<p>anyone here transferred to MIT? What’s the statistics for MIT transfer admission? </p>
<p>I have a few questions on transferring to MIT.</p>
<li><p>I took the SAT 1 in high school when there was no written test, so the highest anyone could get was 1600. Now the new SAT is out of 2400. Do I have to retake the SAT to transfer to MIT or is my old score sufficient?</p></li>
<li><p>About how much weight does MIT give to high school grades in the decision making progress if the candidates have three or four college terms under his belt?</p></li>
<li><p>I remember the admission rate for transfers is extremely low for MIT. Is it because the space is extremely limited or because most candidates simply don’t fit MIT’s transfer profile? Also, are international students considered along with domestic students or are they separate?</p></li>
</ol>
<ol>
<li><p>It reads to me that you have to take the SAT again unless you took the SAT II test in writing (which no longer exists).</p></li>
<li><p>No idea, and given the extremely small pool of transfers, then you are unlikely to get enough data to draw meaningful conclusions. I imagine that most recent result matter a lot more in the same way that junior/senior high school grades matter more than freshman high school grades.</p></li>
<li><p>International students can only transfer in in the fall. US applicants can transfer in the fall or spring. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>I'm not transferring (freshman applicant), but I did a bit of reading about it (had initially considered trying for an 'easier' college and shifting to MIT) -- I think the acceptance rate is fantastically low mostly because not many kids drop out within the four years, so there aren't a lot of spaces for transfer students.</p>
<p>Last year there were 11 transfer students admitted from a pool of 231; the year before that, 6 were admitted from a pool of 302 (Common</a> Data Set). Noldo is correct that few transfers are admitted because few students open up spots by leaving MIT.</p>
<p>It's difficult to suss out the importance of various factors, particularly because it is so difficult to be admitted as a transfer student in the first place. I think the best course of action might be to assume that everything matters.</p>
<p>Molliebatmit, on that link you provided, MIT seems to answer "3.5" for "what's the minimum required GPA for transfer students". I thought there are no strict cutoffs for GPAs? MIT admission officers always say everything is looked in "context".</p>
<p>Do they mean most applicants have GPA of 3.5 or above? But that doesn't mean someone with a 3.45 is automatically rejected I'm assuming.</p>
<p>From the Transfer link Mikalye provided above, one item reads
[quote]
There is no minimum required GPA. However, competitive applicants have a GPA of 3.5 or above, and mostly "A"s in mathematics and science courses.
[/quote]
So there's your answer. They're telling you they won't instantly throw out a transfer application with less than 3.5 GPA, but also hinting strongly that applicants who are more likely to be successful have GPAs of 3.5 or better. In such an ultra-competitive pool, it's probably best to be considered a "competitive applicant". It is also quite probable that transfer applicants are evaluated differently from freshman applicants.</p>
<p>While I understand the number of transfer spots are limited due to limited number of spaces, I somehow doubt there is a "fixed number" that the admission office will only admit each year. For example, I can't imagine the admission office say, "ok, we only have 12 spots this year so we are going to only chose 12 people from however many applications we get". </p>
<p>I think the admission office simply put the standards very high so that the number of qualifiers happens to come out to be around 5% of the applicants pool per year, for example, like 12 or 13 people out of 250. But to the admission office it doesn't really make a difference if they acceptance 12 or 13 people, or does it?</p>
<p>I personally know six transfer students which, according to those statistics, counts as a lot. I can tell you these people have one thing in common: they're really, really, awesome. Not in the "4.0/national award/etc" sense (though quite probably so), but in the sense that they are extremely great people I love hanging out with. I have to give my kudos to the people in transfer admissions, they really manage to find people who fit here and are a blast to have around.</p>
<p>
[quote]
While I understand the number of transfer spots are limited due to limited number of spaces, I somehow doubt there is a "fixed number" that the admission office will only admit each year.
[/quote]
I don't know that they're always admitting exactly the number of transfers they can. However, several of the last few classes at MIT have overenrolled -- the admissions officers underpredicted how many of them would enroll as freshmen. This is important at MIT because all freshmen must live on campus and all students are guaranteed housing all four years, so as you might imagine, with overenrolled classes, you do start pushing the margin of the number of students MIT can actually accomodate. The number of beds on campus is a limited quantity.</p>
<p>I really do think there is a ceiling on the number of transfers MIT can admit, that it depends both on the overenrollment of current classes and the number of students who transferred out, and that it is generally a very small number.</p>
<p>I do not want to unwillingly identify them on a message board, suffice it to say that some are and some aren't. They are all extraordinary people, not necessarily extraordinarily smart.</p>