<p>I keep hearing that MIT rejected a lot of people who have better stats than me. At the same time, MIT accepted a lot of people who have worse stats than me.</p>
<p>Is it extracurriculars, recommendations, essays, interviews, personality, leadership, character. What is it? Did MIT reject the people w/ 2400 SATs because MIT thinks that they are stiff-nosed and bland?</p>
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Is it extracurriculars, recommendations, essays, interviews, personality, leadership, character. What is it?
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Yes.</p>
<p>Once your numbers satisfy a certain threshold, they don't matter too much anymore. After the initial read, the student with a 2400 isn't treated any differently from another talented student with a 2200 simply on the basis of SAT score, but both applicants are evaluated based on what else they bring to the table and to the MIT community.</p>
<p>From Matt's blog, What's</a> the big deal about 40^2?:
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People make a big deal about test scores. No one seems to believe me when I tell them that when I'm reading an application, I just glance at the test scores to get a sense of them before moving on to the more important parts of the application -- that is, who you are. But here's an example. So, I'm reading this application of a student, a pretty strong student, who's definitely overcome some challenges recently. I come to the second to last piece in the folder, which is the guidance counselor letter (the last piece is the interview report). The GC makes a big deal of the student's "scoring the magic 1600 on the SAT." Now, when I started the case, I mentally noted to myself, "Okay, this student has scores that are fine, let's move on," but it didn't really make an impact on me that the student had "the magic 1600." Yes, scoring a 1600 is something that you, your school, your parents, and your guidance counselor can be very proud of. But it's not something I'm going to bust out my highlighter for, circle in big red pen, make it the focus of your case. In fact, I don't think I have ever in my summary of a student used high standardized scores as an argument to admit that student.
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<p>So it's not that students with perfect SAT scores are rejected because of some implicit bias against perfect scorers. But when they are not accepted, it's because their cases weren't as strong in other aspects as other students with lower SAT scores. (And about 50% of perfect scorers are admitted, which is a far better admit rate than the overall rate!)</p>
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I keep hearing that MIT rejected a lot of people who have better stats than me. At the same time, MIT accepted a lot of people who have worse stats than me.
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This is sort of an important point, even if you don't realize it -- the reason that MIT accepted people with lower SAT scores than you, but rejected people with higher scores, is that the MIT applicant pool has very high SAT scores in general. MIT could almost choose students randomly with respect to SAT score and get the same SAT score distribution as they get by carefully selecting students, just because the distribution of applicant SAT scores is so narrow in the first place.</p>
<p>It's a Caltech prank on MIT. Caltech infiltrated the MIT admissions office covertly and is now controlling MIT admissions to ensure that the quality of students at MIT falls relative to that of Caltech.</p>
<p>...no, but in all seriousness, there's more to admissions than numbers. Did you have an admissions interview? Maybe your interviewer saw something special in you that shot your chances up a bit. Do you have any out-of-the-ordinary extracurriculars? Maybe the admissions committee saw something unique and interesting about you that made you a great candidate. How were your essays? Maybe your essays contained a certain spark of unique enthusiasm that would make you preferable to, say, a person who could score a 1,000,000.5 on the SAT but then submits an essay that's been picked over and groomed by its author so many times that it reads more like a randomized listing of those ridiculous fifteen-letter words in a thesaurus than an application essay from a student who has a genuine love of learning and enthusiasm for a field of study.</p>
<p>Whatever the reason, there is a reason.</p>
<p>Edit: Oh, excellent. In my timezone, this post of mine went through precisely at 11:11. I get to make a wish, now, right?</p>
<p>thanks guys, that helps a lot in my perspectives.</p>
<p>any other comments, please post.</p>
<p>MIT permitted me to retake the TOEFL in January...Does this give me more chances to get accepted?</p>
<p>January retaking test scores are acceptable.for all students.</p>
<p>if you have a toefl score>100 then dont retake... save the money</p>
<p>Stiff and bland? If test scores were all that mattered, the college application would be very simple indeed. :p</p>
<p>We found the magic</a> formula a while back, shh it's a secret :)</p>
<p>If admissions were based purely on stats, it wouldn't take three months to make decisions. =P</p>