<p>Definitely wouldn’t say any of these competitions are a necessity for applying or getting in. I never did any of them and I got in. MIT really doesn’t want one type of student at all. I have a passion for math and science, but my extracurriculars were always more in the way of student government, art, and english. I thought that might hurt me initially, but in the end I think it might have been what got me in (imagine reading a million essays about math contests). Just make sure your application is a true reflection of your personality and your interests.</p>
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<p>I totally agree with this sentiment. I believe that as a cc parent, I may have contributed to son’s anxiety about applying to MIT by talking to him about how difficult it was to get in and stay in. For example, prior to cc we believed that getting 5s on 5 AP Tests in junior year and 700s on SAT & SAT Subject Tests was good enough to apply and survive at MIT. We never believed that it was a passport to getting in, but good enough to apply. However, after reading cc discussions on ECs and weighted vs unweighted gpa debates, that confidence evaporated very quickly. It was emotionally a lot easier to take an automatic acceptance from A&M’s Engineering Program as a National Merit semifinalist / National Hispanic scholar and take the 45 AP credits & scholarship than wonder if one would get in or survive at MIT.</p>
<p>A while back I looked through the admit threads for MIT, Caltech, and a couple of Ivies and realized just how skewed they are. It varied from school to school, but somewhere around half of the posts were admits. Those who get rejected tend to shy away from the threads (which makes sense) and you’re left with a skewed population. Now, whether they people admitted who do post are representative of all admitted students is anyone’s guess.</p>
<p>^ Well, people who are on the lower end won’t want to post because people will say they only got in on lower stats for racial/gender/economic reasons and therefore don’t deserve their spot, or people who got in with low stats but didn’t have those reasons may feel they got in as a mistake because they see all the bull that CC tends to post.</p>