Harvard Summer School B & MIT !?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Massachusetts Institute of Technology
1

<p>Hello Everyone, </p>

<p>This is my first post so please forgive any mistake of mine. I will be applying to MIT this year. However, I have a question mark in my mind. I will be greatly pleased if you help me out! </p>

<p>The previous summer (2011), when I was a sophomore, I have participated Harvard Summer School and got 8 credits from Physics. But my grade was a B. I don't want to be snobby, but it really was hard, class had 80 people in it and we were only 10 high school students. The rest were grad students and undergrad students (%50 of them were Harvard students ). As they made curve, it was impossible for a sophomore who didn't know %90 of topics that time to get an A with a bunch of Harvard students... </p>

<p>So, should I write my grade (B) or only say "I passed principles of physics and gained 8 credits?"</p>

<p>Would it hurt my application because I do have significant achievements and I just don't want to ruin my MIT application with this... </p>

<p>Thanks in advance everybody!</p>

2

<p>Don’t you have to submit all transcripts? I’m not sure, but you should check it out.</p>

3

<p>The purpose of taking expensive college classes while still in high school is to either show interest in a given school - not your case, getting a feel of the college life, or showing college admissions officers that you can excell at college courses and are really for it. If you have a 4.0 and high class rank in high school, or something close to a 4.0 - this might hurt you. What would you think? This kid probably came from a not so challenging high school since he cant even get an A in a college course. This kid might not do so well at a challenging college such as ours. I would do the latter option, since a B in a college course can hurt you just as much as a B in high school.</p>

<p>In the end, its your decision.</p>

4

<p>Thanks a lot! I am also considering to tell only that I have gained 8 credits. But wouldn’t they think a worse case than a “B” if I don’t tell my grade? Because “D-” even gets 8 credits…</p>

5

<p>I kind of agree with loyamann, but I feel that MIT admissions doesn’t think that way in terms of penalizing people for B’s. Just about any other top college would, though.</p>

<p>The OP does bring up a good point. If you don’t put a grade, people are going to assume that it is not an “A” (unless you took it pass/fail, and that is pretty unusual to do at Harvard Summer School, a fact that top colleges probably already know.) So it’s not really a disadvantage to explicitly write “B.”<br>
Frankly, it’s more likely to hurt you with MIT if they get the sense you are self-conscious about grades. </p>

<p>Still, my original point stands. I thought you had to submit all transcripts from high school, community college, and universities. Ask your guidance counselor, or MIT admissions.</p>

6

<p>The OP was a 15-16 year old high school sophomore taking a college course and by most accounts, a difficult one. I personally see no shame in a B. He will be 2-3 years older and more educated when he begins college. I don’t expect that this grade will be held against him in anyway, although obviously an A would be better.</p>

<p>You do have to submit a transcript of any college credits earned, so it is a moot point. They will know what your grade was.</p>

7

<p>MIT people have a good idea whether the specific course you took is hard or easy. </p>

<p>It is your interest in physics that matters to them and not that you scored a B.</p>

8

<p>Thanks a lot for everybody again, I would like to indicate that my GPA is 5.0/5.0 -of course without Harvard Summer School- I didn’t do any AP courses, but I’m doing IB and my high level courses are Physics and Mathematics… I do great on them, actually on every high-school course.
However, this “B” thing really made me self-conscious. My SAT physics subject test is also 800. I hope they won’t kill my app because of that B…</p>

9

<p>I wouldn’t worry so much about it. I would bet that MIT admissions is familiar with the environment at the summer school at Harvard and will understand the context of the grade. I don’t think they will assume you got an “A” if you don’t put the grade down - they’ll probably think that you got a grade you didn’t want to disclose. </p>

<p>I would just mark down the grade with all your other ones if you’re planning on putting this in the coursework section of the application. It won’t be factored into your GPA if you didn’t take it for high school credit. If you’re not putting it in coursework, and only in summer activities or something, then you could leave off the grade probably and just say something like “Harvard Summer School College Physics Class” and list the dates.</p>

10

<p>MIT admits students with multiple B’s in fairly ordinary high school science and math courses. Their admissions philosophy is different from what you might expect. The best advice I can give you, atomicmango, is to look through the results threads from recent years. You will see quite a few students with exceptional qualifications in terms of SAT I and II scores, AP scores, math competitions, and GPA being declined (even with some pretty strong extra-curriculars), while others that you might not expect to be admitted, are admitted. MIT admits students who then fail freshman physics in the fall, at MIT. I doubt that the MIT physics course is significantly harder than the Harvard course.</p>

