<p>What kind of requirements does MIT have of its graduate student applicants? </p>
<p>What seems to be of the highest importance? </p>
<p>And finally are MIT's admission standards for graduate students harsher than those for undergrads?</p>
<p>Thanks all.</p>
<p>I don’t know. I never applied as an undergrad, so I can’t tell you. It really depends on the graduate department you are looking at, and the subprogram within the department. I had cross-registered at MIT and my research resume and the recommendations did it for me, I imagine.</p>
<p>Graduate school admissions (everywhere, not just at MIT) are done by department, so it’s meaningless to talk about “grad student admissions” without the context of a particular department or field’s admissions practices.</p>
<p>Many of MIT’s graduate programs do have lower admit rates than the undergraduate program, and the competition is much stiffer.</p>
<p>“Many of MIT’s graduate programs do have lower admit rates than the undergraduate program, and the competition is much stiffer.”</p>
<p>Where do you find the admit rates for specific departments?</p>
<p>Many aren’t published. </p>
<p>You can occasionally find tidbits in the MIT newspaper, The Tech, such as that in 2005, there were about 2495 applicants to the EECS graduate program and the department hoped to admit around 160 (6%), and that there were 371 applicants for about 64 spots (17%) ([source](<a href=“http://www-tech.mit.edu/V125/N4/4gradapps.4n.html]source[/url]”>http://www-tech.mit.edu/V125/N4/4gradapps.4n.html)</a>).</p>
<p>I know from personal experience that the biology department interviews about a third of applicants and accepts about half of interviewed students (17%).</p>
<p>And some of the department admit rates are misleadingly high – from information I’ve seen, aero/astro has a high admit rate overall, but they admit virtually 100% of applicants who did their undergraduate work at MIT. The admit rate for applicants from outside MIT is much lower.</p>
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<p>You can find a lot of them at petersons.com. Keep in mind that they don’t separate master’s from PhD admissions when they display the rates, though.</p>
<p>Also this:</p>
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<p>A lot of the MIT grad departments favor their own (though not all - physics and math, for instance, pretty much won’t take their own).</p>