You said last year’s was your school’s salutatorian. I don’t think I would call that “subpar” or lacking in academic credentials.
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Really, so if they play sports but not the best after putting the time and effort in it doesn’t count?
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Well, that doesn’t end up satisfying half of what I said. Anyway, have fun with the rest of your application results, your son sounds like a smart kid. I wish you the best.
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How many hours do you think varsity athletes spend on their sport and still get grades. Regardless of the fact that you don’t respect other’s extracurricular activities, you could realize the time commitment it takes to get good at anything. Does playing a flute get you a grade or an SAT - no but it is certainly a desirable talent that takes years of energy to get good at. Besides that, you don’t know their essays or what major they applied to. You shouldn’t disrespect activities outside of the classroom the schools dont.
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While I disagree with the tone of the main poster in this recent line of discussion, it’s valid to question whether MIT is starting to fall into the same pattern as it’s Cambridge neighbor with respect to accepting athletes.
My daughter was a recruited athlete, 36 ACT, 5’s on AP’s, published research etc. Super nice kid and didn’t get a good vibe from some (not all) of the other athletes at the official visit. Just backstabby, mean girl behavior that you see a lot in highly competitive peer groups but not something she likes to be around. Based on the conversations in the group chat everyone knew who the scholar athletes were and who were the athlete scholars and you can guess how it turned out.
In the end she has great options so far, UChicago and the actual best STEM school on the other side of the country and this is only anecdotal evidence. But maybe as valid as the handpicked data point of GPA for athletes (which isn’t controlled for choice of major). MIT admissions isn’t perfect and has their institutional requirements to satisfy too. Accepting strong athletes who meet the minimum (high) standards to cut it at MIT is certainly one of them.
Good luck to all!
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That’s what the official word is, but based on personal experience it’s not true at least for the high profile sports. Coaches submit a ranked list and the ranking can weigh heavily with admissions.
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Applications are not a huge money maker for these top colleges. Their endowments are huge. They waive fees, in some cases like Harvard for anyone who indicates they want the fee waived.
They pour a lot of resources into reviewing the applications.
MIT and similar do not need your $80.
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Most sports at most colleges are not money makers for the college. Only a small number of top football and basketball programs turn a profit and mostly those programs are paying for other sports that do not.
So my anecdotal evidence is that parents whose kids got into MIT are satisfied with the admissions process and feel it works fine and parents whose kids didn’t get in aren’t.
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Ok…so, you think MIT first decides which football players they admit…then…basketball is next? When do they make sure they admit enough baseball players? Or oboe and French horn players? Or enough kids interested in entrepreneurship? Or research? When do they check to make sure they have enough people who love to write? Enough people interested in the non-profit sector?
I am not at all suggesting that MIT is blind to athletic talent.
I am questioning the idea that first the admissions committee lets in enough football players, then fills the rest of the class.
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Have you ever seen Legally Blonde? You know the part where Elle first meets all her peers at Harvard and they go around the circle listing all of their accomplishments? One of the guys says he spent his summer “de-worming orphans in Africa.” So the joke in our household has always been you have to be “deworming orphans” in order to get into such schools.
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Move on from personal jabs folks. Just deleted a bunch of posts. If your kid didn’t get in, don’t pick fights with others. And don’t side track this thread with baiting people either. If bickering continues, the thread will be put on slow mode. Thanks for cooperating.
Btw, MIT didn’t force anyone to apply. Sour grapes are not very palatable.
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That made me laugh. I went to the same law school as Elle Woods straight out of undergrad. In my first class at HLS, I turned to the student next to me to introduce myself. After telling him my name and stating that I just graduated from a certain state university, he introduced himself and told me he just left the White House Economic Council to run for congress (but lost so he went to law school). I turned to my other side and introduced myself and said something about the “kids” in our class (since I still thought of myself as a kid at 22 and never took myself too seriously). My classmate corrected me sternly as “she was from Stanford and a WOMAN, not a kid.”
I had to take a deep breath at that point.
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Just another perspective…the one college where my kid was deferred and later withdrew from consideration, we found the stats comforting. I am sure there are those who fall into both groups, not sure what the percentage is of “never tell me the odds” versus our perspective …but just putting that out there.
Even before my kid was admitted to MIT, we appreciated how transparent they are with various statistics.
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I’ve read articles that college sports bring in huge amounts of money. And I’m sure a few million in application fees doesn’t hurt either.
I love it.
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I think this is a fair and insightful assessment in general, and probably applicable to admissions at all highly selective universities. 
At the same time, we appreciated how transparent MIT is with its stats and process even well before my kid applied.
And there are two universities where we felt the process was even more of a “black box” than at most…she was admitted to one and deferred at the other (and then withdrew) and we still feel the same way about both.
And there have been programs and scholarships where my kid was denied or waitlisted or a finalist but not ultimately successful and we have left with overall positive feelings about the process—even if the rejection still stings a bit.
So, while I think obviously “getting in” is likely to feel better than than “not getting in,” we can still reflect on the flaws and strengths of the “holistic” admissions process, both in general and at any given highly-selective institution, despite the outcome.
What I do not think is productive is to try to point any one applicant and pretend we know exactly why that person got in or not when we are not privy to their letters of recommendation, essays, interviews, their full record of activities, nor were we present at the admissions committee when their application was discussed.
You might know a kid’s SAT score and their rank in class and some of the more visible things they do at the school. But that is not a complete picture.
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nemesis is right.
I’ve blogged about this many times (see e.g. The Difficulty With Data | MIT Admissions), but the key issue with public interpretation of decisions is essentially one of salience and (subsequently) fundamental attribution error, in the language of behavioral economics.
There are public attributes of applicant A that people can see and evaluate. Based on those public attributes, they make inferences about what we select for. However, we see very different information in the application, and we also have a different interpretive context (what do we need in this particular incoming class for this particular institution). So these inferences are often incomplete, and at worst even directionally wrong. As I sometimes joke, sometimes I see students post to reddit that they got into MIT because of their essays (highly salient), when in fact I know they got in despite their essays…
If you read these two pages:
What I think/hope you would get is: we select for students who have (empirically, demonstrated) strong measures of academic preparation for MIT, and who possess certain intrinsic motivations and interests and drives that express well in the MIT environment. Possessing these two attributes is necessary but not sufficient for selection because there are way more students in our applicant pool with both attributes than we can admit with a target class size of 1,100 students per year. And so the work we did from August 25th to March 14th was read all those files, construct various permutations/combinations of the class, and arrive at the one we felt was best given all the various parameters and possibilities.
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