<p>what do you think was the most important thing on your app?</p>
<p>activities i was involved in, recommendations, essays, test scores/GPA in that order...</p>
<p>agreed with emmitt</p>
<p>What about the interview?=) I thought it helped quite a bit too!</p>
<p>I didn't interview, and I still got in.</p>
<p>Anyone heard of/gone to this thing? I'm applying, but it's a bit expensive, and I'm wondering if my money will be well-spent. Looks alright. John Conway will be there, so it shouldn't be terrible. Wonder if he can write me a recom...</p>
<p>whoops, clicked wrong button. Didn't mean to sabotage thread.</p>
<p>I had the basic stats (SAT I && II, GPA, AP, etc), but also did some stuff that was pretty out there. I did a broad range of extracurriculars ranging from the expected (chess team, computer club) to the less nerdy (speech team, Youth & Gov't/Young Politicians Club, honors choir).</p>
<p>The highlights are that:
I edited a student-written political magazine for two years.
I have spoken in front of groups of several hundred a few times.
I emphasized (I think - hard to remember which essay was which) an interest in studying/interning overseas.</p>
<p>Rather than doing lots of activities, it's important to show a deep interest in one or two. I am very interested in a medical career, and my activities (extra curricular, school, etc...) reflect that. </p>
<p>Also, it's important to show how you can contribute to MIT. The essay carries a lot of weight!</p>
<p>I have to put it like this: Essay & Recs & Activities, GPA, then test scores last</p>
<p>I'd have to agree with Kirbus. Although it'd be much easier to tell you the LEAST important piece of your app: test scores. If you've even decided to apply to MIT you probably have good--->amazing test scores (and therefore so does everyone else). Even gpa and class rank matter more than test scores because they place your success within the context of your environment; compare you to people around you, not with people 1000s of miles away with completely different backgrounds.</p>
<p>I'd think activities first, then interview, then essays and recs, marks in school and finally test scores.</p>
<p>essay, olympiads and a [url=<a href="http://the-chemist.front.ru/mit-res.pdf%5Dpaper%5B/url">http://the-chemist.front.ru/mit-res.pdf]paper[/url</a>]</p>
<p>Olympiads are counted separately from activities?</p>
<p>lol nice one meder... isn't there a current student that submitted a math proof similar to that?</p>
<p>personal experience (as reflected through essay)</p>
<p>i dint have an interview
the most important part about my application, me thinks, were my essays..long and short..i dint have any international or even national awards to show(n mind you i am an international)..my sat scores..if they count at all were okay (1450..790m/660v....)rank 1/83(i know many ppl must have had those or better than those)</p>
<p>the essays really told adcoms who i am and the picture must have matched with the teachers' recos and the gcs report. A huge credit goes to them as well because although i have not read what they wrote for me..they must have painted a real picture of me(not selling me off as a genius but as a simple level headed girl that i am )
so i think that coherence is a very important factor. you must choose your reco-writing teachers very wisely.
i also had a supplement reco from the dean of my school who really knows me very well through all the activities i was involved in. so i think that also helped me a lot.</p>
<p>I think I got in because of my intense interest in linguistics. I wrote a quirky personal statement about compulsive anagramming; it was silly, probably unusual. Linguistics is a smaller major and I expressed a strong desire to take part in a linguistics major and NLP research and I proved my investment by describing a recent research project I'd done in psycholinguistics. </p>
<p>I am really, really devoted to a couple of extra-curriculars (captain of environmental science team and operettas and violin)
Although I took challenging classes, my grades weren't that great, actually dipped over junior and senior year. 1580 is better than average, but obviously not the reason I was admitted. Being a girl and a legacy helped, but native to the Boston area didn't. oh and my interview went really well; my interviewer spent nearly two hours talking to me, describing his side projects in image processing.</p>
<p>I got really lucky. </p>
<p>But on top of that, I think my hook or what not is my half day internship at NIH (I thought that was gonna make my course load look less rigorious, but in the end, I think it helped me stand out a bit).</p>
<p>your half-day internship?...</p>