<p>I saw this guy at Korean Newspaper..He's from Korea. He attended highschool at US since 9th grade. He received education for geniuses, he did tons of volunteering, he received some medal (not sure) at International Mathematics Olympiad, and he got perfect score (2400) on SAT. I'm pretty sure that he got straight As. And he still got rejected at MIT. (I don't know when this guy applied, and it's possible that he applied this year for EA. If that's the case, I don't think he will get rejected because my friend who has 1980 got deferred..)
The reason that he got rejected, according to some expertise, was that he showed that he lacked knowledge on american culture and issues on interview, even though he lived in US for 4 years...Though isn't it very minor thing considering what he have achieved in highschool? And I'm sure that he will be accepted if he was American Citizen..
The question is..why are those ~100 guys accepted at MIT as int'l status got accepted? Are they really better than him? I'm so discouraged after seeing that article, as an int'l student.</p>
<p>Hey,
I am guessing that colleges such as MIT are not necessarily always looking to accept the class with the smartest students, since all the applicants are pretty smart. So basically, he could have been one of the 10 smartest kids in the applicant pool this year for MIT. But maybe it wasn't what MIT was looking for? (I'm just guessing, because I really have no idea) </p>
<p>This news is kind of disappointing to me though, because any kid who gets a medal at IMO definitely has some extraordinary talent and would make a great addition to the math department at any college, including MIT.</p>
<p>He couldn't have applied this year EA -- international applicants have to apply RD so they're all considered together.</p>
<p>There's absolutely no requirement to know about American culture, and it's pure speculation to assume that this was "the reason" he was rejected. There's not really ever "a" reason that anyone is rejected from MIT, other than that there are tons of awesome international kids applying for a very limited number of spots. Not all of them have international medals, but since when is an international medal the only way to show academic accomplishment and promise?</p>
<p>I read alittlebit's post and the phrase that struck out is "was that he showed that he lacked knowledge on american culture and issues ON INTERVIEW." [Caps added] I'm an EC (interviewer), and while there is absolutely no requirement to know anything about American culture, I am perfectly willing to believe that he could have had a disastrous interview, and that that might have been a factor leading to a rejection.</p>
<p>Now there are a lot of us EC's. We are all quite different, and hence the Interview report at MIT is not as critical a document as at some schools where there is a small pool of interviewers who all work at the Admissions Office. The larger the pool, the harder it is to operate quality control. However, a exceptionally good or bad interview can definitely affect the process.</p>
<p>For starters, when I am interviewing, I never ask about grades, test scores, or anything else that is likely to appear elsewhere on the application. I am always looking for those qualities that are harder to show on an application. Evidence of initiative, risk-taking, intellectual curiousity, hands-on creativity, all of those things that collectively are spoken off as "the match", and I have had some very bright, extremely bright interviewees who were poor matches for MIT. </p>
<p>There are obvious ways to blow the interview. There is the apocryphal story of the interviewee who brought their teddy-bear to the interview. Every question the interviewer asked was referred to the teddy bear and after the interviewee had a short confab with the bear, an answer was forthcoming. The interviewer wondered on paper whether this candidate had the emotional maturity for MIT. That interview had to hurt that candidate's chances for admission. That kid might have had great test scores.</p>
<p>I had one particularly disastrous interview this year (about a month ago), where I strongly suspect that my interview report will tip a candidate into the rejection basket. Similarly, I have had extremely strong interviews where I hope that my very strong report was of real use in gaining them admission.</p>
<p>You say he was rejected for lack of knowledge of American culture. There certainly is no requirement to know anything about that at all. Indeed, as an International EC, most of the candidates I see have extremely little knowledge of American culture. However, I could see a way in which that might have been shorthand for larger failings. Consider the following exchange (exaggerated for effect):</p>
<p>Interviewer: So what do you do for fun?
Response: I like solving Differential Equations
Interviewer: OK, I like recreational math myself, but do you do anything non-academic for fun? For example, do you like going to the movies?
Response: I haven't been to the movies in 6 years.
Interviewer: OK. Fine. There is no cinema requirement. So then, when you spend time with your friends, what else do you do together?
