<p>^ Yeah, MIT doesn’t accept every Olympiad person it gets. That doesn’t mean if you don’t “at least” get an Olympiad placement, you won’t get in. Context is everything - it’s about what opportunities you’ll take advantage of. That’s what MIT wants to see - not that you had everything given to you to try out, but that you took advantage of what you could and will therefore take advantage of all you can get out of MIT.</p>
<p>For the record, I had absolutely no research and did no math/science/whatever competitions. In fact, these things were unheard to me when I was applying.</p>
<p>You would be surprised how much MIT delves into the issue of applicant’s educational context. It is actually one of the areas where input from ECs (Educational counselors who perform the interviews) is critical. While in theory interviews are not absolutely required for admission, in practice nobody is admitted without one. ECs receive extensive training from MIT and are specifically asked to detail the context of an applicant. Half of my report may on the background of a particular student, and whether he took advantage of the resources made available to him at his particular high school. Does the high school offer research programs, do students participate in math/science competitions, how well do they perform? What is the parental educational and professional background? We are also fully aware that it may be lot easier for the son or daughter of a professor at Yale or a physician to get an internship during the summer. </p>
<p>
I don’t believe that helps as much as some may believe. I can typically spot a mile away a student who has been aggressively pushed by his parents to succeed academically as opposed to having a natural passion for math or science. Kids who take and retake the SATs until they get near perfect scores or have a transcript without the slightest blemish don’t necessarily have higher odds at admission. My bet is that if you were to survey a typical MIT class, you would find fewer students heavily tracked by parents than you think.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Being extraordinary obviously helps, but what makes a candidate extraordinary is often not perfect stats. Frankly, in the MIT applicant pool that I see that is fairly ORDINARY. MIT’s definition of extraordinary is quite broad and includes character traits of resilience, creativity, passion, determination, going the extra mile…These are hard traits for parents to just bash into their kids.</p>
<p>That is not strictly speaking true. We do regularly get students admitted from my region who have not been interviewed, but they are certainly in a very small minority.</p>
<p>Thank you for your comments, very insightful.</p>
<p>I would like to clarify that I never said ‘extraordinary’ meant perfect stats. In fact I pretty much said the opposite, that ‘perfect-stat-olympiad kids from the high school are routinely rejected, only extraordinary kids get in’.</p>
<p>Also, when I said “pushing”, I did not mean “bashing”. There is a huge difference, you can’t use them interchangeably. ‘Steering’ is probably a better word. Being ‘steered’ into academic pursuits by your parents at a young age is a huge advantage. And it is something that is not going to be uncovered in a college interview if such steering leads to legitimate passions.</p>
<p>Most ‘steered’ kids may end up being the kind of force fed stat-superstars you are referring to (easy to identify and reject). But some of them will have developed real academic passions (they’ve become successful, they take pride in it), they’re not faking anything. At this point, too, if something extraordinary has been accomplished, top colleges don’t seem to care. That is what I see. If they are trying to discount this type of ‘context’ I doubt they are very successful at it. I am pretty sure MIT, Harvard, etc are filled with kids like this with all different socio-economic backgrounds. </p>
<p>I would say that having ‘in tune’ parents is much more important than being wealthy (the latter is just much easier to measure). No interviewer/adcom will ever be able to discount this kind of advantage with accuracy. And as I said, I don’t think they are trying to.</p>
<p>The evidence is quite clear that a child who was raised in an intellectually stimulating environment is much more likely to succeed academically than somebody who was not. This is why SAT scores tend to track socio-economic levels pretty closely. </p>
<p>I will take it for granted when I interview a candidate whose parents are physicians, attorneys or scientists that they have received all the possible benefits of such a privileged upbringing. Nobody will discount the achievements of the “privileged” candidate but he will clearly stand out much less, everything else being equal, than the candidate whose parent struggled economically or who who had to overcome all types of difficulties to reach the point where he is qualified to apply to MIT. </p>
<p>MIT will draw a distinction between two highly motivated candidates from different backgrounds in part because outstanding applicants from lower socio-economic levels are extremely rare, especially in the STEM fields. The area I cover in CT includes both extremely wealthy towns (think top .1% in income levels) and very poor cities where half the population is on food stamps. 99% of the candidates I interview come from the former, but occasionally I get a candidate from a inner city school, where interest in math and science is everything but cool. I can assure you that I will do everything I can to highlight in my report to the admissions committee the difficulties the candidate had to face in order to even the confidence to apply to MIT. I don’t get transcripts or test results so my evaluation is strictly on the context of the candidate.</p>
<p>Hello everyone! I will be applying to MIT as a freshman and I really hope that what you all are saying is true. My SAT scores and GPA are adequate but not stellar. I’m hoping that what will make me stand out is my dazzling personality and my accomplishments despite the environment I’ve been raised in. I’ve already had my interview and I will hopefully be a part of the soccer program if I get accepted. Is there anything else I can really do to help my chances of getting in?</p>
<p>Also, we do admit students without interviews, but IIRC the admit rate for students w/out interviews is less than or equal to ~1%. So you should interview.</p>
