<p>As you may know we are pretty transparent about our admissions statistics here: </p>
<p>Admissions</a> Statistics | MIT Admissions</p>
<p>One of the things we provide that I've not seen any other school publish in this way are the distribution of scores. </p>
<p>I'm curious: to the extent that anyone here has looked over this page, what do you make of the published score distributions? How do you think of them? How does it influence your own college applications / plans / processes?</p>
<p>The data kind of says what you’d expect it to say. MIT admits some smart kids! (based on the numbers)</p>
<p>I’m going to be applying in 2014, RA, as an international student (Hong Kong). The odds are definitely not in my favour, with a shockingly low ~3.3% admitted, yikes.</p>
<p>From the data, the standardized test scores are definitely attainable, so I’m not too worried about that, but on the whole - I think it’s worth a shot! MIT seems to be a fun, innovative, collaborative, and quirky place (yes, that was a quadlet(?)), abundant of unicorns and wonder 
and a place that I’d love to wake up to each morning (or evening, depending on the workload :-P) for four years. </p>
<p>I’m going to be applying regardless of statistics. :-)</p>
<p>Chris - I love the way MIT leads in terms of transparency across the board. Besides the extra admission statistics you provide the survey data for graduating students, summer experience, etc. holds a lot of interesting and useful information. One thing the distribution of scores shows is that even if an applicant attains all 800s on the SAT, the chance for admission is still relatively low. I think that helps set reasonable expectations.</p>
<p>I hope MIT continues to lead the way in transparency. Many other universities still do not provide the common data set and I think it’s great that MIT goes beyond what’s in that report.</p>
<p>I’m a current freshmen and the published score distributions didn’t affect my decision to attend or apply but I still appreciated them. However, I think they would be much more useful if the acceptance rates by test scores were broken down by domestic and international applicants [even publishing data for just US applicants would be more helpful]. As this thread <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/massachusetts-institute-technology/883698-reconstruction-mit-2009-domestic-usa-admit-rates-sat-score.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/massachusetts-institute-technology/883698-reconstruction-mit-2009-domestic-usa-admit-rates-sat-score.html</a> makes clear it is likely that the presence of international substantially flattens the acceptance rate by SAT math curve [this is regardless of the other claims about URMs and females].</p>
<p>Also interesting is a comparison of acceptance rate by SAT math scores from 2008-9 to 2011-12 [data above thread and Page</a> Not Found | MIT Admissions](<a href=“http://mitadmissions.org/apply/process/stats]]Page”>Admissions statistics | MIT Admissions)
Score Bracket 08-09 acceptance rate 11-12 acceptance rate
750-800 15% 14%
700-740 12% 9%
650-690 8% 4%
600-640 2% 0%<br>
<600 0% 0%</p>
<p>MIT is harder to get into than before but acceptance rates for top scorers haven’t fallen much but have plummeted for scores that are low for MIT.</p>
<p>Chris, I think the distributions are great because without them, for example, someone with an SAT math score below 740 may not apply. However with these distributions one gets the sense that scores down to 700 are probably okay. </p>
<p>PS: I cannot believe I am writing this but not advising my son to apply EA who has a pair of 690s from a little more than a year ago. </p>
<p>He was supposed to take the Oct SAT (last week) but was denied access to the center because of a new photo rule (that is supposed to go into effect in January next year). It is a great photo for identifying him, bright, focused, clear and everything, except apparently shows a greater side profile of him than acceptable. I would say, it provides a better view of his jaw line and forehead to identify him than otherwise. I still do not know if the issue is truly with the photo or (my suspicion) the fact that he raised his SAT math score from 320 in 2008 to 690 in 2011.</p>
<p>I really like the transparency. It’s helpful to have an idea of how the chances are different for those with different test scores. I’m applying this year, but the scores aren’t really affecting my decision in any way. It helps to convey that you don’t need an 800 in every section to be admitted.</p>
<p>Wow, ignore my rant:</p>
<p>That’s actually quite fascinating. I’m applying to some post-grad programs right now, and this reminds me of WUSTL’s admissions’ statistics page.</p>
<p>Anyways, it definitely shows that higher scores do correlate with a higher admissions rate. There’s an increase by more than 50% of admissions rate from the bracket math score [700-740] to [750-800]. Unfortunately, 14% of the [750-800] bracket in itself is still depressingly low for any applicant.</p>
<p>Overall, I think that this page would encourage high SAT scorers to apply, though it would deter many of the lower-scoring applicants. </p>
<p>Personally, my SAT score back in high school was kind of high, so seeing these statistics at that time would have boosted my confidence. And possibly resulted in lousier essays lol.</p>
<p>I, too, applaud the transparency.</p>
<p>One added statistic that might be of interest is if you had the admissions rate for people who were deferred from early action–that is what percentage of them got admitted eventually when in the regular pool.</p>
<p>@collegealum the page says 224 of 3,935 deferred applicants were accepted in the regular round. Thus, the acceptance rate for deferred applicants was 5.7%</p>
<p>The transparency positively impacted my decision to apply. Everyone likes a school which is transparent and open. </p>
<p>However I second the person who said that the grades should be broken down between international and domestic applicants. It seems like only the best of the best are admitted from other countries, if you don’t get into an olympiad or win an international award, you don’t have much of a chance. Any thoughts on that?</p>
<p>I really appreciate the transparency, but I feel that it would be better if it also showed composite SAT score distributions.</p>
<p>It’s good MIT is trying to be as transparent as possible, and that you don’t need a perfect score–nor do you have to be a flawless human machine–to get in. I guess it gives potential applicants an honest answer to what a competitive score is, so they have something to aim for when they take the SAT. </p>
<p>On the other hand, it’s pretty daunting to know that you have virtually no chance with a math score in the mid-600’s. Back this winter when I was waiting for my decision, it just made my heart sink when I found this out (when I applied in the fall, I had no idea what a “good score” was; silly me). A handful do get admitted with low math scores–just enough to keep hope alive, I suppose.</p>
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<p>You’d rather know this now than get your hopes up and not get in, trust me.</p>