I think the coaches do have a big impact. Our town’s high school has only gotten 3 kids into MIT in the past 5 years, and all three were recruited athletes. Each year, we have about 10 people apply. So we have an approximately 6% acceptance rate, but 100% of the acceptances are recruits.
That said, all three were academic superstars as well (1550-1600 SAT, 10+APs, straight As in hardest courses available, and tons of ECs). But we have had many people get into Harvard or Yale or Caltech who got rejected from MIT. It seems obvious that MIT is choosing between many extremely qualified candidates, and uses the coach’s recommendation as a tie-breaker. in the MIT class of 2024, we had a clear case, where a candidate got into Caltech, Harvard, etc., and was rejected by MIT while in the same graduating class, a recruited athlete got in. He was also very qualified, but aside from sports, I’d have bet 100:1 that the decision would have gone the other way.
The basic issue is that MIT has far more “qualified” applicants than slots. By qualified I mean that the kids have grades, the curriculum, test scores, and ECs that are at least average vs. the admitted MIT students. Hence, there are other factors that come into play such as being recruited, being part of an underrepresented group, being from an unusual location, or having an unusual life story or circumstance. All of those non-academic factors play a role, and, in a sense, mean that MIT is probably rejecting a lot of people with 1600 SATs, straight As, published research, etc.
I’d be interested in learning about any data you have to support that assertion. Yes, my son’s coach said he had almost no pull, but probably 1/2 of the kids on his recruited list got accepted, and all of the kids (~3) at the top of the list got in as far as I can tell. Considering that the coach did very little screening of my son aside from his SATs and his sports, it sort of defies all odds that, with an acceptance rate of 4% at MIT, 1/2 of the kids would get in.
I am not arguing that academic standards are lowered for athletes, I am arguing that admissions takes into account the coaches’ recommendations and many kids get in because of the coach that would have gotten rejected had they not been recruited.
It, of course, is not like Amherst where the coaches probably have a 90% success rate at getting the kids that they want, but I am confident that admission rates are much higher for highly recruited athletes at MIT than they are for the general candidate pool, even controlling for other factors. Actually, controlling for the other factors may even make it more true: MIT athletes are, I believe, disproportionately white, rich, and from areas already well-represented at MIT. They also tend to have fewer other ECs as far as I can tell (based on reading the bios online.
My data is largely anecdotal, but it is at least something. I also have read about other MIT coaches saying that they have admit rates of 1/3-1/2. Do you have some inside data from MIT that suggests that MIT athletes have an equally hard time getting in as do non-athletes?
I know that MIT takes the stance that athletes do not have an advantage. It is in their interest to maintain that stance. Similarly, MIT and many other schools make the same claim about underrepresented groups. I’d like to see the data to support it.
Go look at the team pages for every sport at MIT. Read the bios. Ask the coaches what percent of their recruits get in. Is it 4%? Does the football team submit 300 names to admissions to get 12 recruits?
The MIT website specifically says that if you are a student athlete the coach “may choose to” advocate for you “depending on your contribution” in the admissions process - and if you are a highly recruited high stats athlete I am sure that gives you an advantage. Does MIT recruit athletes? | MIT Admissions The website also specifically says they consider the coaches support along with the rest of your application. Seems pretty cut and dried to me! Coaches advocating for athletes is how admission preferences for athletes work.
I did not say that the plural of anecdote is data. Data can be anecdotal. Is that a piece of information that you want to protect the CC readers from hearing?
I like how you edited out my response to you, but you did not edit out your own offensive response to me.
I would agree as well that RA enjoys an advantage even at schools like MIT though the school may not advertise as such. The couches would usually let it be known that the applicant would receive the RA advantage by asking him/her to apply in EA round.
I think for high stats kids without a top 20 national/international accomplishment its a tough year. Schools like MIT could finally throw away some strict benchmarks they had to use every year and admit one or two classes that may resemble those of HYPS.
Looking at admission rates for athletic recruits at the elite universities is terribly misleading. At the Ivies and places like Washington University St. Louis and Carnegie Mellon, recruited athletes receive “likely letters” or equivalent near-guarantees of admission. Those places have 90%+ admission rates for recruited athletes because that is their system. The kids who are not “likely” to get in do not apply, so the rate is inflated.
MIT does not offer “likely letters,” so most of its applicants with a coach’s support have walked away from guaranteed admissions at Ivy and similar colleges for the chance of admission at MIT. That is a much greater commitment to MIT than non-athletes who skip binding early decision at their second choice college. Slightly different versions of “I can’t promise anything” are what MIT coaches have to say because all of the student athletes who give up other exceptional opportunities for the chance at MIT will not get in.
All of the elite admissions offices say they are looking for “excellence.” Regardless of the college, coaches help admissions identify excellence in student athletes. Applicants ranked by a coach have been informally assigned a “relative excellence” score. So, support from MIT coaches is obviously helpful and the higher the applicant is ranked on the coach’s preference list the better.
Academically talented athletes can be a great addition to MIT for many reasons, including that the institute chooses to be a one-stop-shop for both rocket scientists and astronauts. There is no reason they should not start working together in college.
Now commit day is over, do you have any data how many admitted kids enrolled/committed to MIT? If you do, do you mind share? What’s the yield rate for MIT this year?
Sure.
I’ve been watching the stats over the last week-ish or so.
Currently the number of commits is at 1086 as of Monday May 10, 2021.
According to the official blog post, they admitted 1340, so the current yield is 81% (similar to last year).
I do not know if the procedure is to allow people who plan to delay entry (traditional gap year) to remain on the list for a bit or not.
I do know that the people who did delay entry from last year are NOT included in the 1086 (i.e., somewhere around 65-75ish), and I don’t know how many will do two gap years due to COVID.
Other notes.
There are currently four from Canada.
My highly educated guess of who would get admitted was admitted (no surprise here).
On my quora account, I mentioned in one of my answers I think I believe that one spot from Canada is spoken for.
He was accepted and committed. (Hint: he has four IMO medals including a gold last year and ranked number four in the world, he’s at Exeter, he’s been dominating in the post-Victor Rong/William Zhao era in Canadian math contests.) (And both of those guys are at MIT.)
Just thought to update this that after all of the angst of huge application pool for 2025 and not being able to take SATs, D25 ended up at Stanford. Last application to come back and so out of the blue - just so funny how life works. It came down to Penn, UVA with the Jeff scholarship, and Stanford (and it took her until the deadline to commit - v. hard decision.) Also rejected from Tufts, Northeastern, Princeton, Yale, and WL at Williams, Brown, Columbia, Cornell, U Chicago, Duke. Went and won a big Intel award in the spring, too late to submit for colleges but it totally worked out for the best!