<p>I’m a prospective MIT applicant, currently a junior, and I go to an average high school in a small town. My parents have never really pushed me much in anything, and I’d say we’re essentially middle class. However, I’ve still managed to accomplish a great deal in math and science, and I’ve won numerous accolades through my science/tech/math extra curriculars, though nothing of national or international standard. I’m 1st in my class, and I’ve finished my school’s entire core course load save 1 class in 3 years (and my school does have typical AP course offerings). And most important to me, I love math and physics with an evident passion.</p>
<p>Considering my circumstances, though certainly not comparable to that of someone in true poverty, I’d say I’ve taken advantage of most opportunities available to me, and developed my passions for myself. </p>
<p>I honestly do think MIT considers everything in context. What you’ve done with the opportunities available to you - perhaps that is a true measure of you’re potential.</p>
<p>My interviewer told me that when MIT looks at your application, they rate your accomplishments (academic and sports) on a scale of 1-5, with 5= international level, 4 = National level, 3= state level, 2= County level, and 1= school level. He told me that you basically need 3’s and 4’s to have a realistic shot.</p>
<p>That’s not really how it works. I think your interviewer may have been speaking in generalities. </p>
<p>Obviously it does stand out more if you won an international math award as opposed to a school math award, but it’s not that simple or straightforward at all.</p>
<p>Yes, but you still have to make assumptions about the specific environment of each applicant. MIT admits people, not demographic tranches. Your assumptions will be less reliable the further you get from the socio-economic extremes, in my opinion. Nearly identical “environments” on an application and in an interview can mask extreme differences in actual parental involvement in the academic lives of the specific applicants, and often do. Especially in the middle of the socio-economic ladder (from which I assume most applicants come). My point is that these differences in parental involvement play a major role in how impressive applicants turn out to be years later, and they are often not identifiable on a case by case basis, despite being highly correlated to income on an aggregate basis.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>This seems sensible to me. But you can’t say that “nobody will discount the achievements” and then in the same sentence say “but he will clearly stand out much less”. If the applicant is standing out “much less” then obviously the achievement is being discounted. I don’t think there is anything necessarily wrong with discounting, that is the whole point of ‘context’, no? The problem comes in the identification of who is “privileged” and who is not. </p>
<p>In most cases, assumptions are being made when it comes to identifying advantages and disadvantages. Most applicants are not from Greenwich or the inner city, or have college professors for parents. I think it is unavoidable that you (and MIT) will frequently misidentify who is “privileged” and by how much. Some kids have every advantage of those with professor parents, but their parents aren’t professors. Look at the increase in qualified apps to all these top schools. The kids aren’t just getting smarter or more precocious, after all. And those apps aren’t all coming from rich kids. Where are all of these non-wealthy qualified applicants coming from? They are the children of “tuned in” middle class parents who have steered/pushed them into academic pursuits at an early age. High School grade inflation is the myth for which parental involvement inflation is the reality. </p>
<p>I guess I am off on a tangent, but my point is that you are very unlikely to get into MIT if you are “normal”. There is too much competition, and not all of it is coming from rich kids whose achievements will “stand out much less”. There will be other kids from very similar contexts with similar stats who are extraordinary, and they will get in before you. Some of these kids may just be smarter or more talented than you. Often though, they just had a head start.</p>
<p>I don’t think it is unavoidable. I mostly interview kids from high schools I know well, where my own kids went. I may even have met the parents. My role as EC is to identify context and in the 60-90 minutes I spend with a candidate I will learn a lot about his background, his family. In our area, most come from privileged backgrounds, so they don’t get much of a boost from adversity. </p>
<p>
Most successful candidates benefit from parental support. Would a student with a “Tiger Mom” as parent be more successful than one whose parents are supportive without being overly pushy? From interviewing dozens of applicants, I don’t see a pattern. Most successful candidates are pretty self-motivated and don’t need a parent to order them to do their homework. They often learn by osmosis: an intellectually stimulating familial environment will often work better than signing up kids for extra classes. Sure, a number of students may have gotten a particularly interesting research internship in a lab through a parent connection; I often assume as much and I won’t penalize somebody who did not get the chance. More interesting is what students did with that opportunity. Did they learn something useful? How did they deal with failure? </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I don’t agree. Last year, our local HS had an unprecendented 10 students admitted to MIT. Typically, the school gets 2 or 3 admits per year. I interviewed several of the successful candidates, and none were academic superstars by the MIT definition. (Intel winners, USAMO finalists…). I even met their parents after they were admitted and I did not see any “Tiger” parents roaming around! The admits were all excellent students and many had the opportunity to be involved in research. They just did the best they could with the resources available to them. They all seemed pretty “normal” to me.</p>
<p>I guess the ideal combination would be to have one parent who is a college prof, so they know how to access educational opportunities, and another one that actually has time to spend with their child. In a lot of cases, the children of high school teachers tend to be very successful because they actually have time to spend with their kid (as well as an educational value system.) An MIT prof chasing tenure isn’t going to be tutoring their kid in the evenings. Even in the affluent area I came from, most of the kids had virtually absentee parents. They might have been too successful professionally.</p>
