<p>Things like USAMO, RSI, things of that nature. Now, I am... Garden variety smart? I did well on all testing and am considered a genius within my school, but not so much in terms of MIT applicants. I took the AMC 10 and qualified to take the AIME, but didn't find our until it was too late. Will this lack of ridiculously good awards significantly hurt me? I earned my eagle scout award, and was inducted into who's who for mathematics, but that's it for awards above the school level. Do many MIT applicants have these ridiculous national and international awards?</p>
<p>A lot do but they’re a minority of the incoming class. Don’t worry about it. Just do your best on your application and you’re fine.</p>
<p>Ok, that’s what I was asking because I know MIT has this reputation (which isn’t really accurate) of everystudent being a genius, but I was just wondering how many people likeme are applying. Thanks.</p>
<p>MIT admits around 1500 people per class. The number of USAMO qualifiers graduating per year is probably around 100-125. The number of intel finalists is like 30 or so (not really sure.) Anyway, even if you assume that every person winning the super-exclusive awards will apply, there are still about 1000 spots open for “garden-variety smart” people.</p>
<p>Minus recruited athletes, musicians, artists, siemens finalists. Then you need to give out a certain number of spots to URMs and first-generation students. I would be interested to know that number.</p>
<p>^None of those groups has a quota, so the number of recruited art/music/athletics stars admitted varies each year, as does the number of URM and first-generation students. There are no spots reserved for any group, and the only group with a quota is international students.</p>
<p>MIT doesn’t recruit athletes like the ivies where they reserve a certain number of slots for athletes. When I was at MIT, I heard a guy on the Harvard crew team had a 1000/1600 SAT score–MIT doesn’t do that. (I heard this through a classmate of his.) I don’t know how big a boost it is at MIT. It seems like it is bigger than in the old days, as it seems our athletes have gotten better in the past 5-10 years.</p>
<p>And musicians…well, there is no need for this since there is such a large overlap between the math/science crowd and classical musicians.</p>
<p>You can find the % of URM’s on-line. My guess is it’s around 25-30%, but the stats are easily found.</p>
<p>@DoberHound I’m working on Eagle Project right now! I mentioned that I was almost there, but still not as good as actually having Eagle.</p>
<p>about 70% of our admits last year did NOT have a crazy academic award</p>
<p>@ MITChris: sweet, thanks
@ Stevie: what are you doing for yours?</p>
<p>I graduated a year and a half ago, and I still don’t know what most of those acronyms stand for. =)</p>
<p>I’m holding a health fair at my school to educate students about making healthy lifestyle choices. Students will peruse informational displays (researched and made by volunteers) and then listen to different speakers. It’s not the traditional “build a bridge in a nature preserve” project, but I think it’s pretty cool. Plus, I hate building stuff, especially nowadays when few people go to nature preserves. lol</p>
<p>That’s nice and creative, I built a fence for mine.</p>
<p>Congratulations on you eagle scout award, I received mine this past year too! I just got my membership card for NESA today (which I would recommend you to get). Good Luck with college!</p>
<p>^ dude, look up the eagle scout scholarships, they mightreallyhelp.</p>