11

<p>Ok, thanks a lot for your reply, but so what does, in your opinion makes someone into MIT?</p>

12

<p>atomicmango, I think that you can form as good a hypothesis about that as I can. I do suggest that you look through several years of results threads for MIT on CC. You can also read the admissions blogs, and posts by people affiliated with MIT admissions, to see how they tend to view things.</p>

<p>Two pieces of advice I can give you, though:

  1. Don’t put too much stress on the 5.0/5.0. That will be interpreted as a sign of an unhealthy obsession with grades. I am serious that MIT admits students with multiple B’s in quite ordinary science/math courses. If I were in charge of admissions, I would do that only in the most exceptional of circumstances (I could imagine a few), but they seem to do it rather often, in my opinion.
  2. If they ask you to describe a situation in which you have failed, it is a bad idea to say that you failed to become the AP Scholar for your state, or the Siemens scholar for your state. They are trying to see whether you are resilient enough to deal with a genuine setback, not looking for non-failures cloaked as failures.</p>
13

<p>Thanks a lot! Actually it made me feel a lot more comfortable. I also do not live in US… But I’m not international either</p>

14

<p>I don’t want to be the bearer of depressing news, atomicmango, but I think you should look through the results threads carefully, to see the statistics of the students who were rejected, as well as those who were admitted. In particular, I’d suggest looking for piccolojr and hopelesslydevote. I think you will find them in the results thread for 2008, but look around.</p>

<p>It is easy to fall into the trap of thinking that your qualifications are much better than those of many students who were admitted, and therefore you will be admitted. You cannot count on this. MIT admissions has the philosophy that no one deserves to be admitted to MIT. I think this is incorrect, actually. However, they really believe it. You should ponder what it implies.</p>

15

<p>How do you know that philosophy? If they admit people with Bs on science or math courses, then those guys with Bs don’t deserve either. It doesn’t make sense, there is contradiction</p>

16

<p>I’ve been reading the MIT site for a long time (notice my Join Date). I am a parent. A number of my friends’ children have applied to MIT and I have heard of their outcomes.</p>

<p>However, the reason that I know that they think that “no one deserves to be admitted to MIT” is that people affiliated with admissions often state that, in writing. You can find it in the MIT forum.</p>

<p>What they mean is: There is no application package, no matter how good it is, that is sufficient to mean that the student must be admitted, in their eyes. This view has led to some satirical remarks. Ben Golub, a student who served on the admissions committee at Caltech, once posted, “How about Nobel Prize? Nobel Prize enuf?” I don’t agree with Golub’s viewpoints on everything (most notably affirmative action–since he is grad-student age now, he hasn’t had a lot of time to accumulate experiences), but in this particular regard, I think he’s right.</p>

<p>There is no contradiction. Of course, the guys with the B’s don’t “deserve” admission either. That is the meaning of “no one” (i.e., there does not exist x, such that x deserves to be admitted to MIT).</p>

<p>There is another thread running currently, about academic stars and MIT admissions. You’ll notice that they admit about half of the students they rate as academic stars, but they do mark the folders as “academic stars.” If you think about the process operating in the admissions office, in my opinion, they are marking the folders to ensure that they admit a sufficient number of academic stars. In my opinion (again) this almost certainly means that their admissions process does not automatically lead to the conclusion that academic stars are admitted.</p>

<p>On the academic stars thread, Mikalye (an MIT interviewer) remarks that the interview can be a stumbling block, and of course it can. He gives an instance of a student who appeared to have no friends and to devote every waking hour to science. (Nevermind that in a scientific career, you may have long stretches where you do devote every waking hour to science.) I think this is misleading, though, because MIT also rejects academic stars who are normal, socially, and likeable, I suspect.</p>

<p>If you are looking for a university that admits based on scientific promise alone, I suggest Caltech. The environment there is not for everyone, but the scientific education is excellent, for those who fit into that environment. You might also look at Cambridge or Oxford (you can only apply to one or the other of those).</p>

17

<p>In case it is not clear from the previous message, I support affirmative action, and the last I knew, Ben Golub still did not (although perhaps his views have changed, now).</p>

18

<p>OK, I got your point but what about the ones wait-listed?</p>

19

<p>I am not sure that I understand your question in post #18, atomicmango. Could you please clarify?</p>

20

<p>So many people accepted their admission this year that MIT dropped their entire waitlist.</p>

<p>MIT is a tough admission and not predictable whatsoever.</p>