<p>So it can be tricky normalizing for context. I think the best way to do it fairly is to guess who will actually do the best at MIT if you had to place a bet on it. I think there’s too much tendency to give people boosts for “adversity.”</p>
<p>I agree it can be tricky to assess context but that is exactly why MIT has interviews and what ECs are asked to do. MIT does not need me to evaluate a student’s academic credentials. They want to know what cannot be told through a transcript or test score. </p>
<p>If I simply were just to guess who would do best at MIT, the candidates from less stellar high schools in the area I cover would not stand a chance at admission. They are less polished, have no research experience, less access to AP classes. They can’t afford test prep or fancy summer internships. There is simply no way that even a top student from an urban high school in the county will be as well prepared as the students from the top private and public HS in the wealthy suburbs. Would such a student still be able to thrive at MIT? Absolutely! Would he perform as well as the ultra-prepared kids from the wealthier districts? Probably not!</p>
<p>Perhaps I don’t quite understand, but what is the meaning behind “everything else being equal?” I suspected the major point here is that everything between said candidates is highly unequal.</p>
<p>While I am strongly in favor of evaluating in context, I am not in favor in general of declaring a candidate coming from a less privileged background to be “more impressive” … perhaps I am not even highly in favor of the term “impressive.” </p>
<p>It is quite possible that a lot fewer “standard privileged” candidates would appear to be in a situation where you could streamline them into the label of “everything else equal,” if more about them were understood/known. </p>
<p>I do get what you’re saying, and probably am fine with it in the end, but I do feel like there is a tendency by, say, the masses to oversimplify what it takes for an individual to get where that individual gets, given some common privileges. </p>
<p>Further, I thought it was already established that being impressive isn’t the primary goal, but rather to show signs of having something to contribute. If someone comes from a different background and has something definitive to contribute on account of that, which is deemed very valuable, I say more power to them.</p>
<p>I think there is no substitute for case by case detailed consideration. </p>
<p>It is “more impressive” to me if someone gets a 2400 without studying for the SAT than after prepping for a month. But I don’t think I’d really care that much in the end about that particular thing in the end anyway, and would still look at what either individual has to contribute (in general, even outside of admissions talk).</p>
<p>Wholeheartedly in support of these statements.</p>
<p>This is why I was bringing up that, when we talk of two extremes which are highly unequal, it is dangerous to talk of all else being equal. In fact, even in the middle, things aren’t necessarily equal, and in fact are almost certainly not! They can be significantly unequal. </p>
<p>Something which has amazed me time and again is how much people grow during the college years, in various good schools … and also how much some people don’t seem to grow. When we speak of being polished, let us not forget that some students in the middle class families are much more polished early on, and some are much less so. I invariably find the more polished ones do better in admissions, because they simply have a lot to show right then and there. One has to dig quite deep to get a meaningful notion of “context.”</p>
<p>First of all, I don’t think research experience makes a substantive difference in performance at MIT.</p>
<p>Second of all, if we are talking about middle class kids with no access to test prep, the MIT caliber kids tend to crush the standardized tests as long as they are at a decent high school (not necessarily great, but not terrible.) In an extreme case, one of the physics olympic team people was interviewed and said that she read Halliday/Resnick over Christmas break to learn physics! Kind of ridiculous, but it’s an example of how little studying some of these people need. Obviously AP classes are critical to things like SATII tests, but certainly someone could take that into account (i.e., a 700 SATII score in honors chem is impressive.)</p>
<p>If you are talking about someone truly poor from a terrible high school, then all bets are off. What sort of college environment is best for a person like that is arguable, but I think it belies the fact that, in general, you CAN make decisions based on who would actually do best at MIT, because most candidates are in the middle class to upper class range. I knew a lot of middle class guys who were very high performers on a lot of these contests. </p>
<p>Plus, when you look at some of the upper reaches of EC achievement, you can’t get there by paying for it. There is diminishing returns. The value of the different academic ECs vary, though. For me, winning Siemens takes a lot more talent than making MOSP. Some of these awards and ECs are a result of academic polish; others are more reliant on brute intellectual power. Incidentally, I think writing essays preferred by elite colleges and non-academic ECs are highly selected for by family wealth, meaning college-savvy kids can shape their application in a pleasing way.</p>
<p>That’s brilliant.
Hope that I’ve adjusted my trajectory to high position through my high school life.
Getting into MIT is truly a ginormous challenge for international students.</p>
<p>If I simply were just to guess who would do best at MIT, the candidates from less stellar high schools in the area I cover would not stand a chance at admission. They are less polished, have no research experience, less access to AP classes. They can’t afford test prep or fancy summer internships.</p>
<p>Indeed. But I’m enrolled in our school science class that has the most gold medals in science Olympiad in our entire country and I don’t have one, so I’ll be panelized by that factor? And my parents are both scientific researcher but getting intern before 18 is illegal in our country.</p>