<p>Thanks 
That clears it up for me.</p>
<p>Okay so I am still really conflicted. Basically my choices are: </p>
<ol>
<li>Go to U of Toronto, get really crappy grades, but still be a part of some really prestigious and cool research projects. Getting in touch with well-known scholars will be easier at this school. </li>
<li>Stay at McMaster, get awesome grades, but then take part in not-so-great research with lesser-known scholars. </li>
</ol>
<p>Which would be better to increase my chances at MIT aero-astro grad school? If the admissions team HAD to pick one over the other, are marks more important than the research experience?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>For theoretical fields, quite possibly. For instance, donât expect to be so successful getting into a math school with research attempts and mediocre grades. </p>
<p>Also, what convinces you the grades would be awful at U. of Toronto? You should try your best. Research can be hard stuff, so I wouldnât count on it being something you can just get into and surely boost your application.</p>
<p>I think that engineering, for the most part, is pretty much the same anywhere you go. What makes U of T engineering tougher than most is the amount of smarter kids you are surrounded by. I think the harder competition at U of T plus the bell curving that comes with it will result in terrible grades (relative to what I could be getting if I stayed here). So in the end, I feel like I have to sacrifice one or the other: good grades vs. good research experience</p>
<p>My impression is that perfect or near-perfect marks are necessary for admission to MIT Aero-astro grad school. Very few exceptions might be made, like if youâre from Caltech or something. </p>
<p>I donât really know the difference between Canadian schools, so I canât help you with how they might be viewed.</p>
<p>Research is also expected, but my view is that itâs hard to really distinguish yourself with undergrad research. I imagine that recs have more weight from more distinguished faculty.</p>
<p>Best bet is to ask the aero-astro departments of both McMaster and U. Toronto how many students they have per year that end up at MIT grad school, and then ask for their profiles.</p>
<p>If the difference in student quality is that stark, probably U. of Toronto sends more of its grads to MIT than McMaster.</p>
<p>I donât think you can set a lofty goal for yourself, then chisel on it, and think youâre going to get any benefit out of it.</p>
<p>There are lots of engineering schools that award graduate degrees. MIT sees itself, and others see it, as the best of the best. It only has room for a certain number of students, and those had better be the best of the best, or else itâs not worth having them there.</p>
<p>Now, you donât have to be an MIT undergraduate to be the best of the best â they know great candidates are elsewhere, too. But you donât get to be the best of the best, or a candidate for that, solely on the basis of racking up a high GPA against limited competition. Nor is it âbest of the bestâ to hang around great research but do a mediocre job in tough courses. The best of the best are the people who are challenging themselves, in and out of the classroom and the lab, and succeeding a lot more than they donât. They probably shouldnât succeed in everything, all the time, because that would perhaps mean that they werenât actually pushing themselves. But they are going to succeed a lot, and when they fall short it will be reaching for the stars.</p>
<p>You can probably qualify for MIT at either McMaster or Toronto, but not with the attitude you have now. Either place, you have to just blow the doors off academically, and get deeply involved in research. I suspect that it will be easier at Toronto to shine in the way that would make people in Cambridge notice, but it will be tough tough tough either place.</p>
<p>^great post, JHS. I completely agree.</p>
<p>
My husband concurs. Especially for international applicants.</p>
<p>While I agree that MIT undergrads will be very qualified, itâs always seemed rather unfair that MIT, among others, shows preference for its undergrads. Sure, theyâre among the best, but to show preference to them reveals (yet another instance of MITâs) arrogance that they are implicitly âbetter.â Obviously there are students at other schools that would be more qualified than some students at MIT, and of course MIT couldnât saturate its grad programs with its own undergradsâ20% is a huge number though. Iâm sure that the admit rate for MIT undergrads to its grad programs is comparably low, but that they show any sort of preference (which, if I remember correctly, they are explicit about) rather than judge all candidates on their own merits is a bit crooked and speaks to the general elitism that MIT, and many (if not all) Ivies, engage in. After all, if students elsewhere can be just as good, why not just forget about preference to undergrad institution, namely their own? I remember one poster on CC referred to the preferences that Ivies and MIT have for their own undergrads as âincestuous,â which while seeming a bit strong is rather appropriate, I think.</p>
