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<p>The short answer is that they don’t care. If one year there were no chemistry majors obviously something would be seriously wrong and admissions might look at what they’re doing, but for somewhat odd majors like linguistics or ocean engineering they don’t expect to have someone every year. </p>
<p>If recognized academic talent were represented as a vector which can be directed in any number of directions (fields), MIT bases its decision on the magnitude of the vector. I think that’s the right strategy.</p>
<p>Because if they didn’t, high school students would start interning at ship-building companies, then majoring in ocean engineering and going to Wall Street (or maybe not even majoring in ocean engineering.) It’s the Heisenberg Principle of admissions; if people think admissions is looking for something, a lot of people will become that until they get in (and then go back to what they were before.)</p>