<p>I think the acceptance rate of MIT would significantly drop if it accepted common app. Only people who really want to go to MIT bother to apply. It's easier to apply to colleges via common app. What do you think?</p>
<p>Yes, it would be significantly lower. This is because the Common App contains dull essay topics and makes it a NECESSITY to judge students by grades. MIT’s app is an in-depth description of the student.</p>
<p>Most top schools have supplements to the common app. I applied to some of them and didn’t find it any easier to apply to those schools than to MIT. But I do think that MIT’s essay prompts are the best. It’s the only application that I feel really got to know me well.</p>
<p>The supplements are easier than writing an entire application in my opinion. Also, supplemental questions tend to be similar like “elaborate on one of your extracurricular activities”. </p>
<p>I do agree that MIT essay topics are the most interesting though.</p>
<p>Applications would likely increase but yield would probably drop a little offsetting part of the drop in acceptance rate. I am unsure why the common app making it necessary to judge students by grades would lower the acceptance rate. If anything making admissions more dependent on grades (and presumably SAT scores as well) should decrease applications as it raises the bar for competitive applications. I don’t agree that MIT essay prompts are particularly good either.</p>
<p>Well I found it really easy to write MIT’s essays. It asks about YOU. I hate essays that give you a sentence you don’t even find interesting and asks you to write 500 words about it.</p>
<p>It would likely be lower because we’d have a higher number of poorly-matched students applying to us, resulting in more work for us and more rejections for them. </p>
<p>No thank you.</p>
<p>Yeah, and you hear people complain about MIT all the time: “Their admission rate is just too damn high!”</p>
<p>Oh, wait, I think I have that wrong…</p>
<p>Sikorsky: No need to be a smartass. I already know MIT’s acceptance rate is low but notice that I said it would be LOWER. I think MIT would be the most selective university in the US if it accepted common app. Many colleges want to increase the number of applicants to appear more selective but as Chris said, it seems MIT doesn’t care about this and that’s a good thing. I was just considering a hypothetical situation.</p>
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<p>I do not think this is true of HYPS or most of the other colleges and universities in the U.S. already recognized as the very most selective, either.</p>
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<p>I disagree. Just a few years ago Princeton hacked into Yale’s admission website to figure out who they had admitted, presumably so they could better manage yield by rejecting or waitlisting people who they thought would go to Yale. I don’t know the law, but that sounds not just blatantly unethical but actually criminal.</p>
<p>This is a lot harder to believe than top 20 colleges using the common app in order to boost their rankings.</p>
<p>Of the top colleges, MIT is one of the few that doesn’t appear to care how they look in the rankings, and which are not willing to adopt strategies to game the system.</p>
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<p>This seems somewhat implausible given that MIT would need roughly 40% more applicants to have the lowest acceptance rate (assuming no effect on yield) and that few if any colleges have seem this sort of jump.</p>
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<p>2002 is hardly a few years ago and this article [Princeton</a> admissions chief hacks into Yale Web site / He reportedly uses private data from applicants to both schools - SFGate](<a href=“http://www.sfgate.com/education/article/Princeton-admissions-chief-hacks-into-Yale-Web-2818080.php]Princeton”>http://www.sfgate.com/education/article/Princeton-admissions-chief-hacks-into-Yale-Web-2818080.php) suggests that it was a rogue admissions officer concerned about online security. Assuming the figures cited in the article are correct the number of applicants this was done for was small enough that managing yield isn’t a plausible motive.</p>
<p>I certainly think for universities outside the top 5 rankings are pretty important but does anyone really care how US News ranks Harvard? I think the brands of the top 5 schools are strong enough that rankings don’t have a large effect on them.
EDIT: Also see this article <a href=“http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/chatterbox/2002/08/hack_me.html[/url]”>http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/chatterbox/2002/08/hack_me.html</a> that totally rules out yield management as a rationale for the hacking given that the hacking occurred after Princeton released admissions decisions.</p>
<p>I disagree with most here - I don’t think acceptance rate would change significantly if MIT accepted the common app. A few people might apply because it’s easier with the common app… But not very many. There will still be an application fee, a fee to send test scores, possibly a fee to send transcripts. Though a handful qualify for waivers and a handful can spend as much as they want, the vast majority of Americans can’t afford to shell out $50-$100 on another college app just because it’s slightly easier to apply. Most are only willing to pay that much for a school they really want to go to. So imo the applicants now are the ones that truly want to attend MIT and it will remain that way no matter what application is accepted, because of the fees.</p>
<p>Depends on your definition of significant change really. I’d say it would be at least an appreciable increase. Just look at UChicago. They were at around a 20% acceptance rate until they switched to the Common App. Now it’s 8.8%.</p>
<p>Granted, MIT has a far greater brand now than UChicago did pre-Common App. But I’d say it would drop a solid 1-2%, which would be perfect for bumping MIT up a rank or two on the USNWR ranking (not that they care about it).</p>
<p>I liked the MIT Essays, especially the fact they don’t set a hard word limit, so you’re not scrambling to find 5 words to cut somewhere.</p>
<p>I don’t think it’s accurate to ascribe most of Chicago’s drop in admissions rate to the common app as it was quickly falling even before the switch because of other changes such as more aggressive marketing. A 1% drop in acceptance rate if MIT switched to the common app is not implausible. However, acceptance rate actually is a very small factor (1.25%) in US News rankings so this would be unlikely to actually increase MIT’s rank.</p>
<p>The better comparison on that end is probably Columbia, which (also?) switched to common app precisely to drive up their apps / drive down their numbers.</p>
<p>I don’t care about acceptance rate but I wonder it would be easier for some public school counselors to upload recommendation and other materials if MIT use common app. It was a little bit difficult for my son to ask his counselor to submit recommendations to MIT. One of his MIT recs was lost and he had to re-submit by snail mail. That was 5 years ago and I don’t know how things work now.</p>
<p>coolweather: I agree! Mailing the material wasn’t an option for me because I live in a country with no post service to America. And faxing material was difficult too. We had no fax machine and I had to ask my counselor to go somewhere and find a fax machine and they charged a lot for it. I felt bad to put my counselor through all this trouble. I guess they’re making the application process difficult so only people who truly want MIT would apply.</p>
<p>My son spent at least three weeks on his app essays. Maybe other high achieving students find writing all those essays in their spare time a snap but I’m sure the MIT app damps a lot of people’s enthusiasm, even if it does have better questions. For example, we decided against applying to west coast universities because we would have to fill out a whole other app for each state. In fact, my son had a harder time writing the long common app essay than the shorter ones for MIT, and studiously edited his essays to fit the word limit. Brevity is the soul of wit… probably appreciated by all those adcom readers!</p>
<p>Our school had Naviance and there was no problem sending transcripts and recs online to MIT.</p>