<p>At the same time, I think Stanfordâs supposed policy of discriminating *against *its own undergrads is equally wrong. Grad admissions are supposed to be very meritocratic and, to the greatest extent possible, objective. At the very least, itâs much more so than undergrad admissions. Iâm willing to bet that MITâs gender ratio for grads is skewed greatly, as is very common; clearly it doesnât care about keeping that ratio 50-50 if its peers arenât. But thatâs just more evidence that grad admissions care much more about factors like research and recommendations than background and representationâexcept when it comes to their own undergrads.</p>
<p>Well, thatâs a long diatribe.</p>
<p>First of all, MIT âdiscriminatesâ against its own undergrads in the pure sciences and mathematics. That is true at most places. As for engineering, the culture is different, and it is more common to stay at the same place for grad school, at MIT and most other places.</p>
<p>Secondly, there is a difference between a masters degree and a PhD. The masters is, in a way, viewed as a continuation of the bachelorâs, or maybe the capstone. A lot of them are only 1-year. So for chem E and electrical E and comp. sci., they merely put up a GPA barrier to continuing through the masterâs program. The PhD is a different story, and there is certainly no explicit preference.</p>
<p>As for the wrongness of preference for MIT undergrads, well, Iâm not sure I want to tackle that. I disagree.</p>
<p>Speculation about preferences is entirely on our side, and not on the side of the school (which doesnât make the admissions decisions for graduate programs) nor on the side of the programs themselves. I think âpreferenceâ is just shorthand on our side for the large number of MIT undergrads who are admitted to MIT graduate programs â it doesnât actually mean that faculty members admitting students to graduate study at MIT would choose an MIT student over an equally-qualified student from elsewhere.</p>
<p>
Factors like research and recommendations are the considerations used when schools like MIT admit their own undergrads for graduate study â presumably, MIT undergrads are more likely than candidates from many other schools to have participated deeply in research projects with eminent professors who wrote them stellar letters of recommendation. And when applying to your own school, you have the advantage that everyone in the department knows your letter-writers personally.</p>
<p>There are many factors that advantage students in the graduate school application process. Having worked with an eminent professor is one. Having access to top-quality research is another. Access to those opportunities is not equally distributed among college students, and in one sense, thatâs fundamentally unfair. But thatâs what people want when they say they want meritocracy.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I wonât claim to know what is and isnât true about MITâs graduate admissions, but Iâm definitely willing to say I had the same reading of the word âpreferenceâ as phantasmagoric. I am glad my understanding is being corrected.</p>
<p>Now whether I think it is fair or not is perhaps up for question. Perhaps this is another version of how international students might have it harder getting in than students from the US, even if from famous international schools. Iâm sure graduate admissions is quite meritocratic on most counts, but the soft factor always seems to involve what school you come from, and who is recommending you. Not that a bad candidate can get in, but on the other hand the question does arise of whether certain candidatesâ admissions decisions would have been interchanged if solely this factor of connections and school of origin were considered. </p>
<p>Sometimes there are neat lists of âtop schoolsâ formed, which are inadequate. That is, there may be cases where someone with prodigious intellect, perhaps an international student, went to a top 25 but not top 5 school, due to reasons quite unrelated to motivation or qualification, and there may be no dearth of superstar graduate students at those schoolsâŠnor stellar faculty. Of course âtop-nessâ is likely assigned out of some averaging effect which accounts for the varied applicant backgrounds, but the moral of the story is that the schoolsâ faculty in either case may be so laughably beyond âmortalâ and there be such a distribution of strong students at the âless-topâ school that one might almost throw the designations away. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Somehow I would have thought that would precisely be what preference means. For instance, what if someone came from (to use the example of another threadd) CMU? Clearly they are likely to have world famous faculty on their side, an undergrad institution of great reputation for CS (so letâs say they are applying for CS). </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I would think it to be different - more like academics within certain subfields know each other personally, through several conferences and seeing each othersâ names pop up in the big papers being written. In fact, my experience has been that a professor working in Mirror Symmetry may know other researchers in his/her field better than one working in Number Theory - even if from the same university. </p>
