<p>I also had a lot of fun writing the “What do you want to study and why” essays.
I just had soooooo many things to say. I nearly cried when I had to cut down my awesome 350 words-long essay to a 150 words-long one.
At least, the common app allows you to had these kind of essays on a separate page, with no word limit.</p>
<p>I think I’m going to send the mid year report around the deadline. I won’t have my second trimester grades until after the deadline, so it’s not like I’m waiting for them or anything, but every day I wake up and say “Oh, that idea would be cool to add to the mid year report”. Since the form doesn’t have a “save” button, I’m writing everything down on a word document.
I’m also trying to find the best joke for the admissions officers (out of curiosity : what was yours ? I’m thinking of a few jokes my engineering teacher told me)</p>
<p>What was the hardest essay to write ?
I think it was MIT’s “personality” essay.
I don’t like talking about myself so much. Something like “yeah I’m creative or funny or friendly” sounds a bit pretentious to me.</p>
<p>I loved my short answer on the common app for “one of your activities” - I wrote about my kite surfing in a very descriptive style. I also really enjoyed the UChicago essay prompts - though I actually couldn’t decide on what I wanted to write for them, so I took my Princeton essay (taking a favourite quote, describe an event or situation of how your morals/beliefs had been effected - something like that). I took a quote from the book “Tuesdays with Morrie” about how one should go about living their life (which I feel I do, and so appealed to me as a quote).</p>
<p>Hardest essay for me was my cultural background… I’m South African but born in post Apartheid (well a year before anyway) and grew up on an island with a mixture of chinese, indians, french and creoles… and ancestrally, my family was mostly from the british isles… I really had no idea what to say apart from the obvious being that I can bring a very international outlook haha! I might not have completely understood the question though, but I sincerely couldn’t see how I could answer.
Oh, and the “how you dealt with a moral/ethical dilemma that you have faced” for I think Stanford or CalTech… I only had one example and had to word it just right, other than that I can’t recall any relevant examples.</p>
<p>I couldn’t write my MIT and stanford essays in a descriptive style mostly because of its strict word limits. I had to write key ideas and organizing sentences, and that made the words up to 150/ 250s respectively…</p>
<p>I am Vietnamese, but I have lived in Korea for 3 years. I don’t know whether the admission committee would consider me as an applicant from Vietnam or S.Korea. I am really concerned about this, because I believe MIT also have quotas.</p>
<p>If they have quotas, they’re probably not country-specific quotas (e.g. different quota if you come from china or [insert small country name with little to no applicants]), nor are they very strict : they won’t say “Ok, we need exaclty 60% of asians, 13% europeans, etc.” but probably something like “guys, there are also applicants from [insert region name] ! Our admission pool should be a bit more diverse…” .
So I don’t think your S.Korea/Vietnam thing will be a concern. Anyways, if you’re in S.Korea for only 3 years, you don’t hold the korean citizenship, do you ? They will probably consider you as Vietnamese, then (but again, it’s not likely to have an impact).</p>
<p>The citizenship status is only intersting to see the student’s cultural background. I mean, if you are from India/Korea/China, admissions officers may think that you’re not very enthousiastic about what you want to study, but you want to study it because you were molded for it (it’s common in India… I think parents expectations are very high there), whereas if you come from middle of nowhere (like some small country in central Africa), admissions officers will think that you learned about MIT because of your interest in the field you want to study (as it’s not so common to apply to an american university coming from such countries where kids are expected to work for their family, I guess) and that would probably change your odds of gettig admitted (I think they would rather admit someone from polynesia than one from India, all stats/ECs/Essays beeing the same)</p>
<p>Thanks for spamming everywhere with your question.
I don’t know anything about your national defense academy (On what basis are you selected? Your willingness to serve your country or your academic results?) so I can’t help you. I think that if it’s some sort of university, it will not influence your chances a lot… I mean, it’s not because you were admitted to Harvard that MIT/Stanford/Yale is going to admit you, even if it means you were able to survive an extremely low admission rate (actually, I guess that Harvard admits trying to apply elsewhere are going to be more successful, but not because they were admitted to Harvard, more because that they were probably admitted due to their awesome stats/dedication to a field of study, so they will be more competitive than some other applicants. But remember, writing in your app “Guys guys admit me to MIT I was admitted to Harvard/Yale/Stanford omg omg I’m so cool” will probably not help you in any way !!!).</p>
<p>Then, if selection to your NDA is based on a sort of national exam (in France we have a specific kind of exam called “Concours”, where the objective is to be among the firsts students, not to get a good grade [i.e., you can have 3.03/20 and passing the Concours, since everyone else scored 3.02/20]. The top X students are then admitted to the university [actually they are not universities but “Grandes Ecoles”, a french specific kind of university], so getting admitted is a proof that you’re an academic killer [even if you maybe got .01 point more than an other applicant because you were lucky and he was sick, which happens very very often]), then it can help to say “I achieved to be among the top 300 in this exam !”. But I don’t think that’s the case, since “Concours” are really french-specific (it’s also really stupid… All your future depends on one exam you can’t retake, and if you’re like sick/unlucky you get rejected…)</p>
<p>Hope that helps, now please avoid posting everywhere/PM-ing everyone with the same question (and use ponctuation! It makes messages more readable) + it’s not really useful to PM me a question 5s after you wrote the exact same question here… Just give me some time to answer!</p>
<p>Sorry henabou but i was just asking the question
I actually tried the exam and they have a good b.tech program and i want to do mech. Engg. But in india they give subjects and we dont have the freedom of choosing our own subjects thats why i wanted to ask i never meant to spam …
And they have a written exam then 5 day interview of physical psychological tests and whatsover and i did all this to study engineering thought would be given mechanical … Bt instead i was given electrical… So i was asking if it’s a worthy achievment to mention in the form or should i let this one slide …
Srry gain
Thnks </p>
<p>Getting admitted to an institution doesn’t make you awesome, you’re admitted to an institution BECAUSE you’re awesome. Simples. As it says on one MIT blog: no single part of your application will qualify or disqualify you. So it really is up to you, it won’t make or break you!</p>
<p>@laituan245, you will be considered as a Vietnamese applicant as long as you hold Vietnamese citizenship. I’m a Korean student studying in Canada over 4 years, and I applied to universities as a Korean applicant. I do think other Ivys have certain quota for each country which can be flexible to a certain extend. But I don’t think MIT has the quota for individual countries. It makes sense if we look at the MIT undergraduate international student’s nationality. There are lot of Chinese/Korean/ Indian international students whereas some countries have only 1 or no students at all. So I think all MIT international applicants compete against each other while Ivy international applicants compete within applicant pools from their country.</p>
<p>I’ve checked out Harvard’s international students statistic, and the number of Chinese/Korean students remained constant. The number of enrolled Korean student for Harvard undergraduate has been about 10 to 11 every year.</p>
<p>Is there any scholarship for ap exams as the cost of an ap exam in india is too much. Is there any alternative , or anything pls do tell…
Thnks </p>
<p>i heard this from my counselor…most US universities are reaching to applicants whom they had earlier invaded,destroyed etc… She told me that students from places like Vietnam had excellent chances…Have u guys heard this anywhere??</p>
<p>to quiverfox: Hi, I’m Vietnamese and I’m applying to MIT this year. I don’t think the fact that US invaded my country before would increase any chance for my country’s applicants. But it’s true that many students in my country are excellent (IMO/IPho Gold Medalist, 2300+ SAT, etc.). Like others, Vietnamese students must work hard to be admitted to MIT.</p>
(out of curiosity : what was yours ? I’m thinking of a few jokes my engineering teacher told me)</p>