<p>which is really a statement i should just autopopulate into my CC quick reply box.</p>
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<p>I completely agree with this, and it will probably be true even as an undergraduate. I’ve been rejected from 11 different programs/organizations since I got to MIT, and I’m only a sophomore.</p>
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<p>And then there are job applications. I know several people, now quite successful, who sent out over 100 applications before landing their first job. One of them is my husband, who saved every rejection letter. Those letters are more than 30 years old now. I think he keeps them as a sort of souvenir, a reminder of the importance of persistence.</p>
<p>Think about how you’ll move forward. It’s a good time to re-evaluate your entire application and be thoughtful about the match between you and each of the schools to which you will apply. </p>
<p>I’ve read through the posts and am impressed with the level of talent and accomplishment of everyone here. It may be difficult to believe it right now, but each of you will find a school where you will be very happy, even if it’s not MIT.</p>
<p>Grad school admissions is actually pretty predictable. I don’t think it does any one a service to pretend otherwise. Get reasonably high GRE scores, publish a 1st author paper, and get good grades, and I would be shocked if you didn’t get in everywhere. None of those things are that tough; getting a 1st author paper does require significant time in the lab, but anybody can do it. In fact, I would say that a 2nd author paper and good grades/scores is probably more than enough to get in everywhere (with one or two possible exceptions.) In theoretical fields, classroom performance is weighted more.</p>
<p>Med school admissions is not as predictable.</p>
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<p>This just means that you won’t lose your spot to someone with an inferior record (although, like I said before, med school has a bunch of subjective factors thrown in which make it unpredictable.) It depends on your perspective. Some people might think it more brutal to lose your spot to someone with worse grades, scores, and research.</p>
<p>Job applications can be frustrating, especially out of college, but there are ways around that too (internship while an undergrad, etc.)</p>
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As long as you know the rules in advance, and as long as you have the appropriate credentials, graduate school admissions in science and engineering are relatively trivial (though they are getting less so, if you look at the stats threads on the grad school board). There are plenty of kids who go to small, non-research-focused undergraduate schools, and are shocked to discover that they need significant research experience to get into graduate school. And graduate school admissions committees won’t say, “Oh, this kid just wasn’t afforded the ability to do research, let’s let him in anyway.” They don’t care if they fill the entire class with kids who UROPed in the top labs at Harvard, MIT, and Stanford.</p>
<p>Anyway, I don’t think that affects the point that life does not get easier overall for scientists and engineers after undergraduate applications.</p>
<p>I agree with whoever said this sounded whiny. Let’s be realistic now guys, this is MIT. Getting deferred from a place so good should even be a compliment to you, because it means you’re getting in everywhere else. No worries, wait until march.</p>
<p>Wow. I am…wow. Bass69, you must be really upset and I understand. But to rant on MIT and its admission officers like that is just way out of hand.
If you really feel that MIT is not caring about its applicants, you should just withdraw your application. Don’t try to spread your resentment against MIT just because you were not accepted. College admission is about finding the right place. If you were not accepted, it is either because you just do not match with MIT’s philosophy and atmosphere (that’s why they read all those personal statements and recommendations) or maybe they felt that you cannot handle the coursework (statistics).
As far as I am concerned, I would not be happy to go to school with an immature and arrogant person like you.</p>
<p>“The truth is, I am not trying to be offensive, but all the people I know who got in were [fe]male or an under represented minority.”</p>
<p>If you’re not trying to be offensive, don’t say offensive things. I’d like to see you try to argue that you’re any more qualified than myself or any of my female friends who were admitted. I’d like to see you try to prove that you’ve shown more dedication, initiative, and passion than any one of the URM admits. </p>
<p>Also, given that this is the way that you respond to a deferral from a college with a highly-competitive admissions process, I strongly question your personality and level of maturity (both of which, presumably, are significant factors in determining admissions). Maybe browse through the EA results thread and see how many excellent applicants got deferred. Be a bit more humble, less belligerent, and less ready to throw completely unjustifiable accusations at others. </p>
<p>Sorry if this sounds a bit harsh, but, really. Reread your initial post and consider what it’s implying (or, rather, directly stating).</p>
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<p>I don’t know much, but I do know that the OP really didn’t seem to be claiming he is more qualified - rather, observing based on anecdotal experience that females and URMs seemed to have it better in the early round. I would say it is a better criticism to ask whether or not URMs and females were really admitted at a larger rate during the early round than the regular (else the OP would have made merely a rant based on personal experience). </p>
<p>About grad school (@collegealum and Mollie) – probably less “trivial” to predict what to do for theoretical fields, because like in undergrad admissions, it is hard to understand what it is one must do to prove oneself [if not a genius, I guess].</p>
<p>Fair question …</p>
<p>Colleges want to admit students that they need to build the class that will show them in the right light … Atheletes, minorities, legacies and academic super stars ( USAMO/IMO guys for putnam competitions … etc)
But in the early round with limited number of seats with well qualified pool college admission tend to show this bias more and an excellent academic student who the school can choose based on merely grade, course rigor and SAT scores point of view will have to wait for reguar pool.