<p>Now, maybe they walk past each other in the hallways more often, but at least in my narrow experience with a single area, the big names of a given area seem to know each other best in the way that it counts - i.e. know each othersâ research qualification to comment on a given student. Especially in large departments (which MIT seems to be for many departments, compared to other prestigious schools). </p>
<p>I would think they would make decisions based on the reputation of the professor in the field of study rather than on having passed each other on the way to the bathroom more anyway. </p>
<p>Now one could ask - what about when there are two recommenders in the same field of study, and one is from the home school and the other isnât? But shouldnât, in that case, the exposition in the letter of reference (given the reputation of both as researchers, even if one is better known to the reader than the other in person by virtue of proximity) be evaluated carefully, and be the basis of making an actual decision?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Seconded. Iâm quite sure this is the broad trend.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>A couple of things:
- If you work for an MIT prof during the summer and you are an undergrad from another school, then you greatly enhance your chances of getting into that grad program. There are programs like this. Itâs not just people from small colleges that can do this. I know a guy from U. of Michigan that did research one summer for an MIT prof, and the prof told him that he could work for him as a grad student. This was before he formally applied.</p>
<p>2) Graduate school for most subjects is very different from undergrad. Not everyone has the affinity or stamina required to do research, regardless of their grades. Most research experience, even for âtopâ candidates, is not that impressive. Or at least, itâs hard to tell for sure how good they were because research recs tend to be good. Having firsthand knowledge that a student will be good in a research group means that you are a sure thing for a professor.</p>
<p>^ Maybe those fall in the category of useless research rec. I have heard quality recommenders who may either flatly refuse to write for you unless they really know your abilities or write letters like âthis person is not terribly impressive to me but is the best in his year doing these things and I would take him.â</p>
<p>Getting a good letter from reputed recommenders seems not easy, likely, etc. I find those who do get in to the most competitive schools.</p>
<p>I have also heard of people who KNOW people at MiT basically guaranteeing that they can do enough to make sure the person gets in.</p>
<p>
I think professors would tend to carefully read the letters from their closest colleagues, whether those colleagues are in their home department or not. But I wouldnât discount the effect of being in the same department on collegiality â my PI, for example, is very close with the other professors in our department (Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology), even though very few of them are neuroscientists and can really comment on our work technically. So he is in many partially-overlapping circles of close colleagues, some at our institution, and some elsewhere, and some whose work overlaps with ours, and some whose doesnât.</p>
<p>
Given two completely equivalent students applying for a CS PhD, one from MIT and one from CMU, my position is that the MIT undergrad would not be substantially advantaged. But two applicants are rarely completely equivalent. </p>
<p>There are also advantages which are unavoidable â my husband, for example, was admitted to the MIT aero/astro program despite a lackluster GPA, but he had not only outstanding letters from some of the most-respected professors in the department, but he had also had interactions with virtually all of the professors in the department. Every person evaluating his application knew him personally, and knew that he was an outstanding engineer. Unlike someone from (e.g.) Caltech with an equivalent application, he was a known quantity.</p>
<p>^This belies the main point. If a professor writes you a rec to get into his/her own department and itâs understood you want to work for that prof, that prof has the power to get you in. Essentially, the prof is writing a rec to himself/herself. You are applying to a department, but in a certain sense you are applying to be in someoneâs lab (or a small group of labs), even though you are obviously not bound to this once you get in. </p>
<p>Essentially, the guy is writing a rec to himself/herself. Whose rec are they going to value more highlyâtheir own opinion or someone else?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>In your expert opinion, do you think this can and does have an effect? What about should?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>This phenomenon seems to exist in less theoretical fields most, maybe? Because one isnât always applying to a lab - sometimes itâs an objective committee of people who make decisions independently.</p>
<p>Mollieâs husband seems to have had a similar situation, but again, it was a question of having seen in action.</p>
<p>^Yeah, I only really know about the pure sciences.</p>