Response: I don't really have any friends. The ones I do have are all online in distant lands. For fun we solve differential equations together.</p>
<p>Now, I have exaggerated here, but I have certainly interviewed candidates who tended in this direction. What I tend to do in these sorts of cases is to put the relevant segment of the interview into my report verbatim and allow the admissions committee to make their own call. Sometimes the rest of the application is strong enough, that the fact that they might be a little bit of a robot is not sufficient reason to deny them admission. Sometimes it is.</p>
<p>If I had a candidate who was living in ANY community for 4 years and did not seem to have any awareness of that community beyond the classroom, then I might be concerned. A candidate who did not have any social life in the community to speak of would probably gain a negative interview report. The higher the degree of their isolation from their community, the more likely it would be to affect my opinion of them.</p>
<p>And that is not a bad thing. The phrase on the MIT seal is Mens Et Manus - Mind and Hands. Most of the problem sets at MIT are designed to be worked on in groups, certainly almost all of the freshman ones were. MIT participates very strongly in the open source community. Working collaboratively on real world problems is something that MIT holds very dear, and if that really isn't your thing, then regardless of your test scores, you won't really be happy at MIT, and you are highly unlikely to be admitted.</p>
<p>Just my tuppence,
-Mikalye</p>
<p>I can almost assure you there is more to this than you might know...just sounds very suspect. Perhaps he said something which came off derragatory on the interview, something just doesn't add up. My brothers friend made the dumb mistake of admitting to an interviewer from some school that he had smoked too much pot in his 10th grade year thats why his grades suffered that year, WAY TOO MUCH INFORMATION! I am guessing something he said did not sit right with them, because everything else appears flawless.</p>
<p>Just to reiterate the bit about international students- there's actually an international students orientation which starts about a week before the regular orientation for the explicit purpose of introducing international students to American culture, laws, etc.</p>
<p>As for why this student wasn't admitted- it's certainly possible that he said something highly inappropriate in his interview. It's also possible that he showed some of the qualities that Mikalye mentioned, and it's also equally possible that he was simply not admitted. Lots of excellent applicants are simply not admitted for lack of space.</p>
<p>My point is that all of these reasons are valid, but unless that "expert" also happened to be the MIT admissions officer who sat in the committee that rejected this applicant, his opinion is basically worthless.</p>
<p>Mikalye, thanks for your always relevant and insightful comments.</p>
<p>To the OP: there is always a better chance that a US citizen would be admitted to MIT than an international applicant, since there is a cap on international admissions and the competition is so strong.</p>
<p>yes and perfect sat scores, as the admission dudes keep on repeating are useless</p>
<p>LauraN is quite right of course, in that there is no way to actually know why someone was or was not rejected. </p>
<p>The phrase "The reason that he got rejected, according to some expertise..." is crying out for further explanation. The only folks cabable of knowing about a horriffic interview are are the interviewer, the interviewee, and the admissions committee that reads the report. Unless the expert was one of these, the opinion could have equivalently come from a Magic 8-ball <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_8-ball%5B/url%5D">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_8-ball</a> ("Reply Hazy Try Again").</p>
<p>Nor was my post designed to suggest precisely which failings showed up at interview. The international pool is tremendously competitive. Completely blowing your interview for WHATEVER reason, may well be enough to get you rejected.</p>
<p>I would reiterate, before people panic anew about the interview, that most interviews really don't matter all that much in terms of the whole admissions process. It's those interviews at the edges of the bell curve that really matter for good or ill. Indeed there is a box on every interview report form that an EC can tick "If you consider this applicant to be that "one in a million" student". I've seen some very impressive candidates for admission and written some very strong interview reports. I've never ticked that box. I hope that someday I might be lucky enough to meet such a student.</p>
<p>-Mikalye</p>
<p>Mikalye, I have a question for you. Why do you think those people who had interview have much higher acceptance rate than those people who had not? It's like 19% to 6%.</p>
<p>Good question Car202, and obviously I do not know the answer with certainty, but I have been interviewing for a little while and I can make some pretty good guesses. </p>
<p>First, though a small but important correction. The break is not between those who had an interview and those who didn't, although that is the way that the score is often misreported.</p>
<p>There are three categories of interviewees.
a) Those that couldn't have an interview and therefore had their interview waived (say someone who lives in a remote location with no interviewers within any reasonable distance).
b) Those that could have had an interview and did.
c) Those that could have had an interview and chose not to.</p>
<p>In fact, last year, of eligible applicants, MIT admitted 19% of those who had an interview or who had their interview waived, but only 7% of those who chose not to interview.</p>
<p>Therefore, if you live in a remote region, or a non-remote region where there just isn't an EC handy, then the lack of an interview is in no way going to count against you. If however, you live in say suburban New York, then the lack of an interview will definitely count against you.</p>
<p>Why? As I highlighted earlier, there are a whole variety of poor match characteristics that are really, really easy to spot at the interview. I suspect that MIT's view is that anyone who is serious about wanting to go to MIT should want to find out more about MIT and a good EC is an excellent method of doing so. Heck, the interview should be looked forward to. I would say that the overwhelming majority of my interviews are fun, both for me and for the applicants. Most ECs work very hard to create a relaxed environment; you get a better interview that way.</p>
<p>If you are deliberately avoiding the interview, well then I suspect that there has to be a reason for that. I'm not sure of precisely what you are hiding, but it must be something.</p>
<p>Obviously, I cannot be sure that MIT feels precisely the same way, but the 19%/7% split does come from somewhere.</p>
<p>-Mikalye</p>
<p>PS: If there was some disastrous extraneous circumstances that might explain a difficult interview (eg "Driving to the interview, I accidentally ran over the EC's cat"), let the admissions office know. That does help to put these things into further context.</p>
<p>Mikalye, could it be that the more qualified applicants are more likely to seek out an interview?</p>
<p>More qualified applicants who also happen to be arrogant are going to think that the reduction in acceptance rate for non-interviewees isn't going to affect them at all.</p>
<p>Among the non-arrogant ("qualified" and "not as qualified" alike), everyone I know equally seeks the interview to maximize their chances of getting in, since the statistics are obviously there.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Interviewer: So what do you do for fun?
Response: I like solving Differential Equations
[/quote]
</p>
<p>But what if Differential Equations are fun? XD :D</p>
<p>Then there's always Caltech!</p>
<p>How can he even be selected to take part in International Math Olympiad as a non-US citizen? I was not able to be in the second round of USNCO because I was not a citizen...and it would be highly unlikely that he represented Korea in IMO since he would have had to do that before ninth grade.</p>
<p>Some Olympiads allow participation at all levels (including the Internationals) whether or not you are a citizen of the country you represent. It all depends on who runs it; that person makes the decisions.</p>
<p>He actually finished 10th grade in Korea and then came to US as 9th grade. So I guess he participated IMO in Korea..Not sure though. Anyway it's true story since it was on one of the most influential newspaper in Korea.</p>
<p>I knew this kid personally and let me just say he was a great guy. Very talented, and he's at Stanford now.</p>
<p>wait so he repeated two years?</p>