Please spare the MIT profs from being peppered by every aspiring student to collaborate.
@itsjustschool Thank you so much for being to accept my choice and to help! I would definitely love to do work with certain MIT professors on this! I have had this idea but have not done so as yet because of the distance and also because I am in no way, as of now, affiliated to the institution.
And coming to that issue, probably the PHD example isn’t well placed, but I am looking at the conundrum of talking about a start up in my country or an academic career or a career in industry anywhere else in the world because like you said, they do seem to be very varied plans that can be mutually exclusive.
@CheddarcheeseMN Thank you!
@JonathanTan Lots of very good engineering schools in the US focus on these very well. Do not apply to just MIT - you should expand your horizons a bit.
“but after considering deeply, that MIT is still his/her top choice school in the field he/she wishes to pursue and rejects those colleges to apply for MIT again, would it help him/her if he/she were to mention and explain this in your application and interview? [On a side note, is it an overkill to do so? But MIT is great ]”
You ask a pretty girl out. She says no. Instead of walking away and going out with the also-pretty girls who would be happy to date you, you reject all of them. You then go back to the first girl and you hope to win her heart by saying “look at all the other pretty girls I won’t date, because I’m waiting for you,”. Do you think that’s compelling?
MIT (and all other schools) pick students to meet THEIR needs, not to fulfill YOUR lifetime dreams. The fact that YOU love MIT (or think you do) is of no concern to them. They are not granting places to the 2000 or so kids who love them the mostest of all. They’re granting places to the ones they want.
They have 30,000 applicants a year who would all just looooove to go to MIT and believe MIT to be the perfect fit. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, about your specific “love” for them that is notable, noteworthy, distinguishing or that they’d care about. They pick who they want based on what THEY want, not what you want. Just like the pretty girl. She picks who she wants, not the suitor who wants her the most.
“Make an appointment and brief them on Skype, see if you can collaborate with them- somehow develop a plan wherein they are involved in your daily life so that when you transition to that single, and only acceptable, school, you will continue to push your project forward working, now locally, with your collaborators.”
That’s a horrible idea. The kid is obsessed enough with MIT and now you want him to stalk and Skype professors?
Jonathan, you’re not from the U.S. So there is an aspect of Anerican culture you are u familiar with. There is not “one best” in anything. Even your vaunted MIT. People find opportunities everywhere. My guess is that you come from a culture where there is a strict hierarchy, 1 to 2 to 3. The U.S. simply isn’t like that. Do you know the Engkish expression “splitting hairs”?
@JonathanTan:
@Pizzagirl’s analogy of “asking out a pretty girl” is spot on. You’re fabricating how the world should operate from your own little world. You’re not seeing that no one is buying it.
You asked people here, who have knowledge for what you’re trying to do, to give their time to help. They have done so. Then you not only reject their advice (which is your option), but your replies are wasting everyone’s time. Instead of answering questions, you reply with these mind-boggling far-fetched answers that don’t address the question, have nothing to do with reality, and sound legitimate to only you.
Is this how you learn from others?
Hi @jpm50. Thank you for your advice. I kindly and readily accept any constructive advice all forumers have given thus far and have tried my utmost to answer questions which has been posed to me to clarify my stand and provide more information with regards to my background.
I am not sure why you would undermine my intentions but I continue to be very willing to learn from you and everyone else.
You have asked me to describe what I have done over the past one year and I have replied to you on the specifics I would describe in my application this year. I am unsure if you did see it or why you would be in disbelief over what I have done.
Nevertheless, I hope to continue learning from the opinions you have and the points you have highlighted.
OP, I’m still very confused about what really happened vs. what is hypothetical, but if you did turn down UC - Berkeley and Caltech’s offers of admission this past cycle, there is no guarantee that they will accept you again the next time you apply. I’ve never seen statistics on how often admitted applicants are admitted for a second year in a row, but my unscientific hunch is that your application would receive additional scrutiny since you already “wasted their time” by applying, being admitted and turning them down last year. You may want to add some other less-selective universities to your list in case you find yourself rejected from those that admitted you last admissions cycle.