This is my take on so far from what I see.</p>
<p>Just to clarify about grad school admissions in science (specifically to top grad schools like MIT), what both of you are saying is that it’s not as unpredictable as undergrad admissions, right? A top grad school will most likely admit someone with significant research experience/high GPA/GRE score, but someone with a high SAT/GPA and all that has much less of an advantage?</p>
<p>It seems to me that MIT gets the applicants with hooks (have to have’s) in the early round, and then they admit the non-hooked but competitive applicants in regular. It seems they mostly admit recruited athletes, URM’s, first-generation, musical and artistic stars, and extremely-accomplished individuals in the first round. They then admit garden-variety smart kids in the second round because they want to see how they would fit in the class as a whole. I may be biased though as I was deferred early action.</p>
<p>I think top grad school admissions are more predictable because there are fewer people with the appropriate qualifications – there is more stratification within the applicant population. Additionally, grad schools don’t care at all about things like extracurriculars or community service, so those are not factors. As a result, the difference between people who will be admitted and people who won’t is somewhat more clear than for high schoolers, who largely haven’t had real opportunities to flex their intellectual muscle.</p>
<p>Top grad schools in science and engineering place a great deal of weight on previous research/design/internship experience and professor recommendations. Similar to undergrad admissions, though, a high GPA and high GRE score are requisite qualifications, but not sufficient ones.</p>
<p>Hey guys, I was bored and I looked at my CC threads and I just wanna say that I truly did sound like an entitled little brat, probably because I wasn’t used to rejection. Been at Stanford for a few years now… and oh boy has it opened my eyes. I wouldn’t trade my experience here for anything… in fact I’d say I’m glad I got the opportunity to go here instead of MIT. For the kids feeling bitter about rejection- I can say that it will happen to you over and over and over in your life and you have to pick yourself up and do it again. This is life. It’s brutal, and the only one who can help you through is you and your willpower. You have to believe in yourself, push through, and show the world that you are an incredible person.</p>
<p>Thanks for getting back. I think it may help a few other students cope.</p>
<p>One thing that helped my son who also got rejected from MIT despite a stellar resume…</p>
<p>Only 1000 kids get into MIT each year. Calculate how many valedictorians there are in the US alone. Assuming a low 50% of them also have great test scores and you have more than the admissions classes of every Ivy League school. Even if every one of the ‘top’ schools took only the very best qualified students, there would be many rejections based purely on the math.</p>
<p>Enjoy the weather.</p>
<p><em>crosses fingers that someone asks about her grant application from the top of page 2</em></p>
<p>I’ll bite. Dear Mollie, do tell us - did you get that grant? How did you cope?</p>
<p>Congrats on getting into Stanford, and I’m happy to hear you’re enjoying your experience there :)</p>
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So glad you asked! :D</p>
<p>As it happens, I was exactly right about what was going to happen – we got the score back for the grant (recall that we’d spent a solid month writing this), and it was 14th percentile, meaning it was scored better than 86% of grants that were submitted. Yay!</p>
<p>But 14th percentile wasn’t good enough to be funded.</p>
<p>So my collaborator and I spent about a day whining about how nobody gets us and it’s not fair, and then we buckled down and spent a few weeks revising. And when we sent the revision in, we got a 7th percentile score, which was well inside the funding line. </p>
<p>It’s no fun to be deferred or rejected, especially when you’ve poured so much of yourself into an application. But if you’re going to stay in science or engineering, it’s probably a feeling you’re going to need to get used to.</p>