<p>Does participation in MIT's ESP programs, such as Splash, HSSP, Delve, etc. help prospective student's chances of getting into MIT?</p>
<p>Do them anyway, even if they don’t help. They are such amazing programs and I have gained so many awesome friends from them and did quite amazing things, from playing capture the flag in MIT to learning about chemical reactions which we then saw later in action (and by action, I mean blowing up :))</p>
<p>ESP is a student organization that has no ties to the admissions office. </p>
<p>They’re a cool academic extracurricular that you can enjoy/may help you develop academically/that you could put on your application, so that’s cool. But it doesn’t carry any extra weight of any sort.</p>
<p>Basically, == tmanneopen. The program’s pretty awesome overall, do it if you think you’ll get something out of it personally - but not just for the app :)</p>
<p>there is no preferential weight placed on a student directly because of their participation in ESP etc, though it can often signal that they are interested in STEM and might be good matches for MIT.</p>