Hello,
This is a question which may have been asked before, but is still pretty concerning . Does MIT accept international students who do not have awards from national or international Olympiads , supposing the rest of the application is okay?Is there any student of this situation through the years who has been admitted?
Thank you.
Yes
It’s not likely. Think about it. MIT has an admissions rate of only 8% (which means that many people who have 2300+ SATs, 4.0+ GPAs, and tons of extracurrculars (olympiads, AIME tests etc) will be rejected. But the international students admissions rate is only 3%. Refer to http://mitadmissions.org/apply/process/stats, only 119 students were taken out of nearly 4000. More than 100 (probably more than 1000) international students have many awards, amazing stats and amazing essays. At this level, it’s about making yourself stand out, and these students may overwhelm an application that has none of these things.
That being said, you never know who MIT will accept. There’s a luck factor involved. I’d say not to give up hope. You never know if you work hard.
“through the years”, yes,
currently? Not really.
This comes up a lot and its just not true that you need to have a bunch of Olympiads and international awards. It really truly is not true. I am an international regional chair of the MIT educational council, that group of alumni who interview prospective applicants, and I eventually get to meet a majority of the admitted students from my international region, and I can assure you that most of the admitted students do not have these things. They do have other ways of demonstrating the match between themselves and MIT (see http://mitadmissions.org/apply/process/match). Winning awards is great, but it is not a requirement for admission in any way.
@Mikalye thank you for your answer! There are other students in my country who I know that have many awards (even international ones) and I don’t have that much ,that’s why it is a bit concerning, but I do have other things to demonstrate the match between me and MIT. Thanks again.
Off the top of my head, I’d say that maybe half of the international students we admitted last year had some level of distinction in Olympiads and half didn’t. It might be more like 60/40, but the bottom line is no, you don’t have to have a medal to be admitted to MIT as an international student.