Not the OP but others on this thread have expressed those thoughts.
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As a separate matter, sometimes other students are sometimes less qualified. It is not a sin to believe so. Just because MIT picked someone, it doesn’t automatically make them good.
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nvm
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Of course, some kids are academically stronger than others. But parents (especially disappointed parents - not the OP, but there have been some on CC) are not typically able to judge other students’ qualifications.
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It would help if society felt that way about it.
But these universities themselves say it is a meritocracy and society continually tells us that.
How can it not be personal when you have to write essays about yourself and your whole life is evaluated before a room full of people?
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I have no idea about either of these kids. But the school, teachers, and many of their peers would have a strong idea about which is the stronger kid. Far better idea than what MIT thinks it knows.
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I mean admissions offices haven’t exactly been showing themselves in a good light over the past few years.
I don’t need to name specifics but I’m sure people are aware of various cases over the past few years.
It’s understandable why people become skeptical of what holistic means and lose faith in the system entirely. And for most people applying to top schools on college confidential, the system has always been on their side until now.
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Time to return focus to OP, since we agree that OP doesn’t harbor such views and isn’t interested in discussing the “why”s of admission?
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If your son is anything like our son, applied but didn’t get into MIT, he does not want a daily reminder that he “failed” and then having a “talk with his parents”. ‘He don’t need it nor wants it.’
He was upset. He was a tutor, as well. He was perfect on paper. But if you mentioned anything about his acceptances, he walked away from us.
So, we went about our lives and didn’t discuss anything related to college acceptances because he was getting it hourly, if not from other kids, teachers, administrators, coaches, but also from family. He already felt badly.
So we gave him time to grieve. We took him to the movies. We took him to a Padres game. We went to his tennis matches and we did family activities. Basically we tried to “move around him” to ground him in our common family activities. He seemed to appreciate it and then he received his Caltech acceptance. We never had to mention MIT.
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The way I comforted myself after my rejections was by thinking about the positives in my life.
Yes, I may not have a prestigious degree but my parents are both educated professionals and I’m still better off than the vast majority of people in society.
There are millions out there who will never even get the opportunity to apply to top schools and that was my consolation.
Besides, I’ll have a very, very decent inheritance as well. The very fact that.the biggest concern in my life is a lack of a degree from my dream colleges demonstrates how lucky I am 
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I think this view expresses the mistaken (IMO) belief about how college admissions work and/or ought to work, and this mistaken belief leads to the disappointment experienced by the OP’s son. Colleges don’t line students up from most to least “qualified” by some objective standard of academic ability, then go down the row accepting students until they fill the spots. Rather, they choose a class from well-qualified students based on institutional needs. Between these two students it is very likely that they were both well qualified but there are just way too many well qualified candidates.
While I am sorry your son is distraught, I would encourage you to try to help him understand that his friend did not take his spot. Had either not applied, the results would very likely had been the same for the one who did.
Along those lines and like @MWolf, I’d encourage him to be proud of the fact that he helped his friend, but it is too much to say your son is responsible of his friend’s admissions. Surely the friend (and MIT) had a lot to do with it.
At 17 it is hard to imagine that some things are beyond our control, but that is an important if difficult lesson to learn.
I’m going off the oft-repeated belief that MIT is hard for kids who excelled in math and science in high school. Maybe not quite Caltech-hard, but no walk in the park.
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Yes, recommendation letters are a significant variable where factors other than the applicant’s achievements can affect their quality. In most cases, applicants have no real idea which teachers and counselor write better recommendations generally or which ones would be better for them and their selection of colleges (some prep schools with dedicated college counseling staffs may have better coordination with teachers to recommend the optimal set of recommendations for each student).
MIT’s admissions blog has an entry on recommendations with examples: How to write good letters of recommendation | MIT Admissions
Perhaps the OP’s student’s recommenders wrote recommendations like the ones for Jen, Mike, and Brian, while the other student’s recommenders wrote recommendations like the ones for David and Mary. Such a difference is invisible when looking at stats and ECs, but potentially highly influential to admissions readers. Often, getting better or worse recommendations is a matter of luck, since students typically do not know which teachers or counselors write better or worse recommendations.
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I don’t think there is a simple linear relationship between “how well you did in math and science in high school” and “how hard MIT is.” I attended MIT as a grad student and was a TA for 6.001 for many terms (the classic intro computer science course). I tutored many kids who struggled in fundamental ways with the abstraction level of the class. All could eventually grasp and master the material, but it was interesting to me how often a very smart and hardworking kid (who might be a whiz at EE or something else) would struggle a whole lot with certain concepts.
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Looking forward to your son moving on to another college he loves!
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Here is my free advice. Let your son have a couple of days to feel badly about MIT…then it will be time to move on to making a college choice. Really…I would not discuss this any further…what’s done is done. Time to look at the acceptances and decide where he wants to be.
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@parent600 I would just like to say that you are a class act, and so is your son. If “character” is important, I wish MIT had known how much he helped his friend.
I think it can be helpful to remember that colleges are building classes, rather than assessing individuals in some sort of hierarchical way. Maybe an applicant plays the flute, collects butterflies, or has hiked the Appalachian trail. I only hope the guidance counselor or teachers honored your son’s contributions in terms of tutoring math, science and writing.
Back quite a few years, my son did not apply to Bates because his best friend applied. He wanted to avoid just such a situation and might have felt worse if he was the one who got in!
I don’t know how you can help this feel better. I feel sure from your posts that your son feels valued by you, and not in a way that brings his friend down either. Time and focusing on his own school may help, and one hopes he thrives there so that this does not sting for a long time. Sympathies!
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