to have a better chance than an otherwise similar candidate that has no connection to MIT.
That’s just based on the human connection aspect, and not even considering the more instrumental factors, like a prominent professor maybe getting mad and moving to Caltech if his or her child doesn’t get in.
bluewater2015, universities are not like small businesses where all the employees know each other and interact. In fact, it would not be unusual for a tenured prof with 25 years of experience in one department to not know a tenured prof in another department. Now add in staff and other employees. It is not one big happy family. It is likely that the admissions staff don’t know the majority of faculty at MIT and vice versa. It’s not like rejecting the offspring of your buddy.
Further, LOL LOL LOL, the idea that faculty members are so portable they can simply up and leave and will easily find a home and lab at another university at a similar level is very very improbable. At the senior level, obviously superstars who command great $$ in terms of federal grants may be highly sought ofter. But, senior lines supported by salary and by lab resources and ‘start up’, sometimes in the millions, are not just sitting round for the chance to be filled by a faculty member whose son or daughter did not get into the prospective faculty member’s former employer. It is such an improbable scenario.
I am not employed by MIT but what I have seen of admissions in MIT leads me to believe that offspring don’t get bonus points from admissions for having parents employed by MIT. On the other hand, the offspring of MIT faculty members already have a leg up. They are very familiar with MIT. Their parents have values consistent with those of MIT. They have an inside track to MIT research and may already have considerable research experience. And so their background and knowledge base is probably much higher than that of a typical applicant. So, there is a better chance that their application is strong compared to the typical applicant. Thus, I would guess that fact would mean that a higher percent of applicants who are offspring of MIT students are accepted but the acceptance is based on their own work and their own application-not connections or their parent’s status.
MIT and Caltech are suppperr faiirrr. Thanks Mr. Peterson for all your hard work and unwavering determination to choose only students with academic excellence and passion. If someone could quote Mr. Peterson, I know he has a CC account, to my comment. That would be awesome.
Speaking of fairness and MIT’s admissions, the summer before I started MIT, I was in a youth hostel in Europe. While there, I met someone who had applied to MIT and did not get in. I vividly recall how he told me his father had a lot of oil money and tried using that to get him into MIT. He was a bit bitter because MIT would not accept it.
Well, if you do get admitted and your parent is an MIT employee, then congratulations, your tuition is free. One of those rarely-exercised employee benefits.
I grew up with and went to school with a lot of MIT faculty kids, and I didn’t see any of them go to MIT, whereas the Harvard faculty kids had a lot of acceptances/attendees. One of our good family friends was tenured, department chair, chaired professorship, Institute Professor, and won a Nobel Prize. His kids didn’t get into MIT. Absolutely anecdotal but my sense is that MIT doesn’t let in students who can’t keep up, no matter who their parents are.