Thank you @MITer94 and @Pizzagirl! I am indeed looking at some other colleges that better fit my goals. I understand that there are a lot of opportunities everywhere and while there can never be a good gauge of which college is the best other than a mere representative of different opinions and methodologies which may favour certain places, I hope you do understand that I am looking towards fit more than anything else in terms of culture, students, professors, programmed and opportunities.
I do in fact gladly accept your opinions on my past actions (to reject other colleges) and whether it will help or hurt my college applications. I do believe that it may seem baffling to some but I think focusing on the current application would be more apt than to focus on my actions. 
@GnocchiB Yeah I understand that. I won’t be looking to applying to those two schools this time round and will in fact look at other colleges too. But as I have continually stressed, MIT remains my top choice.
Have you even visited any of these colleges?
OP is seriously overthinking this. And if that comes through so clearly here, excellent chance adcoms will have the “Say What?!” moment and move on.
In fact, I don’t think any other posters will convince him of anything.
No, you don’t impress adcoms at any tippy top by saying you turned down other top schools and you won’t get an admit by professing love-- no one does. It’s superficial and not showing any comprehension of the process or what the school values.
You’re raising flags. And then defending them.
Did you actually decline your acceptances to every school that gave you an offer or did you accept one and ask for a gap year?
My opinion is that telling MIT that you rejected offers from top schools for the chance to apply again to their school would not in any way help your application.
You can explain the reasons you chose to spend your time on things other than olympiads/ and science fairs but make sure that it sounds like part of your unique story and not a lame excuse.
I don’t think that the admissions office has any preconceived ideas as to what an applicant could put in their application that they would view as negative. If you have any concerns that admissions might see some of what you tell them in a negative light, make sure to put those things in a framework of what you learned or challenges that you overcame because you had those experiences.
I feel like #2 is going to sound like a lame excuse no matter what. Don’t waste precious app space talking about the things you didn’t do.
Begging is a negative. Not showing reasonable thought processes is another.
OP is missing the whole concept of “show, not just tell.” Frankly, it sounds like the app will be a mess to read, with all the explanations. And that’s not showing the sort of savvy an MIT is looking for.
We can’t tell OP how to do it.
It may be the OP wants to know if conveying that he or she turned down Cal Tech regardless of whether that happened) in favor of applying to MIT would convince MIT that OP was worthy of an acceptance. But I’m sure MIT has faith in its ability to choose students and doesn’t let information about how other schools feel about a candidate influence their choices.
I think MIT choices the candidates they believe to have the best fit to MIT. They have been at the business of selecting students for a good long time. Given their 2 year return rate and their overall graduation rate, as well as the success of their graduates, it appears that they don’t need input from other schools and they especially don’t need input from other schools through the report of the student.
Had the crop of students currently at MIT not gotten into MIT, most would be happily pursuing study at other universities. That is the kind of student they select.
And 2) as you know, many students are accepted to MIT without Olympiad awards. Successful students probably are not those who explain away lack of awards. Rather I’d guess they explain their achievements. 3) they probably discuss things they have done, not things they have considered or plan to do.
Thank you so much for all your replies I appreciate them.
@intparent I haven’t visited them due to financial constraints. That is why comments from all of you help a lot and I am glad all of you are giving me the adequate information with right context to pursue my application.
@lookingforward Thank you for your fair comment that’s directed at the issue and your great advice. Indeed, I do understand now that how I was looking at it was wrong. Thanks!
@rothstem Definitely! Sounds great! I am intending for the experiences to be part of my story too!
@lostaccount For #3, What I meant was that should I talk about things which would be currently ongoing, at the point of application, for instance, a funding round.
Don’t beg, it is very very rare that would work.
Have you seen this program?
http://web.mit.edu/admissions/graduate/special.html
And yes, I agree with others that you’d be insane to turn down Caltech for MIT. At the very worst, you can transfer from Caltech to MIT and get an MIT degree, plus you’ll have the upper level classes at MIT which would be specific for your program.
BUT: you mention financial constraints - did you even look into how much it will cost you to attend college in the US? Travel to and from? Tuition, fees, room and board?
Do you even know if you could afford any of the colleges you were accepted to?