Hi CC,
I attended RSI this year (great experience), and am applying EA to MIT this fall. However,I don’t think I’m a strong candidate in terms of other things (average GPA and SAT, my ECs are not so great etc). Does RSI guarantee you a spot in MIT? I mean, how much of an advantage would it give me over someone who might deserve it more than I do?
Not guaranteed, but if you can write about the experience in a persuasive and impactful way, it might sway your application in favor of someone who might be marginally more deserving.
Nothing guarantees you a spot at MIT.
We’ll know if you went to RSI. It can be a subject of your essays if you feel like it gives you the best source material for any given prompt. Or it could not if you want to write about other stuff. Up to you.
If you attended RSI it is a great honor. You didn’t get in because you are average. Personally I always thought that RSI was primarily a recruiting tool for MIT. If I were you I would apply early to the school at the other end of Mass Avenue(Harvard) or Stanford
@collegedad13 RSI is hosted but not operated by MIT, and we do not take a majority (or even a plurality, I think) of their alumni. It’s pretty well spread across the Ivies, Harvard, Stanford, and the flagship publics.
@mitchris You are mistaken. The math portion is run by the MIT math department
https://math.mit.edu/research/highschool/rsi/index.php.
The website says that RSI is run by CEE and MIT. They use MIT addresses
It is a recruiting device used by MIT.
One thing I have noticed is that the percentage of women is very small at RSI and the amount of white women is almost non existent
@collegedad13 I believe @MITChris works for the MIT admissions office … I would trust what he has to say about the RSI-MIT relationship.
@MITChris is probably most qualified to speak about this, but from anecdotal experience in the past few batches about half of RSI kids end up attending MIT. The rest mostly matriculate at Harvard, with some going to Stanford, Yale and Princeton, among other colleges.
This is a disproportionately high rate, but I don’t think anyone can really determine if its RSI that got them in, or if it was because they were already an incredibly high achieving group of students to begin with.
The question ‘how much of an advantage would it give me over someone who might deserve it more than I do’ seems to imply that you don’t feel that the work you did at RSI deserves any value. The Ad Coms might not admit you just because they see ‘RSI’ on your app, but because they might feel your participation indicates that you are intellectually curious or capable. How much of an edge this gives you is probably a question even the admissions committee cannot answer.
Even if I were not a moderator on this site, I would trust any answers given by @MITChris .
@skieurope The MIT math website has a section on RSI and says the following
“The MIT Mathematics Department Faculty Advisors for RSI, Professor David Jerison and Professor Ankur Moitra, match each student with a mathematics graduate student mentor with compatible interests. The graduate student mentor devises a research project, often in consultation with an MIT faculty advisor. The graduate student then meets with each of his/her mentees each weekday during the RSI program. Dr. Slava Gerovitch is the program director.”
About Dr. Gerovitch MIT refers to the RSI program as the “Math Departments RSI” as follows
"Dr. Gerovitch co-founded MIT PRIMES (Program for Research in Mathematics, Engineering and Science) in 2010 and has served as program director for the Math Department’s RSI and SPUR summer programs since 2012, and DRP and UROP+ programs since 2014. He has been lecturing at MIT since 1999. His most recent class is Cultural History of Mathematics. "
None of that is inconsistent with what I said; that CEE runs RSI, and recruits mentors from many places, including (but not limited to) MIT. It is distinct from PRIMES which is entirely run/funded/hosted by our math department. CEE does host a college night that I speak at along with reps from 18 other colleges. And, having looked at the data, I know that we do not enroll a majority of RSI alumni; maybe we occasionally hit a plurality.
RSI is a great program that identifies and develops exceptional young researchers. We are happy that it is hosted at MIT and that many RSI alumni have chosen to apply to / attend MIT. In my view, framing RSI as a recruitment tool by MIT is inaccurate and actually diminishes the independent excellence of the program. I don’t think we substantively disagree but this is an important point I want to make precisely because these distinctions matter when you’re setting expectations about enrichment programs.
@MITChris Could it be argued that enrichment programs affiliated with MIT (RSI, Launch, MITES, etc) admit people with similar traits that MIT looks for? This would partially explain why there are many people from programs like RSI accepted to MIT.
For example, Launch “looks for candidates who show initiative, action-orientation…”. This sounds awfully similar to people who are a good fit for MIT.
Sometimes! I talk with those programs frequently. They select students independently of our process and quite consciously do not align their selection criteria with ours. However, they do sometimes end up selecting students who are also well-matched to MIT, and developing talent that we’d like to have among our undergraduate pool.
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