<p>I was not admitted today. Plan B is graduate school. What criteria does MIT use for admitting grad students? I believe that the reason I didn't get into MIT this time around is because I didn't know about doing a bunch of extracurricular activities. My test scores were not the problem. What kinds of things should I do while I'm in college. If it matters, I'm going to the University of Michigan.</p>
<p>What will your major be?</p>
<p>The major admissions criteria for science PhD programs are research experience and letters of recommendation. It's important to keep your GPA up and to have a good GRE score (especially on the math section), but research experience and letters of recommendation are the factors that will get you admitted.</p>
<p>I know less about engineering master's programs, although letters of recommendation will still play a major role. I think that work experience, whether through internships or academic research, is pretty important.</p>
<p>In either case, extracurriculars unrelated to your field will be completely irrelevant for graduate school admissions. Most applications don't even have a place to list them.</p>